skill, that not a murmur of discontent was elicited. The locality fixed upon for the treasury of the confederacy was the island of Delos, the sacredness of which promised security; but the fund was subsequently removed to Athens itself, which became thenceforward the depository. This arbitrary act of transference was, we can have no doubt, rendered necessary by the pressure of the times, since Aristides deemed it advisable. It was the last public business of importance with which he was connected. Aristides died about 468 b.c., the third year after the ostracism of Themistocles. He had not grown wealthy in the service of the state; otherwise, though it may have been merely as a mark of respect that he was buried at the public expense, it would not have been thought necessary to portion his daughters from the public treasury, or to confer upon his son a grant of land.
Plutarch draws a parallel between Aristides and Cato the Censor; in modern history he has been not unaptly compared to George Washington. It was a high, but not an undeserved tribute of admiration which was paid to him, when once in the theatre at Athens, the entire audience turned towards him as those lines of Æschylus, in the "Seven against Thebes," were recited:—
" To be and not to seem, is this man's maxim;
His mind reposes on its proper wisdom,
And wants no other praise."
ARISTIDES or ARISTODEMUS of Thebes, a painter of the Sicyonic school, the father of Aristides and Nicomachus. He lived about 382 b.c.
ARISTIDES, the son and pupil of Aristides of Thebes, a Greek painter, living about 350 b.c. Like his father, he preferred to paint lively and passionate subjects.
ARISTIDES, a Greek painter of Thebes, scholar of Euxenidas—340 b.c. He was a contemporary of Apelles, and divided with him an admiration which assumes often the appearance of exaggeration. The most wonderful artistic powers have been attributed to him: and after making due allowance for the enthusiasm of hero-worship, enough remains to satisfy us that Aristides was a great master of his art, if not also the first who succeeded in portraying the affections of the mmd. The appreciation of his works was extraordinary. His picture of an incident in the sacking of a city—the child at the breast of the bleeding mother—was sent by Alexander, when he conquered Thebes, to Pella. A battle scene between the Greeks and the Persians, containing 100 figures, was purchased by the king of Elateus, at the rate of about £27 of our money for each figure, and Attalus offered for his Bacchus 600,000 sesterces, or between four and five thousand pounds sterling. Aristides was the first foreign painter who lived at Rome. His fame is sullied by his licentiousness,—having been fully entitled to be placed among the Πορνογράφοι of Athenæus.—A. L.
ARISTIDES, Quintilianus, a Greek writer on music, who has been elaborately proved by the internal evidence of his work, to have lived prior to Ptolemy, and to have been most likely a contemporary of Plutarch, in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. Contrary to the general impression among learned men, that there is no direct testimony on this subject, but without giving any authority, Dr. Schilling definitely states that he was born at Adria, in Mysia, 130 b.c., and that he held an appointment as teacher of music in Smyrna. His treatise upon music, occupying twenty sheets of the collection of seven Greek musical authorities, printed by Meibomius, is esteemed the best and most complete account of the Greek system of music that exists. He states that the science of music comprises the knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, physics, and metaphysics, and that it involves not only a technical exercise, but the full comprehension of the entire nature of man. He defines the thirteen modes as reduced in number from the fifteen that were at one time in use, but he gives no account of the further reduction of the number to seven. He assigns a special character to each mode, appropriating each to the expression of a particular sentiment. He treats at great length upon rhythm, to the influence of which a large proportion of the effect of the Greek music is to be attributed. His system is said to be an attempt to combine those of Aristoxenes and Pythagoras.—(Burney, Schilling, Fètis.)—G. A. M.
ARISTIDES, Saint, of Athens, lived in the beginning of the second century, and is noted as the author of the most ancient apology for Christianity. It was presented in the year 125 to the Emperor Hadrian, and is cited by Eusebius and Jerome.
ARISTIDES, Ælius, a Greek sophist, flourished about the year 176. He enjoyed a great reputation in his day, and has left fifty-five discourses (including those discovered by Mai and Morelli), most of them marked with vigour, but deficient in grace; nor can it be said that they confirm the suffrages of the ancients, who compared the author to Demosthenes. Two of his discourses, the fifth and sixth, are curious, as affording us the first indications of animal magnetism. His account would pass for a mesmeric exhibition of the nineteenth century. He says he fell periodically into a state of spontaneous somnambulism, when, being under the inspiration of Æsculapius, he prescribed with a loud voice, before many witnesses, medicines to be administered to himself, different from those recommended by his physicians. First edition by Euphrosinus Boninus, Florence, 1517; later, Leipzig, 1829, 3 vols.—A. L.
ARISTIDES of Miletus, a very early Greek author, the first writer of tales of fiction. His chief work is named "Milesian," and is noted for its licentiousness.—Another Aristides of Miletus, wrongly confounded with this writer, is referred to by Plutarch. He wrote historical works on Sicilian and Italian affairs.
ARISTILLUS, two brothers, both good astronomers. The younger commented on Aratus; the former laboured at Alexandria, and seems to have been the first to refer the places of the fixed stars to the zodiac. Ptolemy has recorded a high opinion of Aristillus.
ARISTION, a Greek philosopher, of the century before Christ. Aristion was a citizen of Athens, though born of a slave-mother; and he studied philosophy with the view of aiding his political ambition. Having been sent on a deputation to Mithridates, he contrived, by resigning himself as an instrument into the hands of that monarch, to buy his support by the sale of the relics of his country's independence. On his return to Athens, he prevailed upon the citizens, by praises of his patron, to prefer the protection of the Eastern monarch to the domination of the Romans; and thus getting himself named prætor, he subjugated his countrymen to a yoke as odious as it was unjust. His tyranny was as usual accompanied by debauchery. To add to the misery of a situation sufficiently complicated by evils, Sylla appeared before the city, and a famine commenced its desolation within. In the end, the tyrant and his accomplices were slain by the Romans in the acropolis.—A. L.
ARISTIPPUS, a native of Cyrene, in Africa, where his father was rich and influential, rendered himself famous in Greece for having founded a new school of philosophy, remarkable for its paradoxes even among the most paradoxical people of the world. While yet young, he was sent by his father to Athens, where, having become one of the pupils of Socrates, he was bold enough to dissent from the opinions of his great master. He subsequently figured at the court of Dionysius of Syracuse, where his love of pleasure endeared him to the tyrant; and his fine raillery, directed against the aspiring and mystical philosophy of Plato and his other associates, brought out in relief the sensualism of his own. His life was that of a rich man courting the world and its pleasures, and yet sacrificing at the sacred shrine of philosophy. But this philosophy of his, if it deserves the name, was merely the handmaid of his sensualism; his love of the Corinthian Lais, and his devotion to all forms of luxury, being only a tenet of his creed. He believed in nothing but the intimations of the senses, declaring our notion of truth to be a delicate internal touch, which may be different in different individuals, and thus independent of any standard of a moral rule. The result of such a scheme was, and could only be, that the senses, under the guidance of a very indulgent reason, are of use to man just in so far as they are the ministers of his pleasure. The school was continued under his daughter Arete. He flourished about the year 370 b.c.—A. L.
ARISTIPPUS the Younger, a Greek philosopher, grandson of the preceding, lived about the year 364 b.c.
ARISTIPPUS, tyrant of Argos, lived about the middle of the third century b.c.
ARISTO, Titus, a Roman lawyer of the first century, wrote notes on Cassius, who had been his master, on Sabinus, and on the "Libri Posteriores" of Labeo.
ARISTO. See Ariston.
ARISTOBULUS of Cassandria, in Macedonia, a Greek historian of the fourth century b.c., was one of the generals of Alexander the Great, and took part in several expeditions, of
