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61 See Plato, Euthydemus, p. 305; also Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, vol. i. ch. xix. pp. 557–563.

It is exactly this juste milieu which Dionysius Hal. extols as the most worthy of being followed, as being ἡ ἀληθινὴ φιλοσοφία. De Isocrate Jud. pp. 543, 558.

62 Cicero, De Oratore, iii. 35, 141. Itaque ipse Aristoteles quum florere Isocratem nobilitate discipulorum videret, quod ipse suas disputationes a causis forensibus et civilibus ad inanem sermonis elegantiam transtulisset, mutavit repente totam formam prope disciplinć suć, versumque quendam Philoctetć paulo secus dixit. Ille enim turpe sibi ait esse tacere, quum barbaros hic autem, quum Isocratem pateretur dicere See Quintilian, Inst. Or. iv. 2, 196; and Cicero, Orator. 19, 62: Aristoteles Isocratem ipsum lacessivit. Also, ib. 51, 172: Omitto Isocratem discipulosque ejus Ephorum et Naucratem; quanquam orationis faciendć et ornandć auctores locupletissimi summi ipsi oratores esse debebant. Sed quis omnium doctior, quis acutior, quis in rebus vel inveniendis vel judicandis acrior Aristotele fuit? Quis porro Isocrati adversatus est infensius? That Aristotle was the first to assail Isokrates, and that Kephisodôrus wrote only in reply, is expressly stated by Numenius, ap. Euseb. Pr. Ev. xiv. 6: ὁ Κηφισόδωρος, ἐπειδὴ ὑπ Ἀριστοτέλους βαλλόμενον ἑαυτῷ τὸν διδάσκαλον Ἰσοκράτην ἑώρα, &c. Quintilian also says, Inst. Or. iii. 1, p. 126: Nam et Isocratis prćstantissimi discipuli fuerunt in omni studiorum genere; eoque jam seniore (octavum enim et nonagesimum implevit annum) pomeridianis scholis Aristoteles prćcipere artem oratoriam cpit; noto quidem illo (ut traditur) versu ex Philoctetâ frequenter usus: Αἰσχρὸν σιωπᾷν μέν, καὶ Ἰσοκράτην ἐᾷν λέγειν.

Diogenes La. (v. 3) maintains that Aristotle turned the parody not against Isokrates, but against Xenokrates: Αἰσχρὸν σιωπᾷν, Ξενοκράτην δ ἐᾷν λέγειν. But the authority of Cicero and Quintilian is decidedly preferable. When we recollect that the parody was employed by a young man, as yet little known, against a teacher advanced in age, and greatly frequented as well as admired by pupils, it will appear sufficiently offensive. Moreover, it does not seem at all pertinent; for the defects of Isokrates, however great they may have been, were not those of analogy with βάρβαροι, but the direct reverse. Dionysius must have been forcibly struck with the bitter animus displayed by Aristotle against Isokrates, when he makes it a reason for rejecting the explicit averment of Aristotle as to a matter of fact: καὶ οὔτ Ἀριστοτέλει πείθομαι ῥυπαίνειν τὸν ἄνδρα βουλομένῳ (De Isocr. Jud. p. 577).

Mr. Cope, in his Introduction to Aristotles Rhetoric (p. 39, seq.), gives a just representation of the probable relations between Aristotle and Isokrates; though I do not concur in the unfavourable opinion which he expresses about the malignant influence exercised by Isokrates upon education in general (p. 40). Mr. Cope at the same time remarks, that Aristotle in the Rhetorica draws a greater number of illustrations of excellences of style from Isokrates than from any other author (p. 41); and he adds, very truly, that the absence of any evidence of ill feeling towards Isokrates in Aristotles later work, and the existence of such ill feeling as an actual fact at an earlier period, are perfectly reconcileable in themselves (p. 42).

That the Rhetorica of Aristotle which we now possess is a work of his later age, certainly published, perhaps composed, during his second residence at Athens, I hold with Mr. Cope and other antecedent critics.

63 Athenćus, ii. 60, iii. 122; Euseb. Pr. E. xiv. 6; Dionys. H. de Isocrate Judic. p. 577: ἱκανὸν ἡγησάμενος εἶναι τῆς ἀληθείας βεβαιωτὴν τὸν Ἀθηναῖον Κηφισόδωρον, ὃς καὶ συνεβίωσεν Ἰσοκράτει, καὶ γνησιώτατος ἀκουστὴς ἐγένετο, καὶ τὴν ἀπολογίαν τὴν πάνυ θαυμαστὴν ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Ἀριστοτέλη ἀντιγραφαῖς ἐποιήσατο, &c. Kephisodôrus, in this defence, contended that you might pick out, even from the very best poets and sophists, ἓν ἢ δύο πονηρῶς εἰρημένα. This implies that Aristotle, in attacking Isokrates, had cited various extracts which he denounced as exceptionable.

These polemics of Aristotle were begun during his first residence at Athens, prior to 347 B.C., the year of Platos decease, and at the time when he was still accounted a member of the Platonic school. They exemplify the rivalry between that school and the Isokratean, which were then the two competing places of education at Athens: and we learn that Aristotle, at that time only a half-fledged Platonist, opened on his own account not a new philosophical school in competition with Plato, as some state, but a new rhetorical school in opposition to Isokrates.64 But the case was different at the latter epoch, 335 B.C., when Aristotle came to reside at Athens for the second time. Isokrates was then dead, leaving no successor, so that his rhetorical school expired with him. Aristotle preferred philosophy to rhetoric: he was no longer trammelled by the living presence and authority of Plato. The Platonic school at the Academy stood at that time alone, under Xenokrates, who, though an earnest and dignified philosopher, was deficient in grace and in persuasiveness, and had been criticized for this defect even by Plato himself. Aristotle possessed those gifts in large measure, as we know from the testimony of Antipater. By these circumstances, coupled with his own established reputation and well-grounded self-esteem, he was encouraged to commence a new philosophical school; a school, in which philosophy formed the express subject of the morning lecture, while rhetoric was included as one among the subjects of more varied and popular instruction given in the afternoon.65 During the twelve ensuing years, Aristotles rivalry was mainly against the Platonists or Xenokrateans at the Academy; embittered on both sides by acrimonious feelings, which these expressed by complaining of his ingratitude and unfairness towards the common master, Plato.

64 That Aristotle had a school at Athens before the death of Plato we may see by what Strabo (xiii. 610) says about Hermeias: γενόμενος δ Ἀθήνῃσιν ἠκροάσατο καὶ Πλάτωνος καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους. Compare Cicero, Orator. 46; also Michelet, Essai sur la Métaphys. dAristote, p. 227. The statement that Aristotle during Platos lifetime tried to set up a rival school against him, is repeated by all the biographers, who do not however believe it to be true, though they cite Aristoxenus as its warrant. I conceive that they have mistaken what Aristoxenus said; and that they have confounded the school which Aristotle first set up as a rhetor, against Isokrates, with that which he afterwards set up as a philosopher, against Xenokrates.

65 Aulus Gellius, N. A. xx. 5. Quintilian (see note on p. 24) puts the rhetorical pomeridianć scholć within the lifetime of Isokrates; but Aristotle did not then lecture on philosophy in the morning.

There were thus, at Athens, three distinct parties inspired with unfriendly sentiment towards Aristotle: first, the Isokrateans; afterwards, the Platonists; along with both, the anti-Macedonian politicians. Hence we can account for what Themistius entitles the army of assailants (στράτον ὅλον) that fastened upon him, for the unfavourable colouring with which his domestic circumstances are presented, and for the necessity under which he lay of Macedonian protection; so that when such protection was nullified, giving place to a reactionary fervour, his residence at Athens became both disagreeable and insecure.