A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

298 ARISTIPPUS.
racter, so that he is spoken of with abhorrence by
Plutarch (Praecept. ger. Reip. p. 809), and classed
by him with Nabis and Catiline. He sent Apellicon of Teos to plunder the sacred treasury of Delos,
[APELLICON], though Appian (M3ithrid. p. 189)
says, that this had already been done for him by
Mithridates, and adds, that it was by means of the
money resulting from this robbery that Aristion was
enabled to obtain the supreme power. Meantime
Sulla landed in Greece, and immediately laid siege
to Athens and the Peiraeus, the latter of which was
occupied by Archelaus, the general of Mithridates.
The sufferings within the city from famine were so
dreadful, that men are said to have even devoured
the dead bodies of their companions. At last
Athens was taken by storm, and Sulla gave orders
to spare neither sex nor age. Aristion fled to the
Acropolis, having first burnt the Odeum, lest Sulla
should use the wood-work of that building for
battering-rams and other instruments of attack.
The Acropolis, however, was soon taken, and
Aristion dragged to execution from the altar of
Minerva. To the divine vengeance for this impiety Pausanias (i. 20. ~ 4) attributes the loathsome disease which afterwards terminated Sulla's
life. [G. E. L. C.]
ARI'STION ('Apro--i'w), a surgeon, probably
belonging to the Alexandrian school, was the son
of Pasicrates,* who belonged to the same profession. (Oribas. De Machinam. cc. 24, 26. pp. ]80,
183.) Nothing is known of the events of his
life; with respect to his date, he may be conjectured to have lived in the second or first century
B. c., as he lived after Nymphodorus (Oribas. ibid.
p. 180), and before Heliodorus (p. 161). [W.A.G.]
ARISTIPPUS ('ApirTr7ros). 1. Of Larissa,
in Thessaly, an Aleuad, received lessons from
Gorgias when he visited Thessaly. Aristippus obtained money and troops from the younger Cyrus
to resist a faction opposed to him, and placed
Menon, with whom he lived in a disreputable
manner, over these forces. (Xen. Anab. i. 1. ~
10, ii. 6. ~ 28; Plat. Menon, init.)
2. An Argive, who obtained the supreme power
at Argos through the aid of Antigonus Gonatas,
about B. c. 272. (Plut. Pyrrh. 30.)
3. An Argive, a different person from the
preceding, who also became tyrant of Argos after
the murder of Aristomachus I., in the time of
Aratus. He is described by Plutarch as a perfect
tyrant in our sense of the word. Aratus made
many attempts to deprive him of the tyranny, but
at first without success; but Aristippus at length
fell in a battle against Aratus, and was succeeded
in the tyranny by Aristomachus II. (Plut. Arat.
25, &c.)
ARISTI'US FUSCUS. [Fuscus.]
ARISTIPPUS ('ApiarTrTros), son of Aritades,
born at Cyrene, and founder of the Cyrenaic
School of Philosophy, came over to Greece to be
present at the Olympic games, where he fell in
with Ischomachus the agriculturist (whose praises
are the subject of Xenophon's Oeconomicus), and
by his description was filled with so ardent a
desire to see Socrates, that he went to Athens

ARISTIPPOS.
for the purpose (Plut. de Curios. 2), and remained
with him almost up to the time of his execution,
B. c. 399. Diodorus (xv. 76) gives B. c. 366 as
the date of Aristippus, which agrees very well with
the facts which we know about him, and with the
statement (Schol. ad Aristopli. Plut. 179), that
Lais, the courtezan with whom he was intimate,
was born B. c. 421.
Though a disciple of Socrates, he wandered both
in principle and practice very far from the teaching
and example of his great master. He was luxurious in his mode of living; he indulged in sensual
gratifications, and the society of the notorious
Lais; he took money for his teaching (being the
first of the disciples of Socrates who did so, Diog.
Laert. ii. 65),and avowed to his instructor that he
resided in a foreign land in order to escape the
trouble of mixing in the politics of his native city.
(Xen. JM1enm. ii. 1.) He passed part of his life at
the court of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, and is
also said to have been taken prisoner by Artaphernes, the satrap who drove the Spartans from
Rhodes B. c. 396. (Diod. Sic. xiv. 79; see Brucker,
Hist. Crit. Phil. ii. 2, 3.) He appears, however, at
last to have returned to Cyrene, and there he spent
his old age. The anecdotes which are told of him,
and of which we find a most tedious number in
Diogenes Laertius (ii. 65, &c.), by no means give
us the notion of a person who was the mere slave
of his passions, but rather of one who took a pride
in extracting enjoyment from all circumstances of
every kind, and in controlling adversity and prosperity alike. They illustrate and confirm the two
statements of Horace (Ep. i. 1. 18), that to observe
the precepts of Aristippus is " mihi res, non me
rebus subjungere," and (i. 17. 23) that, " omnis
Aristippum decuit color et status et res." Thus
when reproached for his love of bodily indulgences,
he answered, that there was no shame in enjoying
them, but that it would be disgraceful if he could
not at any time give them up. When Dionysius,
provoked at some of his remarks, ordered him to
take the lowest place at table, he said, " You
wish to dignify the seat." Whether he was prisoner to a satrap, or grossly insulted and even spit
upon by a tyrant, or enjoying the pleasures of a
banquet, or reviled for faithlessness to Socrates by
his fellow-pupils, he maintained the same calm
temper. To Xenophon and Plato he was very obnoxious, as we see from the Memorabilia (I. c.),
where he maintains an odious discussion against
Socrates in defence of voluptuous enjoyment, and
from the Phaedo (p. 59, c), where his absence
at the death of Socrates, though he was only at
Aegina, 200 stadia from Athens, is doubtless mentioned as a reproach. (See Stallbaum's note.)
Aristotle, too, calls him a sophist (Metaplhys. ii.
2), and notices a story of Plato speaking to him
with rather undue vehemence, and of his replying
with calmness. (Rhet. ii. 23.) He imparted his
doctrine to his daughter Arete, by whom it was
communicated to her son, the younger Aristippus
(hence called /LrTpobaaicK os), and by him it is
said to have been reduced to a system. Laertius,
on the authority of Sotion (B. c. 205) and Panaetius (B. c. 143), gives a long list of books whose
authorship is ascribed to Aristippus, though he also
says that Sosicrates of Rhodes (B. c. 255) states,
that he wrote nothing. Among these are treatises
Hiep Haibeidas, LHep 'Apser@s, IHep TiXtTs, and
many others. Some epistles attributed to him are

* In the extract from Oribasius, given by A.
Mai in the fourth volume of his Classici Auctores
e Vaticanis Codicibus Editi, Rom. 8vo., 1831, we
should read vio'v instead of raT'rpa in p. 152, 1. 23,
and 'ApimCTiwv instead of 'Apriwm in p. 158, 1. 10.