Book 5
1.3
In time the circle about him grew larger; he then sat down to lecture, remarkingEur. Philoct. Frag. 785 Dind., 796 Nauck2.: It were base to keep silence and let XenocratesMost authorities put Isocrates here in place of Xenocrates. speak. He also taught his pupils to discourse upon a set theme, besides practising them in oratory. Afterwards, however, he departed to Hermias the eunuch, who was tyrant of Atarneus, and there is one story that he was on very affectionate terms with Hermias; according to another, Hermias bound him by ties of kinship, giving him his daughter or his niece in marriage, and so Demetrius of Magnesia narrates in his work on Poets and Writers of the Same Name. The same author tells us that Hermias had been the slave of Eubulus, and that he was of Bithynian origin and had murdered his master. Aristippus in his first book On the Luxury of the Ancients says that Aristotle fell in love with a concubine of Hermias,
1.4
and married her with his consent, and in an excess of delight sacrificed to a weak woman as the Athenians did to Demeter of EleusisThis story comes ultimately from Lyco the Pythagorean; cf. Aristocles. Cf. Euseb. Praep. Ev. xv. 2 § 5 φησὶ γὰρ θύειν Ἀριστοτέλην θυσίαν τετελευτηκυίᾳ τῇ γυναικὶ τοιαύτην ὁποίαν Ἀθηναῖοι τῇ Δήμητρι. This version is irreconcilable with ὑπερχαίρων in D. L.; and that he composed a paean in honour of Hermias, which is given below; next that he stayed in Macedonia at Philip’s court and received from him his son Alexander as his pupil; that he petitioned Alexander to restore his native city which had been destroyed by Philip and obtained his request; and that he also drew up a code of laws for the inhabitants. We learn further that, following the example of Xenocrates, he made it a rule in his school that every ten days a new president should be appointed. When he thought that he had stayed long enough with Alexander, he departed to Athens, having first presented to Alexander his kinsman Callisthenes of Olynthus.
