Book 5
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and shall dedicate my mother’s statue to Demeter at Nemea or wherever they think best. And wherever they bury me, there the bones of Pythias shall be laid, in accordance with her own instructions. And to commemorate Nicanor’s safe return, as I vowed on his behalf, they shall set up in Stagira stone statues of life size to Zeus and Athena the Saviours.The last clause was curiously misunderstood by three eminent authorities on Aristotle, namely Grant, Grote and Zeller, who took ζῷα τετραπήχη to mean four animal figures, instead of figures four cubits high; see Journ. of Phil. vol. xxxii. 303. The article Verify your quotations, although modestly followed by two asterisks, was written, I believe, by the late Ingram Bywater, then one of the editors of the journal. This concession by Aristotle to the popular faith (for the statues from their size seem those of deities) some critics regard with suspicion, because they see in it a resemblance to the last words of Socrates (Plato, Phaedo, 118). Accordingly they are disposed to doubt the genuineness of the will. But see C. G. Bruns, Kl. Schrift. ii. 192 sqq.; H. Diels, Philos. Aufsätze, 231 sqq.; B. Laum, Stiftungen in der griech. u. röm. Antike.
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Such is the tenor of Aristotle’s will. It is said that a very large number of dishes belonging to him were found, and that Lyco mentioned his bathing in a bath of warm oil and then selling the oil. Some relate that he placed a skin of warm oil on his stomach, and that, when he went to sleep, a bronze ball was placed in his hand with a vessel under it, in order that, when the ball dropped from his hand into the vessel, he might be waked up by the sound.Next come (a) the sayings of Aristotle (§§ 17-21); (b) the catalogue of his writings (§§ 21-27); (c) his tenets (§§ 28-34).
