And when we find Aristokles rejecting the allegation
about the [Greek: i)atrei=on], by speaking of it as an [Greek:
a)/doxon i)atrei=on], we can admit neither the justice of the epithet
nor the ground of rejection.]
[Footnote 6: This account rested originally (so far as we know) upon
the statement of Hermippus (B.C. 220), and was adopted by Apollodôrus
in his Chronology (B.C. 150), both of them good authorities, yet
neither of them so early as Epikurus and Timæus. Diogenes Laertius
and Dionysius of Halikarnassus alike follow Hermippus. Both the life
of Aristotle ascribed to Ammonius, and the Anonymous Life first
edited by Robbe (Leyden, 1861, p. 2), include the same strange
chronological blunder: they affirm Aristotle to have come to Athens
at the age of seventeen, and to have frequented the society of
_Sokrates_ (who had been dead more than thirty years) for three
years; then to have gone to Plato at the age of twenty. Zeller
imagines, and I think it likely, that Aristotle may have been for a
short time pupil with _Isokrates_, and that the story of his having
been pupil with _Sokrates_ has arisen from confusion of the two
names, which confusion has been seen on several occasions (Zeller,
Gesch. der Philos. der Griechen, ii. 2, p. 15.)]
During the interval, 367-360 B.C., Plato was much absent from Athens,
having paid two separate visits to Dionysius the younger at Syracuse.
The time which he spent there at each visit is not explicitly given;
but as far as we can conjecture from indirect allusions, it cannot
have been less than a year at each, and may possibly have been
longer. If, therefore, Aristotle reached Athens in 367 B.C. (as
Hermippus represents) he cannot have enjoyed continuous instructions
from Plato for the three or four years next ensuing.
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