If they had had their own way, they would have forced him to leave their country. But they wisely kept these opinions to themselves. For this short-sighted, stoutish gentleman, famous for his good taste in books and in clothes, was no negligible quantity in the political life of that day, no obscure little professor who could be driven out of town by a couple of hired toughs. He was no one less than the son of a Macedonian court-physician and he had been brought up with the royal princes. And furthermore, as soon as he had finished his studies, he had been appointed tutor to the crown prince and for eight years he had been the daily companion of young Alexander. Hence he enjoyed the friendship and the protection of the most powerful ruler the world had ever seen and the regent who administered the Greek provinces during the monarch’s absence on the Indian front watched carefully lest harm should befall one who had been the boon companion of his imperial master. No sooner, however, had news of Alexander’s death reached Athens than Aristotle’s life was in peril. He remembered what had happened to Socrates and felt no desire to suffer a similar fate. Like Plato, he had carefully avoided mixing philosophy with practical politics. But his distaste for the democratic form of government and his lack of belief in the sovereign abilities of the common people were known to all. And when the Athenians, in a sudden outburst of fury, expelled the Macedonian garrison, Aristotle moved across the Euboean Sound and went to live in Calchis, where he died a few months before Athens was reconquered by the Macedonians and was duly punished for her disobedience. At this far distance it is not easy to discover upon what positive grounds Aristotle was accused of impiety. But as usual in that nation of amateur orators, his case was inextricably mixed up with politics and his unpopularity was due to his disregard of the prejudices of a few local ward-bosses, rather than to the expression of any startlingly new heresies, which might have exposed Athens to the vengeance of Zeus. Nor does it matter very much. The days of the small independent republics were numbered. Soon afterwards, the Romans fell heir to the European heritage of Alexander and Greece became one of their many provinces. Then there was an end to all further bickering, for the Romans in most matters were even more tolerant than the Greeks of the Golden Age had been and they permitted their subjects to think as they pleased, provided they did not question certain principles of political expediency upon which the peace and prosperity of the Roman state had, since time immemorial, been safely builded.