We here learn that in the heroic genealogy of the Asklepiads, the son
of Machaon himself bore the name of Nikomachus. I do not think that
Will. v. Humboldt and Bernays are warranted in calling Aristotle "ein
Halbgrieche," "kein vollbürtiger Hellene"--(Die Dialoge des
Aristoteles, pp. 2-56-134). An Hellenic family which migrated from
Athens, Chalkis, Corinth, etc., to establish a colony on the coast of
Thrace, or Asia Minor, did not necessarily lose its Hellenism. One
cannot designate Demokritus, Xenokrates, Anaxagoras, Empedokles, &c.,
half Greeks.
Diogenes here especially cites Hermippus (B.C. 220-210), from whom
several of his statements in this and other biographies appear to
have been derived. The work of Hermippus seems to have been entitled
"Lives of the Philosophers" (v. 2), among which lives that of
Aristotle was one.
Hermippus mentioned, among other matters, communications made to
Aristotle by Stroebus (a person engaged in the service of
Kallisthenes as reader) respecting the condemnation and execution of
Kallisthenes in Baktria, by order of Alexander (Plutarch, Alex. c.
54). From what source did Hermippus derive these statements made by
Stroebus to Aristotle?]
Respecting the character of his youth, there existed, even in
antiquity, different accounts. We learn that he lost his father and
mother while yet a youth, and that he came under the guardianship of
Proxenus, a native of Atarneus who had settled at Stageira. According
to one account, adopted apparently by the earliest witnesses
preserved to us,[3] he was at first an extravagant youth, spent much
of his paternal property, and then engaged himself to military
service; of which he soon became weary, and went back to Stageira,
turning to account the surgical building, apparatus, and medicines
left by his father as a medical practitioner. After some time, we
know not how long, he retired from this profession, shut up the
building, and devoted himself to rhetoric and philosophy. He then
went to Athens, and there entered himself in the school of Plato, at
the age of thirty.[4] The philosophical life was thus (if this
account be believed) a second choice, adopted comparatively late in
life.[5] The other account, depending also upon good witnesses,
represents him as having come to Athens and enlisted as pupil of
Plato, at the early age of seventeen or eighteen: it omits all
mention of an antecedent period, occupied by military service and a
tentative of medical profession.[6] In both the two narratives,
Aristotle appears as resident at Athens, and devoting himself to
rhetoric and philosophy, from some period before 360 B.C. down to the
death of Plato in 347 B.C.; though, according to the first of the two
narratives, he begins his philosophical career at a later age, while
his whole life occupied seventy years instead of sixty-two
years.