Homer Hesiod Hymns Tragedy Remythologizing Tools Blackboard Info
Dictionary
 
PALAESTRA 100.00%

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64
The name given by the Greeks to the place in which the young were instructed in wrestling and boxing under the guidance of a master called a poedotribes. There were a considerable number of such schools at Athens, which had been built, some at public expense, some by private undertaking. In later times they were also connected with the Gymnasia. (See GYMNASIUM and GYMNASTICS.)
 
GYMNASIUM 100.00%

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64
The Greek name for the place where the youths who had alreadyreat variety of gymnastic exercises, and the increasing inclination of grown men to look on at them and take part in them, the gymnasia often adorned with beautiful sculptures, grow in extent and splendour of equipment. (Seecut.) The great court comprised a number of spaces serving a variety of purposes: for instance, the ephebeion, or hall where the ephebi practised, rooms for dressing and anointing, sanding or dusting the body, cold-water baths and dry sudatoria, spaces for playing at ball, open and covered passages for running, wrestling, or walking. Attached to the colonnades on the outside were semicircular niches, furnished with stone seats, called exedra,. In these philosophers and rhetoricians would sit and talk with their disciples. A stadion, with a space for spectators to look on, and walksplanted with trees, were often attached to the gymnasium. The whole was under the superintendence of a gymnasiarchos. The conduct of the youths was under the supervision of sophronistoe. At Athens these officers were ten in number, and elected annually. The exercises were directed by the gymnastoe. For similar arrangements under the Roman empire see THERMAe.
 
ACADEMY 97.23%
A grove on the Cephissus near Athens, sacred to the hero Academus, and containing a gymnasium. Here Plato, whose country-house was near, delivered his lectures; hence the school of philosophy founded by him received the name of "The Academy."
 
EXEDRA 89.72%
An alcove, or semi-circular extension of the colonnade in a Greek gymnasium. It was furnished with seats on which the philosophers usually sat to talk with their disciples. In private houses the exedra was a room intended for conversation, fitted with a bench running round the wall.
 
PERIPATETICS 81.40%
The followers of Aristotle's philosophy. They derived their name from Aristotle's habit of walking with his disciples in the shady avenues of the Athenian Gymnasium called the Lyceum, while he discussed the problems of philosophy. (See also ARISTOTLE and PHILOSOPHY.)
 
THERMAE 80.52%

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64
The name given by the Romans to the public buildings, founded in and after the time of Agrippa, which combined, with warm baths, the arrangements of a Greek gymnasium. These included open and covered colonnades for conversation, instruction, and different exercises, especially the game of ball. The most extensive and splendid establishments of the sort were to be found in Rome, and are still to be seen, though, for the greater part, in ruins. Of the existing remains the most important are those of the Thermoe of Caracalla. (Cp. ARCHITECTURE, fig. 14, p. 56; and see BATHS.)
 
PAEDAGOGUS 71.33%
The name among the Greeks for the slave who had the duty of looking after the son of his master whilst in boyhood, instructing him in certain rules of good manners, and attending him whenever he went out, especially to school and to the paloestra and gymnasium. With the Romans in earlier times it was an old slave or freedman who had a similar duty as custos; but after it became the custom to have even children taught to speak Greek, his place was filled by a Greek slave, who bore the Greek name and had the special duty of instructing his pupils in Greek.
 
IOLAUS 70.69%
Son of Iphicles, the half-brother of Heracles, and the faithful companion and charioteer of that hero. For his help in destroying the Lernaean hydra and in the fight with Cycnus, Heracles transferred to him his first wife Megara. The friendship he bad devoted to the father he continued to the children of Heracles in defending them against Eurystheus. As the comrade of Heracles he was worshipped beside him in Thebes, where the gymnasium was named after him, and where the inhabitants used to swear by his name.
 
ANTISTHENES 43.02%
A Greek philosopher of Athens,born about 440 B.C., but only a half citizen, because his mother was a Thracian. He was in his youth a pupil of Gorgias, and himself taught for a time as a sophist, till, towards middle life, he attached himself to Socrates, and became his bosom friend. After the death of Socrates in B.C. 399 he established a school in the gymnasium Kynosarges, the only one open to persons of half-Athenian descent, whence his followers bore the name of Cynici (Kynikoi). He lived to the age of seventy. Like Socrates, he regarded virtue as necessary, indeed, alone sufficient for happiness, and to be a branch of knowledge that could be taught, and that once acquired could not be lost, its essence consisting in freedom from wants by the avoidance of evil, i.e. of pleasure and desire. Its acquisition needs no dialectic argumentation, only Socratic strength. His pupils, especially the famous Diogenes of Sinope, degraded his doctrine to cynicism by depreciating all knowledge and despising the current morality of the time. His philosophical and rhetorical works are lost, all but two slight declamations on the contest for the arms of Achilles, the Aias and Odysseus; and even their genuineness is disputed.
 
GYMNASTICS 19.06%

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64
I Grecian. The art of physical exercises, so called because the Greeks practised them unclothed (gymnos). Various exercises of the kind, carried on in view of contests on festive occasions, are mentioned as early as Homer. After the Homeric time they were, at all periods, widely practised among the Greeks, and more so after they were legally prescribed as part of the regular educational course, especially at Athens and Sparta. They were, moreover actively encouraged by the great national games, particularly the Olympian games, of which they formed the chief part. Heracles and Hermes were the tutelary gods of gymnastics, which attained in Athens their highest and most varied development. The object of the art was to develop the body harmoniously in health, activity, and beauty. Boys went through certain preliminary stages of gymnastics in the paloestroe, a carried on their further training to perfection in the gymnasia. (See GYMNASIUM The different kinds of exere ses were as follows: (1) Running (dromos or stadion). This was the oldest of all, and for a long time the only one practised in the public games. In later times, indeed, it stood at the head of the list. The course was either single (stadion, nearly the eighth of a mile), or double (diaulos). The runner was sometimes equipped with helmet and greaves, but in later times only with the latter. The hardest of all was the long course or dolichos. This was a distance of 24 stadia, between two and three English miles, which had to be run without stopping. (2) Leaping (halma). This included the high and wide jump, and jumping downwards. To strengthen the power of spring and secure the equilibrium of the body, especially in leaping downwards, it was common to use piece of iron called halteres, not unlike our dumb-bells. (3) Wrestling (pale). This was the piece de resistance of the Greek gymnastic. The combatants were allowed certain tricks which are now forbidden, as throttling, pushing, and twisting the fingers. Standing upright, each wrestler tried to throw the other down, and if one of them was thrown thrice, he was regarded as beaten, unless the contest was continued on the ground. In this case the one who was thrown tried to get up, while the other tried to hinder him, until he owned himself vanquished. Before all gymnastic exercises the body was well rubbed with oil to make the limbs supple. But before wrestling it was also sprinkled with dust, partly to afford a firm hold, partly to prevent excessive perspiration. (4) Discobolia, or throwing the discus. (See Discus.) (5) Throwing the javelin (akontismos). These five exercises together formed the pentathlon, or set of five, in which no one was accounted victorious who had not conquered in all. Besides these there was (6) The dangerous game of boxing (pyx,pygme). In this the combatants struck out with each hand alternately, their hands being bound round with thongs so as to leave fingers and thumb free to form a clenched fist (See engraving). Athletes often fitted the thongs with strips of sharp and hardened leather, or with nails and leaden knobs. The blow was directed against the upper part of the body, head, and face. (7) The Pancration was a combination of boxing and wrestling, but nothing was worn on the hands, and the blow was delivered, not with the clenched fist, bat with the fingers bent. This exercise was not introduced into the public games until 650 B.C. Indeed, the two latter exercises were generally confined to the professional athletes. (See ATHLETES.) In Sparta they were not practised at all. II Roman. Among the Romans from the oldest times until the imperial period, the youths used to assemble for exercises in the Campus Martins, the object of the exercises being exclusively to prepare them for military service. (See EDUCATION.) The Greek gymnastic was not introduced at Rome until the decline of Roman tradition had set in, and professional athleticism had become fashionable. The Roman sense of propriety was offended by the Greek practice of exercising unclothed, and the only game which they really adopted was that of throwing the discus.
 
PLATO 15.25%

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64
who shares with Aristotle the first place among the philosophers of antiquity, was born at Athens 428 B.C. (according to the story, on the 21st of May, the birthday of Apollo). His father, Ariston, traced his descent from king Codrus; his mother, Perictione, belonged to the same family as Solon. Originally called after his grandfather Aristocles, he afterwards obtained the name of Plato (said to have been given by Socrates) either from the breadth of his shoulders or from the ample flow of his speech. His youth falls in the time of the Peloponnesian War, when Athens, though already entering on the decline of its political greatness,was still distinguished by the greatest activity in all intellectual paths. He had an education befitting his rank and including, according to Athenian custom, both gymnastic and musical culture; but from the first he consistently held aloof from public life, in spite of the numerous advantages which his birth and connexions would have insured him in such a career. Critias, for instance, who was afterwards the leader of the Thirty, was his mother's cousin. After at first devoting himself to poetical studies, and himself composing poetry, he soon took up philosophy. In this subject he is said to have received the instructions of Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus. At the age of twenty he entered the circle of Socrates' disciples, and soon took a prominent position among them. In 399, after Socrates' death (at which he was prevented by illness from being present) he went to Megara, to his old fellow disciple Euclides, and thence is said to have travelled to Cyrene and Egypt. He certainly spent some time in Magna Graecia with the Pythagoreans, Archytas of Tarentum and Timaeus of Locri, and thence visited Syracuse on the invitation of the elder Dionysius his strong independence, however, and his intimate friendship with Dionysius' brother-in-law , the noble Dion, soon drew upon him the mistrust of the tyrant. The story relates that he was sold as a slave, into Aegina by order of Dionysius, and ransomed by a friend. Returning to Athens about 388, he established in a garden near the Academy (a gymnasium so named after the hero Academus), in the north-west part of the city, a philosophical school, over which he presided for forty years. Here he lived unmarried, taking no part in the affairs of State, but devoting his energies exclusively to the pursuit of knowledge, interrupted only by two journeys to Sicily. The first of these he undertook in 367, on the accession of the younger Dionysius, in order, in conjunction with Dion, to win the young ruler to the cause of philosophy and induce him to convert the tyranny into a constitutionally organized monarchy. This attempt completely failed; and the only result was the banishment of Dion. His second jonmey was in 362. His object was to reconcile Dionysius with Dion, but in this he was equally unsuccessful; in fact, his own life was in danger, and he was only saved by the intercession of Archytas of Tarentum. However, the accounts of these last two journeys are little to be depended upon. Besides the narrower circle of his immediate pupils-among whom the most celebrated are Aristotle, Speusippus, his sister's son, and Xenocrates,-the Academy was also frequented by a large number of educated men, and even women. It is said that Plato's advice in political matters was asked, not only by statesmen at home, but even by foreign States. His teaching was given partly in the shape of informal conversation, partly in consecutive and systematic lectures on philosophical subjects. Even to his old age his activity was unwearied; and he was carried off by an easy death (it is said, while actually engaged in composition), in the eighty-first year of his life (348). He was buried in the neighbourhood of the Academy, where his tomb still existed in the 2nd century A.D. His plot of land remained nearly a thousand years in the possession of the Platonic school. As works of Plato, thirty-six writings in fifty-six books (the thirteen letters being reckoned as one), have been handed down to us. These were divided by Thrasyllus, a Neo-Pythagorean of the time of Tiberius, into nine tetralogies, as follows; (1) Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo.(2) Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus. (3) Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaeedrus. (4) Alcibiades I and II, Hipparchus, Anterastae. (5) Theages, Charmides, Laches, Lysis. (6) Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno. (7) Hippias I and II, Ion, Menexemus. (8) Clitopho, Republic (ten books), Timaeus, Critias. (9) Minos, Laws (twelve books), Epinomis, Letters. Besides these, eight other writings bear his name; but these were marked as spurious even in ancient times. Of the genuine writings of Plato none have been lost, owing to the fact that the study of them was kept up without a break through all the intervening centuries; but a number of the above-mentioned are of more or less doubtful authenticity, though there is not in all cases sufficient evidence to prove their spuriousness. Besides the Letters and the Epinomis (an appendix to the Laws composed by Plato's pupil Philippus of Opus), the writings of the fourth tetralogy as well as the Theages, the Minos., and the Clitopho, are reckoned as undoubtedly spurious. Of questionable genuineness also is a series of epigrams which has been handed down under Plato's name. Many attempts have been made to arrange the Platonic writings in the order of time, but unanimity on the subject has never been attained. An old, though disputed, tradition reckons the Phaedrus as the first, while the Laws, which is said to have been published by the aforesaid Philippus after the author's death, are generally acknowledged to be the last; the Republic also belongs, at any rate, to the later writings. The writings of Plato are among the greatest productions, not only of Greek literature, but of the literature of the world. They are equally admirable in matter and in form, combining, as they do, fulness and depth of thought with the highest mastery of style, while at the same time they are penetrated by the noblest spirit. The form is throughout that of dialogue; and in the dialogues Plato himself never appears as a speaker, but he makes his master, Socrates, the interpreter of his views. The dramatic setting and execution, the delineation of the characters, the language, perfectly adjusted to the personality of the speakers and to the circumstances supposed, -- now faithfully reproducing the simple manner of expression usual in conversation, now giving clear expression to the thought with all the incision of dialectics, now rising to poetic elevation,--all show the most consummate art and make it doubtful, whether in Plato we should rather admire the artist and the poet, or the philosopher. On his teaching and his school, see PHILOSOPHY.
 
EDUCATION 11.79%

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64

Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64
Greek. The Dorians of Crete and Sparta followed a peculiar line in the matter of education. Throughout Greece generally the state left it to private effort; but in Sparta and Crete it came under the direct supervision of the community. At Sparta, as soon as a child was born, a commission of the elders of its tribe had to decide whether it should be reared or exposed. If it was weakly or deformed, it was exposed in a defile of Mount Taygetus. Till his seventh year, a boy was left to the care of his parents. After this the Paidonomos, or officer presiding over the whole department of education, assigned him to a division of children of the same age called a bua. Several of such buas together formed a troop or ila. Each bua was superintended by a Buagoros, each ila by an Ilarchos. Both these officers were elected from among the most promising of the grown up youths, and were bound to instruct the children in their exercises. The exercises were calculated to suit the various ages of the children, and consisted in running, leaping, wrestling, throwing the spear and discus, as well as in a number of dances, particularly the war dance or Pyrrhiche (see PYRRHIC DANCE). The dancing was under the constant superintendence of the Paidonomos, and five Bidyoe, under him. The discipline was generally directed to strengthening or hardening the body. The boys went barefoot and bareheaded, with hair cut short, and in light clothing. From their twelfth year they wore nothing but an upper garment, which had to last the whole year. They slept in a common room without a roof, on a litter of hay or straw, and from their fifteenth year on rushes or reeds. Their food was extremely simple, and not sufficient to satisfy bunger. A boy who did not want to be hungry had to steal; if he did this cleverly, he was praised, and punished if detected. Every year the boys had to undergo a flogging at the altar of Artemis Orthia, as a test of their power to endure bodily pain. They were whipped till the blood flowed, and deemed it a disgrace to show any sign of suffering. Reading and writing were left to private instructors; but music, and choral singing in particular, formed a part of the regular discipline. The understanding was assumed to be formed by daily life in public, and the conversation of the men, to which the boys were admitted. Every Spartan boy looked up to his seniors as his instructors and superiors; the consequence being that in Sparta the young behaved to their elders with more modesty and respect than in any other Greek city. Besides this, every man chose a boy or youth as his favourite. He was bound to set the boy an example of all manly excellence, and was regarded as responsible and punishable for his delinquencies. This public education and the performance of the regular exercises, under the superintendence of the Bidyoe, lasted till the thirtieth year. In the eighteenth year the boy passed into the class of youths. From the twentieth year, when military service proper began, to the thirtieth, the youth was called an eiren. He was not regarded as a man, or allowed to attend the public assembly till his thirtieth year. The girls had an education in music and gymnastic education similar to that of the boys, and at the public games and contests each sex was witness of the performances of the other. The girls' dress was extremely simple, consisting of a sleeveless tunic reaching not quite down to the knees, and open at the sides. In this, however, there was nothing which interfered with modesty and propriety of behaviour. In Crete the system of education was generally similar to that of Sparta. But the public training did not begin till the seventeenth year, when the boys of the same age joined themselves freely into divisions called agelai, each led by some noble youth, whose father was called agelatas, and undertook the supervision of the games and exercises. It is probable that the young men remained in this organization till their twenty-seventh year, when the law compelled them to marry. At Athens, as in Greece generally, the father decided whether the child should be reared or exposed. The latter alternative seems to have been not seldom adopted, especially when the child was a girl. If the education of a child was once fairly commenced, the parents had no power to put it out of the way. At the birth of a boy, the door of the house was adorned with a branch of olive; at the birth of a girl, with wool. On the fifth or seventh day after birth the child underwent a religious dedication at the festival of the Amphidromia ("running round"). It was touched with instruments of purification, and carried several times round the burning hearth. On the tenth day came the festival of naming the child, with sacrifice and entertainment, when the father acknowledged it as legitimate. To the end of the sixth year the boys and girls were brought up together under female supervision; but after this the sexes were educated apart. The girls' life was almost entirely confined to her home: she was brought up under the superintendence of women, and with hardly anything which can be called profitable instruction. The boy was handed over to a slave older than himself called Poedagogos. It was the slave's duty to watch the boy's outward behaviour, and to attend him, until his boyhood was over, whenever he went out, especially to the school and the gymnasium. The laws made some provision for the proper education of boys. They obliged every citizen to have his son instructed in music, gymnastics, and the elements of letters (grammata), i.e. writing, reading, and arithmetic. They further obliged the parents to teach their boys some profitable trade, in case they were unable to leave them a property sufficient to maintain them independent. If they failed in this, they forfeited all claim to support from the children in old age. But with schools and their arrangements the state did not concern itself. The schools were entirely in private hands, though they were under the eye of the police. The elementary instruction was given by the grammatistoe, or teachers of letters, the teacher writing and the scholars copying. The text-books for reading were mostly poems, especially such as were calculated to have an influence on the formation of character. The Homeric poems were the favourite reading book, but Hesiod, Theognis, and others were also admitted. Collections of suitable passages from the poets were early made for the boys to copy, learn by heart, and repeat aloud. The higher instruction given by the grammatikos was also of this literary character. Mathematics were introduced into the school curriculum as early as the 5th century, drawing not till the middle of the 4th century B.C. Instruction in music proper began about the thirteenth year. The profound moral influence attributed to music in Greek antiquity made this art an essential part of education. It brought with it, naturally, an acquaintance with the masterpieces of Greek poetry. The instrument most practised was the lyre, from its suitableness as an accompaniment to song. The flute was held in less esteem. The aim of education was supposed to be the harmonious development of mind and body alike. Instruction in gymnastics was consequently regarded as no less essential than in music, and began at about the same age. It was carried on in the paloestroe (see PALAeSTRA) under the paidotribai, who were, like the grammatikoi, private, not public instructors. The boys began their gymnastics in the paloestra, and completed them in the gymnasia under the superintendence of the gymnastoe. The ephebi, in particular, or boys between sixteen and nineteen, practised their exercises in the gymnasia, till, in their twentieth year, they were considered capable of bearing arms, and employed on frontier service. At this point they became liable to enlistment for foreign service, and obtained the right of attending the meeting of the public assembly. Towards the end of the 5th century B.C. the class of sophistoe, or professors of practical education, arose. This gave the young men an opportunity of extending their education by attending lectures in rhetoric and philosophy; but the high fees charged by the sophistoe, had the effect of restricting this instruction to the sons of the wealthy.
 
ARISTOTLE 10.84%
One of the two greatest philosophers of antiquity, born B.C. 384 at Stageira, a Greek colony in Thrace. He was the son of Nicomachus, who died while acting as physician in ordinary to Amyntas II at Pella in Macedonia. In B.C. 367, after the death of his parents and the completion of his seventeenth year, Axistotle betook himself to Athens, became a pupil of Plato, and remained twenty years, latterly working as a teacher of rhetoric. About his relations with Plato unfavourable rumours were current, which may have had their origin in his subsequent opposition to the Platonic doctrine of ideas. That he arrived pretty early at opposite opinions, and gave emphatic expression to them, is quite credible. This may have been the occasion of Plato's comparing him (so it is said) to a colt that kicks his mother; yet Plato is also said to have called him "the intellect" of his school, and " the reader," on account of his habit of incessant study. Comparing him with Xenocrates, he remarked, that the one wanted a spur, the other a bridle. On the other hand, Aristotle, in one of his writings, combating his former master's theory of ideas, lays down the maxim that friendship, especially among philosophers, must not be allowed to violate the sanctity of truth; and in a fragment of an elegy he calls Plato the first man who showed in word and deed how a man is to become good and happy. After Plato had handed over his school to his sister's son Speusippus, Aristotle quitted Athens, B.C. 347, and repaired to his friend Hermeias, despot of Atarneus in Mysia. When that prince had fallen a prey to Persian intrigues he withdrew, B.C. 345, with his wife Pythias, his friend's sister, to Mitylene in Lesbos; and two years later accepted an invitation to Macedonia to be tutor to Alexander, then thirteen years old. He lived at the court eight years, though his tenure of office seems to have lasted barely half that time. Both Philip and his son esteemed him highly, and most liberally seconded his studies in natural science, for which he inherited his father's predilection. Alexander continued till his death to respect and love him, though the affair of Callisthenes (q.v.) occasioned some coolness between them. When the king undertook his expedition in Asia, Aristotle betook himself once more to Athens, and taught for thirteen years in the Gymnasium called the Lyceum. In the mornings he conversed with his maturer pupils on the higher problems of philosophy, walking up and down the shady avenues, from which practice the school received the name of Peripatetics. In the evenings he delivered courses of lectures on philosophy and rhetoric to a larger audience. After Alexander's death, when all adherents of the Macedonian supremacy were persecuted at Athens, a certain Demophilus brought against him a charge of impiety, where upon Aristotle, "to save the Athenians from sinning a second time against philosophy" so he is reported to have said, alluding to the fate of Socrates retired to Chalcis in Eubcaea. There he died late in the summer of the next year, B.C. 322. Of the very numerous writings of Aristotle, some were composed in a popular, others in a scientific form. A considerable number of the latter kind have come down to us, but of the former, which were written in the form of dialogues, only a few fragments. The strictly scientific works may be classed according to their contents, as they treat of Logic, Metaphysics, Natural Science or Ethics. (1) Those on LOGIC were comprehended by the later Aristotelians under the name of Organon ("instrument"), because they treat of Method, the instrument of research. They in clude the Categories, on the fundamental forms of ideas : the De Interpretatifte, on the doctrine of the judgment and on the proposition, important as an authority on philosophical terminology; the Analytica Priora and Posteriora, each in two books, the former on the syllogism, the latter on demonstration, definition, and distribution; the Topica in eight books, on dialectic inferences (those of probability); on Sophisms, the fallacies of sophists, and their solution. (2) The METAPHYSICS as they were called by late writers, in fourteen books, consist of one connected treatise and several shorter essays on what Aristotle himself calls " first philosophy," the doctrine of Being in itself and the ultimate grounds of Being; a work left unfinished by Aristotle and supplemented by foreign ingredients. The works on NATURAL SCIENCE are headed by the Physics in eight books, treating of the most general bases and relations of nature as a whole. This is followed up by four books on the Heavens or Universe, two on Beginning to be and Perishing, and the Meteorologica in four books, on the phenomena of the air. A short treaties On the Cosmos is spurious: that on the Directions and Names of Winds is a fragment of a larger work on the signs of storms; and the Problems (physical) is a collection gradually formed out of Aristotelian extracts. Of mathematical import are the Mechanical Problems (on the lever and balance) and the book about Indivisible Lines. Natural history is handled in the ten books of Animal History, and in four books on the Parts, five on the Generation, and one on the mode of Progression of Animals. The work on The Motion of Animals is probably spurious, certainly so the one on Plants in two books. Aristotle's treatise on this subject is lost. Turning to Psychology, we have the three books On the Soul and a number of smaller treatises (on the Senses and the Objects of Perception; on Memory and Recollection; on Sleep and Waking; on Dreams; on Divination by Sleep; on the Length and Shortness of Life; on Youth and Age, Life and Death; on Breathing; on Sound and Voice, etc.; that on Physiognomy is probably spurious). (4) Of the three general works on ETHICS, the Nicomachean Ethics in ten books, the Eudemian Ethics in seven, and the so-called Magna Moralia in two, the first alone, addressed to his son Nicomachus, and of marked excellence in matter and manner, is by Aristotle himself. The second is by his pupil Eudemus of Rhodes, and the third a mere abstract of the other two, especially of the second. The essay on Virtues and Vices is spurious. Closely connected with the Ethics is the Politics in eight books, a masterly work in spite of its incompleteness, treating of the aim and elements of a State, the various forms of Government, the ideal of a State and of Education. A valuable work on the Constitution of 158 states is lost, all but a few fragments.1 Of the two books on Aeconomics the first is spurious. Corresponding partly with the Logic, and partly with the Ethics, is the Rhetoric in three books,2 and the Poetics, a work of inestimable worth, not withstanding the ruinous condition in which its text has come clown to us. [The Rhetoric is a masterly treatise on oratory, regarded as an instrument for working upon the various passions and feelings of humanity.] Sundry other prose writings are preserved under Aristotle's name, e.g., that on Colours; the so-called Mirabiles Auscultationes, a collection of memoranda on all sorts of strange phenomena and occurrences, mostly bearing on natural science; on Melissus, Zeno, and Gorgias; six Letters which however are not regarded as genuine, any more than the 63 epigrams out of supposed mythological miscellany entitled Peplos. But we may safely assign to him he beautiful Scolion, or impromptu song, on his friend Hermeias, which takes the form of a Hymn to Virtue. A story dating from antiquity informs us that Aristotle bequeathed his own writings and his very considerable library to his pupil and successor in the office of teacher, Theophrastus, who again made them over to his pupil Mileus, of Scepsis in the Troad. After his death his relations are said to have buried them in a cellar, to guard them against the mania for collecting books which characterized the Pergamene princes. At last they were unearthed by Apellieon of Teos, a rich bibliophile, who brought them to Athens about 100 B.C., and tried to restore them from the wretched state into which they had fallen through the neglect of 130 years. Soon after, at the taking of Athens by the Romans, they fell into Sulla's hands, who brought them to Rome. Here the grammarian Tyrannion took copies of them, and on this basis the Peripatetic Andronicus of Rhodes prepared an edition of Aristotle's works. This would indeed partly account for the wretched condition in which some of them are preserved. At the same time it can be proved that the principal works were known during the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., 80 that the story affects only the author's original MSS., among which a number of works till then unpublished may have come to light. Though the writings preserved form rather less than half of the number which he actually wrote, there is quite enough to show the universality of Aristotle's intellect, which sought with equal ardour and acumen to explore and subdue the entire domain of research. He was the originator of many lines of study unknown before him,-Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric in its scientific aspect, Literary Criticism, Natural History, Physiology, Psychology; he was the first to attempt a History of Philosophy and of the forms of government then existing. His method, of which he must be considered the creator, is critical and empirical at once. In all cases he starts from facts, which he collects, sifts and groups as completely as he can, so as to get some general leading points of view, and with the help of these to arrive at a systematic arrangement of the subject, and a knowledge of its in most being, its cause. For to him the Cause is the essential part of knowledge, and the philosophy that searches into ultimate causes for the mere sake of knowing is the best and freest science. The form of Aristotle's works is by no means equal to their contents. Of the beautiful harmony between style and subject, that so charms us in Plato, there is not a trace in Aristotle; his manner of expression, though scientifically exact, lacks flavour, art, and elegance. But of exact scientific terminology he is the true founder. When the ancients celebrate the "golden stream" of his writing, the opinion can only refer to his lost popular works. Aristotle's personality is one of those which have affected the history of the world. His writings, Us those of Plato, were to the Christian centuries of antiquity a most stimulating incentive to scientific inquiry; in the Middle Ages they were for the Christian nations of the West and the Arabs the chief guide to philosophical method; and in the province of logic his authority remains unshaken to this day.
 
OLYMPIAN GAMES 9.69%
 
Query:
Type: Standard
SoundEx
Results:
  
gutter splint
gutter splint
gutter splint