Aris toph anes

(ar-is-tof'ah-neez,) a Greek comic poet, and contemporary of So crates, Demosthenes, and Euripi des, was B. in Athens, abt. 450. He is said to have written 54 plays, but of these only 11 have come down to us. With the utmost boldne and license he directed his terrible satire not only against the chief political and social evils of the age, but against the leading men of the time. His works, therefore, present a vivid, if exaggerated, picture of A then i an life and manners, while for purity and elegance of style he is unsurpa ed. Aristotle, the great founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophers, B. at Stagira, in Macedonia, B. c. 384, at the age of 17 became a pupil of Plato, who called him the " mind" of his school. His great abilities procured for him Alexander the Great as his scholar. On Alexander's expedition to Asia, A. returned to Athens, and obtained leave to occupy the Lyceum as a school of philosophy, over which he presided for 13 years; and which was called, probably from his habit of walking as he lectured, the Peripatetic. Retiring to Chalcis, he D. there in 322. A. accomplished in his day the task of an intellectual giant. His genius embraced all the sciences of his time, and invented new ones. His extant works include treatises on physics, metaphysics, logic (of which he justly claims to be the inventor), rhetoric, ethics, politics, and the natural history of animals. The philosophy ofA. attained immense influence, and was supreme in Europe during the Middle Ages. His word was another Bible, and to question his authority was heresy. After the revival of literature and the Reformation, men began to perceive that facts could not be discovered by words, and the name ofA. was lost. But now, after that natural reaction and a period of neglect, he is again studied and praised as one of the greatest intellects that have appeared in the world. [s. 46]