and five sisters. He early showed a disposition for poetry, and wrote in his boyhood a drama on the subject of Pyramus and Thisbe. Being designed for the profession of the law, he was sent to Padua, where he spent five years, much against his will, in the study of that science; and his father, at last convinced of his distaste for this pursuit, recalled him home and allowed him to follow his own inclination. His father died about 1500, and Lodovico was left in charge of the family with a small patrimony. Having written several lyric compositions, both in Italian and in Latin, he attracted the notice of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, who in 1503 appointed him one of the gentlemen of his retinue, and employed him in important affairs and missions both for himself and for his brother Alfonso, after the latter became Duke of Ferrara. But Ariosto had little taste for diplomacy, and still less for court intrigue. He returned to Ferrara about 1514, and resumed his studies. He had long before this begun a poem, in ottava rima, on the fabulous adventures of the knights and paladins, Moors and Christians, of Charlemagne's

age.

In 1522, having applied to the duke for some more active and lucrative employment, he was sent as governor to the mountain district of Garfagnana, a dependency of Modena, situated on the western slope of the Apennines, and bordering upon Lucca. Ariosto humorously describes the troubles of his government in his fifth Satire. He remained nearly three years at Castelnuovo, the chief town of the district, during which he seems to have conciliated the minds of that rude population, and to have restored order among them. In 1524 he returned from his government to Ferrara, where it appears he remained ever after, nominally in the duke's service, but enjoying leisure for his studies. He now wrote his comedies, which were performed with great splendour before the court, in a theatre which the duke built for the purpose. In October, 1532, Ariosto, after correcting and revising his poem for sixteen years, published the third edition in 46 cantos, which, in spite of some misprints of which Ariosto bitterly complains, remains the legitimate text of the Orlando Furioso.' Scarcely had Ariosto completed his third edition, when he found himself ill with a painful internal complaint, which brought on a decline. After lingering seve ral months, Ariosto died June 6, 1533, in his 59th year. He was buried in the old church of San Benedetto, attended by the monks, who volunteered to do honour to his remains.

Besides the three Ferrara editions above-mentioned, printed under Ariosto's superintendence, several reprints of his poem were published in various parts of Italy in his lifetime. Numerous editions followed after his death. The 'Orlando Furioso' has been translated into most European languages, though seldom successfully. Of the English translations, that by Harrington is spirited and much superior to Hoole's, but Rose's is considered the best, and is generally faithful.

Pulci, Bojardo, and Bello had each written a poem on the wars between Charlemagne and the Saracens, in which Orlando, or Roland, appeared as a prominent character, and the champion of the Christians. Bojardo took Orlando for the hero of his poem, and made him fall in love with Angelica, an infidel princess. Bojardo broke off the story of Angelica in the 50th canto of his 'Orlando Innamorato,' and never resumed it, although he had carried his poem to the 69th canto at the time of his death. Ariosto took up the thread of Angelica's story where Bojardo had left it, and making her fall in love with Medoro, an obscure youthful squire, he represents Orlando as driven mad by jealousy and indignation: he continues in this state during the greater part of the poem, until he Ariosto is considered one of the best Italian is restored to reason by Astolfo. But the madness satirists. The tone of his satires resembles that of Orlando is not the principal subject of the of Horace rather than that of Juvenal. He intro poem, although it has furnished the name for it; duces several of the principal occurrences of his life, the war between Charlemagne and the Saracens is and exhibits the manners and vices of his time and continued throughout the narrative, of which it country. His Satires, seven in number, and adforms a most important and consecutive action, dressed to his brothers and other friends, were first ending with the expulsion of the Moors from published in 1534, after his death, and have been France, and the subsequent death of their king often reprinted, both separately and with the rest of Agramante and their other chiefs. Intermixed his works. He wrote five comedies in blank verse, with these subjects or tales are numerous and some 'La Cassaria,' 'I Suppositi,' 'La Lena,' 'Il Negrolong episodes of knights and damsels, of their mante,' and 'La Scolastica,' and several minor fights and loves, of their strange adventures, some works, consisting of 'canzoni,' 'capitoli,' and 'soheroic, some ludicrous, and others pathetic; there netti.' Ariosto was never married, but he left are magicians and giants, enchanted palaces and two natural sons, one of whom became a canon in gardens, flying horses and harpies, and other mon- the cathedral of Ferrara, and the other a captain sters; and the reader finds himself in the midst of in the duke's service. a new world, created as it were by the wand of an enchanter.

(Baruffaldi, the younger, La Vita di M. Lodovico Ariosto.)

ARISH, or EL ARISH, a small town on a slight eminence about half a mile from the shore of the Mediterranean, and on the usual road from Egypt to Syria, 31° 5' N. lat., 33° 48′ E. long. There are some wells near it, and some clumps of palm-trees between the town and the sea. There are still some Roman ruins, and several marble columns at Arish. Arish is the site of the ancient Rhinocolura, which was considered a kind of

frontier town between Egypt and Syria; and, in connection with Petra in the interior, was an entrepôt of some importance. The French took possession of it in February, 1799, in their expedition to Egypt, and kept it for some time. It was at Arish that Sir Sydney Smith concluded a convention with the French army, allowing them to return to France with their baggage and arms, which was subsequently disavowed by the British go

vernment.

ARISTÆ'NETUS, a Greek writer, a native of Nicæa. It has been conjectured that the Aristanetus to whom are attributed the Erotic or Love Letters is the person to whom several of the letters of Libanius are addressed, and who lost his life in the earthquake at Nicomedia, A.D. 358.

at Paris, in 1543, on the 'System of the World, under the name of Aristarchus. But this, there is no doubt, was by Roberval himself.

Vitruvius speaks highly of Aristarchus, as the inventor of many useful machines, and, in particular, of a dial which he terms scaphe. This dial is described by Martianus Capella (cited by Weidler), from which, and partly from the name, we should infer that it was a part of a concave hemisphere, with a style ending in the centre, so that by drawing the equator, &c. inside the hemisphere, the sun's position might be found by marking the extremity of the shadow. Montucla describes one, dug out at Tusculum in 1741, which, since Cicero describes such an instrument, is conjectured to have belonged to him. (Mont. 'Hist. Math.' i. 721; a drawing is given.)

A new edition of the Greek text of Aristarchus, with a Latin translation, appeared at Paris in 1810, 8vo. There is also a French translation by M. de Fortia d'Urban, Paris, Didot,

These letters, of which there are two books, are a species of rhetorical exercise, and not real letters; they are of some value as presenting a picture of the manners, or at least of the literature, of the age. The latest and best edition is by Boissonade, Paris, 1822, 8vo. There is a German translation 1823. of Aristænetus by Here!, Altenburg, 1778, 8vo. : ARISTARCHUS was born in the island of there are also several, but somewhat indifferent, Samothrace; but he settled in Alexandria. French translations.

ARISTARCHUS of Samos, an astronomer, lived about B.C. 279. We know nothing of his life or death.

Pto

lemæus Philométor, king of Egypt, reigned from B.C. 181 to 145, and Aristarchus was the preceptor of his son, who was killed by his uncle Ptolemæus Euérgetes II., at the accession of the latter Archimedes (in the 'Arenarius') attributes to in 145 B.C. Aristarchus was the disciple of ArisAristarchus the opinion that the earth moves tophanes of Byzantium, the first Grecian who inround the sun, which is supposed to have been quired with precision into the genuineness of the previously held by Pythagoras and Philolaus. A early Greek writings; he likewise introduced the passage from Plutarch states that Aristarchus use of the Greek accents, as they may now be seen supposed the heavens to be fixed, and that the in manuscripts and printed books. (Wolf, 'Proleg. earth moved in an oblique circle, at the same ad Homer., s. 44.) Aristarchus succeeded his time revolving round her own axis. We learn master Aristophanes as head of the grammatical also from Archimedes, that Aristarchus supposed the apparent diameter of the sun to be the 720th part of the zodiac, that is, half a degree. This is about 2' too little.

and critical school of Alexandria; and obtained, by his eminence as a teacher and by his various writings, a reputation greater than any other critic of antiquity. Horace and Cicero use the term Aristarchus as a general name for a great critic.

One small work of Aristarchus has come down to us, 'On the Magnitudes and Distances of the The numerous critical works of Aristarchus are Sun and Moon,' which makes no mention of the now all lost, and they are only known from expreceding hypothesis with regard to the earth's tracts and citations preserved in other writers. His motion. It contains the celebrated method of chief work was his edition of the Iliad' and finding the relative distances of the sun and Odyssey;' in which he revised the text, partly moon: the earliest which was founded upon by means of the comparison of MSS., and partly sound principles. When the moon is exactly by conjecture; he divided the two poems into halved, it is known that the line joining the sun twenty-four parts or books, each distinguished by and moon is at right angles to that joining the a letter of the Greek alphabet; and he placed earth and moon. By observing the elongation of certain critical marks before certain lines, some dethe two bodies, a second angle of the right-angled triangle is obtained; and when two angles of a triangle are known, the proportions of the sides can be found. But Aristarchus had not the means of making an accurate use of his principle, good as it is.

noting that the verses so marked contained something worthy of notice, and others that they were spurious. Of his Homeric criticisms, a large part is extant in the 'Scholia' to Homer, from which a tolerably complete notion of his mode of treating ancient Greek poets may be formed. One of the most remarkable features of his criticism is the boldness with which he condemned numerous verses as unworthy of Homer, and as manifest interpolations of a later age. Various opinions have been formed on these judgments of Aristarchus; some moderns having thought that his method was in the highest degree arbitrary and uncritical, while others have thought that he exercised a sound discretion. There can be no doubt that Aristarchus, in rejecting verses of Homer. for the

most part did not rely on the faith of ancient copies, but trusted merely to his own sagacity in discovering the traces of interpolation.

The division of Homer into books was doubtless made by Aristarchus for the purpose of reference; and it has been retained on that account ever since his time. The earlier Greek writers, as Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle, in citing Homer, refer by description to the part of the poem which they mean, as the exploits of Diomedes, the descent into hell, the battle of the gods, and so on.

Aristarchus did not confine his criticism to grammatical and metrical questions, but he also gave historical and geographical illustrations of the author's text. He published two editions of his recension of Homer, as appears from numerous passages in the Scholia ' to Homer, where the differences between the readings of the first and second editions are noticed. His recension became the established text of the Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' not only among the grammarians of Alexandria and their disciples, but among the copyists from whose transcripts the present texts of Homer have been derived.

Late in his life he appears to have retired from Alexandria to Cyprus, where, being afflicted with a dropsy, he died of voluntary starvation at the age of 72; leaving as his successor in the Alexandrine school his disciple Ammonius.

of Psyttaleia, near Salamis, and put to the sword! the Persian troops stationed on that island (Herod. viii. 95.)

Before the battle of Platea, fought in September, B.C. 479, he was reinstated in his former favour with his countrymen. At this battle, contrary to the general usage, he was appointed sole general of the Athenian troops, and he signalized his moderation in a dispute with the Tegeáta concerning the right of occupying the left wing of the allied army, the second post in point of honour, the right wing being always held by the Lacedæmonians.

Not long after the restoration of Athens, which had been destroyed by Xerxes and Mardonius, ar important change took place in the constitution. Aristides proposed a law, by which all persons were rendered eligible to the archonship, without regard either to birth or wealth. [ARCHON.]

Aristides was the colleague of Themistocles in an embassy to Sparta, when the Spartan government interfered to prevent the rebuilding of the walls of Athens, destroyed by the Persians. (Thucyd. i. 91.)

assessment was executed by Aristides with such fairness, that, according to Diodorus (xi. 47), he obtained the highest praise for justice.

In B.C. 477, the unpopularity of the Lacedæmonians, especially of the commander-in-chief Pausanias, induced the Ionian Greeks to offer the command of the confederacy to Athens, whose ships at that time were under the command of ArisARISTIDES, son of Lysimachus, a great tides; and to his moderation and probity, and to the Athenian statesman and general. Of his early favourable opinion consequently entertained of the life nothing very precise is recorded. It appears Athenian character, that transfer of the command that he was early opposed to Themistocles, whose is chiefly to be ascribed, and the establishment of ambitious and unscrupulous temper led him to what may be called the Athenian rule in Greece, promote both his own and his country's benefit by which was overthrown seventy-two years aftermeasures quite at variance with the integrity of wards, at the end of the Peloponnesian war. Aristides. Plutarch states that he was one of the Under this new arrangement, the Greeks of the ten commanders who directed the Athenian army, west coast of Asia Minor, the islands, and Thrace, B.C. 490, upon the occasion of the Persian inva- in conjunction with the Athenians, engaged to sion under Datis and Artaphernes. According to maintain a fleet to prosecute the war with Persia. Plutarch, when the Athenians marched back to Each state was assessed to furnish a certain sum their capital in haste, to prevent the flying Per- of money, amounting in the aggregate to 460 sians from making any attempt on it by sea, Aris-talents; and the difficult task of making the tides was left with the men of his own tribe to guard the valuable spoil of the Persian camp; being selected for that duty on account of his incorruptible honesty. But Herodotus, in his ac- This is the last public office in which we know count of the battle (vi. 109), never even mentions Aristides to have been engaged. The precise Aristides' name. This proceeded from no un- time of his death is not mentioned by the early friendly feeling; for the historian (viii. 79) hears Greek historians, or by Plutarch. Nepos says testimony to him as the 'justest and best man in that it occurred in the fourth year after the osAthens.' That he distinguished himself is how- tracism of Themistocles, which fixes it to 467. ever rendered probable by his having been elected He left a son, Lysimachus, and two daughters; archon eponymos in the following year. (Plut. all of whom were provided for by the state. Ly'Arist..' c. 5.) In the sixth year after, B.C. 483, simachus had a pension and a grant of lands at he was banished by the process called ostracism. Estica in Euboea. (Demos. Leptin.' cap. 24.) [OSTRACISM.] In the third year afterwards, B.C. Aristides lived and died in poverty, after having 480, the Persian invasion under Xerxes took borne the highest offices of Athens, and possessed place. At the battle of Artemisium, Aristides the most tempting opportunities for peculation of was still in exile. But in the night preceding the any man in Greece; a voluntary poverty, for he battle of Sálamis he passed from the island of is said to have refused large sums offered to him Egina through the Persian fleet, bearing intelli- by private liberality, saying that he could better gence to his countrymen that they were sur- boast of his poverty than others of their riches, rounded, and that flight, which they were then which many did use ill, and few well and meditating, was no longer possible. (Herod. viii. that it was a hard thing to find one man of a 79.) (SALAMIS.] Aristides, at the head of a noble mind that could away with poverty, and body of Athenians, kended on the small island that such only might be ashamed of poverty

:

28 were poor against their wills.' 'Plutarch.')

(North's panegyrics on many distinguished cities, such as Smyrna, Rome, &c.

In the Elgin collection of the British Museum, there is a sepulchral stéle, which bears the name of Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, of Estiæa.' It is conjectured that this Aristides was the grandson of Aristides the Just.

(Library of Entertaining Knowledge-Elgin Marbles, vol. ii. 149; Plutarch, Cornelius Nepos, Lives of Aristides.)

The latest edition of the Declamations of Aristides, together with his two books on Rhetoric, is by W. Dindorf, Leipzig, 1829, 3 vols. 8vo. ARISTIDES QUINTILIA'NUS, a Greek writer on music, whose age is uncertain. His work on Music (gi Moves), in three books, is printed in the Collection of Meibomius.

ARISTIPPUS, the son of Arítades, was born ARISTIDES, a native of Thebes, and one of at Cyréne, and came to Athens when a young the great Greek painters, is said by Pliny (xxxv. man, in order to profit by the lessons of Socrates. 10) to have been the contemporary of Apelles. Aristippus was a hearer of Socrates for some time; His excellence consisted in giving character and and as he could not have been very young when expression to his figures, and in the strong de- he was attracted to Athens by the philosopher's lineation of the passions: his colouring was hard. fame, we may suppose that he was at least One of his great pictures represented the capture twenty-five years old at the death of Socrates, of a city. Among the most striking figures was B.C. 399, which would make his birth as early as that of a mother just expiring from a wound; her B.C. 424 or 425. Lais, the courtesan, with whom infant still clings to her breast, and the dying mo- he was in habits of intimacy, was born B.C. 421. ther seems only anxious that her child should not We know that he was still living in B.C. 366, but suck the blood that is streaming from her body. the time of his death is not stated. Alexander the Great had this picture removed to Aristippus appears to have prided himself on Pella in Macedonia. The works of Aristides were his knowledge of the world, on the popularity numerous, and many of them were transferred to and versatility of his manners, and the ease with Rome with the rest of the plunder of Greece. At which he could adapt himself to the company of the capture of Corinth by L. Mummius, Polybius, all persons, and to all varieties of fortune. His the Greek historian, who was present on the oc- principles and conduct made him obnoxious to casion, saw the Roman soldiers playing at games Xenophon, with whom he is stated to have been of chance on the most costly pictures, which they on bad terms, and to Antisthenes, the head of the had spread on the ground. (Strabo, p. 381.) Cynic school, whom he is reported to have conA Dionysus (Bacchus) by Aristides, and a Hercu- stantly ridiculed for the austerity of his manners. les struggling with the poisoned shirt of Deianira, Plato likewise aims a blow at him in the 'Phædo,' by the same artist, were treated in this shameful way. Strabo himself saw the Bacchus, which, by chance, had been safely transferred to Rome, in the temple of Ceres, and he pronounces it a most beautiful work of art.

for passing his time in luxurious enjoyment at Egina, while his master, Socrates, was under sentence of death at Athens, at a distance of a few hours' sail. He seems to have remained true to the principle expressed by him in a converSee a passage in Athenæus (xiii. 567) on other sation with Socrates (Xenophon, Memorabilia,' subjects painted by Aristides. ii. 1), of keeping from his native country, in order ARISTIDES 'LIUS, was born at Hadriani to avoid taking any share in public affairs, and in Bithynia, probably about A.D. 117; but, ac- to have travelled to various Greek states. cording to other opinions, A.D. 129. He studied passed much time at the court of Dionysius of at Smyrna under Pólemo, and at Athens under Syracuse. He probably retired late in his life to Heródes Atticus, after which he travelled exten- Cyrene, where we find his family and his school sively in Asia and in Egypt; finally, he settled after his death.

He

at Smyrna, where he obtained the priesthood of Aristippus differed from Socrates, and the SoEsculapius. He also opened a lecture-room and cratic philosophers, in taking money for his ingained great reputation by his rhetorical prelec-struction.

tions. In A.D. 178, Smyrna was destroyed by It is doubtful whether Aristippus inculcated an earthquake, and Aristides, by addressing a let- his opinions in writing, or whether, like Socrates, ter on the subject, which is still extant, to M. he only imparted them orally to his disciples. Aurelius, induced the emperor to restore the city. However this may be, it is certain that his docStatues were erected in honour of Aristides; one, trines were perpetuated by his daughter, A'rete, now in the Vatican (Winkelmann, ii. 475, French and by Antipater of Cyrene. Arete was the ed.), bears his name, and it is by no means teacher of her son, Aristippus, who, to distinguish improbable that the statue supposed by some to represent Aristides of Athens, really belongs to this Aristides, who affected to rival Isocrates and Demosthenes.

him from his grandfather, was called metrodidactos (taught by his mother); and Theodórus, the atheist, a philosopher of some note, is stated to have been a disciple of this Aristippus. Antipater, the other Of his fifty-five declamations, one entitled immediate successor of the elder Aristippus, is 'Against Leptines,' is an imitation of the great stated to have had disciples; but Hegesias and oration of Demosthenes, which bears the same Anniceris, who were about contemporary with name; and another, the 'Panathenaikos,' was in- Theodórus, are the only philosophers in his branch tended to show that he could write in the style of the Cyrenaic school of whose opinions anything of Isocrates, and rival one of the most famous spe- is known. cimens of that master. Aristides wrote also

Aristippus is stated to have considered ethics

An Aristocracy, therefore, may be defined to be a form of government in which the sovereign power is divided among a number of persons less than half the adult males of the entire community where there is not a class of subjects or slaves, or the dominant community where there is a class of subjects or slaves.

as the only subject which deserved the atten- | Athenian citizen had a share in the sovereign tion of a philosopher. (Aristot. 'Metaph.' ii. 2.) power, the government of Athens was called, not He held that the happiness of man consists in an aristocracy, but a democracy. Again, the pleasure, and his misery in pain: happiness being Athenians had a class of slaves four or five merely an aggregate of pleasures, and misery an times more numerous than the whole body of aggregate of pains. That pleasure is the greatest citizens; yet, as a majority of the citizens posgood he conceived to be proved by the fact, that sessed the sovereign power, the government was the youngest children, and even brute animals, called a democracy. seek it, and avoid pain. He did not, like Epicurus, consider the absence of pain to be pleasure, or the absence of pleasure to be pain; for he thought that pleasure and pain are accompanied with motion, whereas the absence of pain and pleasure is not accompanied with motion: the former of these two states being like sleep. He did not recommend an unrestrained pursuit of pleasure: true wisdom Sometimes the word aristocracy is used to (he thought) consisted, not in abstaining from signify not a form of government, but a class of pleasure, but in the proper enjoyment of it. persons in a state. In this sense it is applied not He condemned all care for the past or the future, merely to the persons composing the sovereign all regret and all forethought, and said that a body in a state of which the government is aristoperson ought to think only of the passing day. cratical, but to a class or political party in any He recommended calmness of mind and modera-state, whatever be the form of its government. tion of desires; and he particularly cautioned When there is a privileged order of persons in a his daughter Arete against covetousness. He community having a title or civil dignity, and thought that the wise man should be free from when no person, not belonging to this body, is envy and love, from superstition, and from the fear of death.

(Life of Aristippus, by Diogenes Laertius, ii. 65-104, with Menage's notes; Ritter's Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. ii. pp. 87-103.)

ARISTOBU'LUS accompanied Alexander the Great in his campaigns, of which he wrote an account after the king's death. This work, now lost, is one of the chief authorities for Arrian's "History of Alexander.' (Arrian's Preface to his Anabasis.)

admitted to share in the sovereign power, this class is often called the aristocracy, and the aristocratic party or class; and all persons not belonging to it are called the popular party, or, for shortness, the people. Under these circumstances many rich persons would not belong to the aristocratic class; but if the disabilities of the popular order are removed, and the rich obtain a large share of the sovereign power, then the rich become the aristocratic class, as opposed to the middle ranks and the poor. In England, at the present time, aristocracy, as the name of a class, is generally applied to the rich, as opposed to the rest of the community: sometimes, however, it is used in a narrower sense, and is restricted to the nobility, or members of the peerage.

ARISTOBU'LUS. [ASMONEANS.] ARISTOCRACY, from the Greek aristocrátia (aproxgaria), according to its etymology, means a government of the best or most excellent (gr). This name, which, like optimátes in Latin, was applied to the wealthy class in the state, soon lost The word aristocracy, when used in this last its moral and obtained a purely political sense; so sense, may be applied to an order of persons in that aristocracy came to mean merely a government states of any form of government; and it would of a few, the rich being always the minority of a be an error if any person were to infer from the nation. When the sovereign power does not belong existence of an aristocracy (that is, an aristocratical to one person, it is shared by a number of persons class) in a state, that the form of government is either greater or less than half the community: therefore aristocratical, though that might happen if this number is less than half, the government is called or may be called an aristocracy; if it is The use of the word aristocracy to signify a greater than half, the government is called a de- class of persons never occurs in the Greek writers, mocracy. Since, however, women and children with whom it originated, nor (as far as we are have in all ages and countries (except in cases of aware) is it ever employed by Machiavelli and the hereditary succession) been excluded from the revivers of political science since the middle ages : sovereign power, the number of persons enume- among modern writers of all parts of Europe this rated in estimating the form of the government is acceptation has, however, now become estaconfined to the adult males, and does not compre-blished.

to be the case.

hend every individual of the society. Where There is scarcely any political term which has there is a class of subjects or slaves who are ex- a more vague sense than aristocracy; and the cluded from all political rights and all share in the historical or political student should be careful to sovereignty, the numbers of the dominant commu- watch with attention the variations in its meannity are alone taken into the account in deter- ing. If this is not done, there is danger, in pomining the name of the form of the government. litical or historical discussions, of confounding Thus, Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian things essentially different, and of drawing paralwar had conquered many independent communi- lels between governments, parties, and states of ties, which were reduced to different degrees of society, which resemble each other only in being subjection. Nevertheless, as every adult male called by the same name.