ARISTOTLE AND THE EARLIER PERIPATETICS vol.I by Eduard Zeller, B.F.C.Costelloe 1897

THE LIFE OF ARISTOTLE 41
Alexander by unworthy means, 1 and it was not to be
expected that he should applaud or imitate the follies
of a Callisthenes. To impute it to him as an offence,
that he attached himself to the Macedonian party, is to
apply to him an erroneous and inapplicable standard.
By birth and training he was a Greek. But while all
his personal ties attached him to the royal house to
which he and his father owed so much, no one can say
that the consideration of the general position of politics
ought necessarily to have turned him against their
policy.
So satisfied was Plato of the untenable character
of the existing political relations, that he had advocated
sweeping changes.
Plato's follower could the less evade
the same conviction, since he had a keener insight into
men and things, and had clearly detected the conditions
on which the vitality of States and forms of
government depends. With his practical acumen he
could not put his trust in the Platonic ideal of a State
;
he was forced to seek the materials for a political reconstruction
from among the political relations as they
were and the powers already existing. At that day no
1
Stabr thinks it sounds like angry with inferiors, and that he
flattery when Aristotle writes to stood above all men, which was
Alexander (Arist. Fragm. No. surely true of the conqueror of
611, apud jElian, V. H. xii. the Persian Empire. We cannot
54) b Svfi.bs icdl 77 opyii ov irpbs tell whether the letter is genuine.
iaovs (1. Viaaovs with Rutgers, Heitz ( Verier. SoJir. d. Arist. 287)
Rose and Heitz) aMu: irpbs suggests that this fragment does
robs Kpeirrovas ylverai, trot 5e not agree with that in Plut.
oiiSels Xaos, but if this is genuine (Tramgu. An. 13, p. 472 ; Arist.
Aristotle said no more than the Fragm. 614, 1581, b) in which
truth, and he wrote, according to Aristotle is made to compare
yElian, in order to appease himself with Alexander, but the
Alexander's wrath against certain letter is much the more doubtful
persons, for which purpose he of the two.
tells him that one cannot be
42 ARISTOTLE
new foundation could be found except in the Macedonian
kingdom, for the Greek States were no longer able at
once to maintain their independence against the foreigner
and to reform their inner life. The whole course of
history so far had proved this so conclusively, that even
a Phocion was forced to
say, in the Lamian War, that
unless the moral conditions of Greece were altered
there was nothing to be expected from an armed rising
against Macedon. 1
come far less
Doubtless such a conviction would
readily to an Athenian statesman than to
a friend of the Macedonian kings, who was a citizen
of a small city like
Stagira, once destroyed by Philip,
and then reorganised as a Macedonian town. Can
we blame him if he accepted that view, and, with a
just appreciation of the political situation, attached
himself to that party which alone had a future, and
from which alone, if from any, Greece could still find
salvation from the dissension and decay within, and the
loss of power to face the enemy without? Can we
condemn him if he felt that the old independence of
the Greek cities must come to an end, when its basis
in the civic virtue of their citizens was gone ? Can we
object if he believed that in his pupil Alexander was
fulfilled the condition under which he held that
monarchy was natural and just 2 —where one man stands
out so clearly beyond all others in efficiency as to make
their equality with him impossible ? Can we complain
if he preferred to see the hegemony of Hellas rather in
the hands of such a man than in those of the ' great
king ' of Persia, for whose favour the Greek cities had
1
Plut. PJioc. 23. 2 Polit. iii. 13 fin.