140

Logic IV. 146

truth. How could he have committed an error in regard to the age of Aristotle? It is true that we have good reason to suppose that Epicurus would naturally be bitterly mimical to Aristotle, and some positive evidence that he was so; and as for Timaeus, he said that Aristotle made a certain statement
(which was we have strong reason to think true) "in order that men might believe him to have been of Alexander's generals, and to have lately conquered the Persians at the Cicilian Gates in a pitched battle by his own ability; and not to be a mere pedantic sophist, universally unpopular, who had but a short time before shup up his miraculous apothecary-shop," with much else in the same temper, of which Polybius remarks that a historian ought to be ashamed to entertain such inventions in his own mind, to say nothing of putting them in writing. If, therefore, it could in any way put Aristotle into a disadvantageous light to represent him as sever years older than he was, that would sufficiently account for the statement of Timaeus and Epicurus.