the
fate of Socrates).

He probably intended to return to Athens again so soon as the political
troubles had abated, but in September, 322 B.C., he died at Chalcis. An
overwrought mind, coupled with indigestion and weakness of the stomach,
from which he had long suffered, was most probably the cause of death.
Some of his detractors, however, have asserted that he took poison, and
others that he drowned himself in the Eub[oe]an Euripus.

It is not easy to arrive at a just estimate of the character of
Aristotle. By some of his successors he has been reproached with
ingratitude to his teacher, Plato; with servility to Macedonian power,
and with love of costly display. How far these two last charges are due
to personal slander it is impossible to say. The only ground for the
first charge is, that he criticised adversely some of Plato's doctrines.

The manuscripts of Aristotle's works passed through many vicissitudes.
At the death of the philosopher they were bequeathed to Theophrastus,
who continued chief of the Peripatetic school for thirty-five years.
Theophrastus left them, with his own works, to a philosophical friend
and pupil, Neleus, who conveyed them from Athens to his residence at
Scepsis, in Asia Minor. About thirty or forty years after the death of
Theophrastus, the kings of Pergamus, to whom the city of Scepsis
belonged, began collecting books to form a library on the Alexandrian
plan. This led the heirs of Neleus to conceal their literary treasures
in a cellar, and there the manuscripts remained for nearly a century
and a half, exposed to injury from damp and worms. At length they were
sold to Apellicon, a resident at Athens, who was attached to the
Peripatetic sect. Many of the manuscripts were imperfect, having become
worm-eaten or illegible. These defects Apellicon attempted to remedy;
but, being a lover of books rather than a philosopher, he performed the
work somewhat unskilfully. When Athens was taken by Sylla, 86 B.C., the
library of Apellicon was transported to Rome. There various literary
Greeks obtained access to it; and, among others, Tyrannion, a grammarian
and friend of Cicero, did good service in the work of correction.
Andronicus of Rhodes afterwards arranged the whole into sections, and
published the manuscripts with a tabulated list.

The three principal works on biology which are extant are: "The History
of Animals;" "On the Parts of Animals;" "On the Generation of Animals."
The other bio