1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aristo (of Chios)

ARISTO or Ariston, of Chios (c. 250 B.C.), a Stoic philosopher and pupil of Zeno. He differed from Zeno on many points, and approximated more closely to the Cynic school. He was eloquent (hence his nickname “the Siren”) but controversial in tone. He despised logic, and rejected the philosophy of nature as beyond the powers of man. Ethics alone he considered worthy of study, and in that only general and theoretical questions. He rejected Zeno’s doctrine of desirable things, intermediate between virtue and vice. There is only one virtue—a clear, intelligent, healthy state of mind (hygeia). Aristo is frequently confounded with another philosopher of the same name, Ariston of Iulis, in Ceos, who, about 230 B.C., succeeded Lyco as scholarch of the Peripatetics. (See Stoics.)