discussions by A. Harnack, Altchristl. Litteratur, i. 96 ff., Chronologie, i. 271 ff., where references to other writers may be found. The Epistola ad omnes philosophos and the Homily on the Penitent Thief, ascribed by Armenian tradition to Aristides, are really of 5th-century origin. Trans. of Apology by W. S. Walford (1909). (J. A. R.)
ARISTIPPUS (c. 435–356 B.C.), Greek philosopher, the founder of the Cyrenaic school, was the son of Aritadas, a merchant of Cyrene. At an early age he came to Athens, and was induced to remain by the fame of Socrates, whose pupil he became. Subsequently he travelled through a number of Grecian cities, and finally settled in Cyrene, where he founded his school. His philosophy was eminently practical (see Cyrenaics). Starting from the two Socratic principles of virtue and happiness, he emphasized the second, and made pleasure the criterion of life. That he held to be good which gives the maximum of pleasure. In pursuance of this he indulged in all forms of external luxury. At the same time he remained thoroughly master of himself and had the self-control to refrain or to enjoy. Diogenes Laertius (ii. 65), quoting Phanias the peripatetic, says that he received money for his teaching, and Aristotle (Met. ii. 2) expressly calls him a sophist. Diogenes further states that he wrote several treatises, but none have survived. The five letters attributed to him are undoubtedly spurious. His daughter Arete, and her son Aristippus (μητροδίδακτος, “pupil of his mother”), carried on the school after his death. A cosmopolitan on principle, and a convinced disbeliever in the ethics of his day, he comes very near to modern empiricism and especially to the modern Hedonist school.
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.)
ARISTO, of Pella, a Jewish Christian writer of the middle of the 2nd century, who like Hegesippus (q.v.) represents a school of thought more liberal than that of the Pharisaic and Essene Ebionites to which the decline of Jewish Christianity mainly led. Aristo is cited by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. iv. 6. 3) for a decree of Hadrian respecting the Jews, but he is best known as the writer of a Dialogue (between Papiscus, an Alexandrian Jew, and Jason, who represents the author) on the witness of prophecy to Jesus Christ, which was approvingly defended by Origen against the reproaches of Celsus. The little book was perhaps used by Justin Martyr in his own Dialogue with Trypho, and probably also by Tertullian and Cyprian, but it has not been preserved.
The literature is cited in G. Krüger’s Early Christian Literature, pp. 104 f.
ARISTOBULUS, of Cassandreia, Greek historian, accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns, of which he wrote an account, mainly geographical and ethnological. His work was largely used by Arrian.
Müller, Historicorum Graecorum Fragmenta; Schöne, De Rerum Alexandri Magni Scriptoribus (1870).
ARISTOBULUS, of Paneas (c. 160 B.C.), a Jewish philosopher of the Peripatetic school. Gercke places him in the time of Ptolemy X. Philometor (end of 2nd century), Anatolius in that of Ptolemy II. Philadelphus, but the middle of the 2nd century is more probable. He was among the earliest of the Jewish-Alexandrian philosophers whose aim was to reconcile and identify Greek philosophical conceptions with the Jewish religion. Only a few fragments of his work, apparently entitled Commentaries on the Writings of Moses, are quoted by Clement, Eusebius and other theological writers, but they suffice to show its object. He endeavoured to prove that early Greek philosophers had borrowed largely from certain parts of Scripture, and quoted from Linus, Orpheus, Musaeus and others, passages which strongly resemble the Mosaic writings. These passages, however, were obvious forgeries. It is suggested that the name Aristobulus was taken from 2 Macc. i. 10. The hypothesis (Schlatter, Das neugefundene hebräische Stück des Sirach) that it was from Aristobulus that the philosophy of Ecclesiasticus was derived is not generally accepted.
See E. Schürer, History of the Jewish People (Eng. trans., 1890–1891), ii. 237 seq.; article Alexandrian School: Philosophy; and s.v. “Aristobulus” in Jewish Encyclopedia (Paul Wendland).
ARISTOCRACY (Gr. ἄριστος, best; κρατία, government), etymologically, the “rule of the best,” a form of government variously defined and appreciated at different times and by different authorities. In Greek political philosophy, aristocracy is the government of those who most nearly attain to the ideal of human perfection. Thus Plato in the Republic advocates the rule of the “philosopher-king” who, in the social scheme, is analogous to Reason in the intellectual, and alone is qualified to control the active principles, i.e. the fighting population and the artisans or workers. Aristocracy is thus the government by those who are superior both morally and intellectually, and, therefore, govern directly in the interests of the governed, as a good doctor works for the good of his patient. Aristotle classified good governments under three heads—monarchy, aristocracy and commonwealth πολιτεία, to which he opposed the three perverted forms—tyranny or absolutism, oligarchy and democracy or mob-rule. The distinction between aristocracy and oligarchy, which are both necessarily the rule of the few, is that whereas the few ἄριστοι will govern unselfishly, the oligarchs, being the few wealthy (“plutocracy” in modern terminology), will allow their personal interests to predominate. While Plato’s aristocracy might be the rule of the wise and benevolent despot, Aristotle’s is necessarily the rule of the few.
Historically aristocracy develops from primitive monarchy by the gradual progressive limitation of the regal authority. This process is effected primarily by the nobles who have hitherto formed the council of the king (an excellent example will be found in Athenian politics, see Archon), whose triple prerogative— religious, military and judicial—is vested, e.g., in a magistracy of three. These are either members of the royal house or the heads of noble families, and are elected for life or periodically by their peers, i.e. by the old royal council (cf. the Areopagus at Athens, the Senate at Rome), now the sovereign power. In practice this council depends primarily on a birth qualification, and thus has always been more or less inferior to the Aristotelian ideal; it is, by definition, an “oligarchy” of birth, and is recruited from the noble families, generally by the addition of emeritus magistrates. From the earliest times, therefore, the word “aristocracy” became practically synonymous with “oligarchy,” and as such it is now generally used in opposition to democracy (which similarly took the place of Aristotle’s πολιτεία), in which the ultimate sovereignty resides in the whole citizen body.
The aristocracy of which we know most in ancient Greece was that of Athens prior to the reforms of Cleisthenes, but all the Greek city-states passed through a period of aristocratic or oligarchic government. Rome, between the regal and the imperial periods, was always more or less under the aristocratic government of the senate, in spite of the gradual growth of democratic institutions (the Lat. optimates is the equivalent of ἄριστοι). There is, however, one feature which distinguishes these aristocracies from those of modern states, namely, that they were all slave-owning. The original relation of the slave-population, which in many cases outnumbered the free citizens, cannot always be discovered. But in some cases we know that the slaves were the original inhabitants who had been overcome by an influx of racially different invaders (cf. Sparta with its Helots); in others they were captives taken in war. Hence even the most democratic states of antiquity were so far aristocratic that the larger proportion of the inhabitants had no voice in the government. In the second place this relation gave rise to a philosophic doctrine, held even by Aristotle, that there were
