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AR'ISTAR'CHUS (Gk. Άρίσταρχος, Aristarchos) of Samos. A celebrated ancient astronomer of the Alexandrian School, who made his observations about B.C. 280-264. All his writings have perished, excepting a short essay on the sizes and distances of the sun and the moon. In this he shows the method of estimating the relative distances of the sun and moon from the earth, from the angle formed by the two bodies at the observer's eye when the moon's phase reaches exactly the first or third quarter; i.e., when we see a half moon.
Remembering that the moon's light is simply reflected solar light, it is easy to see from the annexed figure that the three bodies must then form a right-angled triangle, with the moon at the right angle. The angle MES being then observed, we can readily calculate the ratio EM to ES. This is quite correct in theory; but the impossibility of determining when the moon is exactly half illuminated renders the method inaccurate in practice. Besides, in the days of Aristarchus there were no instruments for measuring angles with anything like accuracy. Aristarchus estimated the angle at E at 83° and determined EM to be one-twentieth of ES, the truth being that the angle at E differs only by a fraction of a minute from a right angle, and that EM. the distance of the moon from the earth, is about 1·400 of ES, the distance of the sun. According to some accounts, Aristarchus held, with the Pythagorean School, that the earth moves around the sun. Vitruvius speaks of Aristarchus as the inventor of a kind of concave sun-dial. His essay was first published in Latin (Venice, 1498), then in Greek (Oxford, 1688). and it has since been republished.
ARISTARCHUS of Samothrace (B.C. 216–144). A Greek scholar. He was the pupil of Aristophanes of Byzantium, became tutor to the son of Ptolemy Philometor, and succeeded his master as head of the Alexandrian library. He died in Cyprus at the age of 72. Aristarchus represents the highest attainments of philological criticism in antiquity, and his influence dominated all later workers. He gave his attention chiefly to exegesis of the poets, particularly of the Homeric poems; his recension is the basis of our common text of Homer to-day. He wrote an enormous number of exegetical works—according to Suidas over 800—and many special treatises besides. Fragments of his comments are preserved, e.g., in the Venetian scholia to the Iliad. He founded a school of Aristarcheans at Alexandria, which continued to work on classical texts until after the beginning of the Empire. For an account of Aristarchus's Homeric studies, consult Lehrs, De Aristrirchi Studiis Homericis (Königsberg, 1882).
ARISTE, a'rest'. A male character in Molière's Les femmes savantes, the common-sense brother of Chrysale. He befriends the lovers, and, through his pardonable falsehood concerning Chrysale's financial loss, exposes the knavery of Trissotin.
ARIS'TEAS (Gk. Άριστέας). An officer at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He is said to have been sent by the latter to Jerusalem (B.C. 273), where he obtained from the high-priest Eleazar a genuine copy of the Pentateuch and a body of seventy-two elders who could translate it into Greek. See Hody, De Bibliorum Textu Originali (Oxford, 1705); Dale, Dissertatio super Aristea (Amsterdam, 1705) . See Bible.
ARISTEAS, A magician of antiquity who rose after his death, and whose soul left and reentered his body according to its pleasure. His earliest appearance is as the teacher of Homer. We also hear of him as having been born, at a period later than Homer, at Proconnesus, an island in the Propontis. He is said to have traveled through the countries north and east of the Euxine, and to have visited the Arimaspi, the Cimmierii, the Hyperborei, and other mythical nations, and after his return and subsequent disappearance to have written an epic poem in three books, called Arimaspia, a composition belonging probably to the Sixth Century B.C.. Aristeas is fabled to have entered a fuller's shop at Proconnesus and there died. Later a traveler appeared who said that he had met him on the road between Cyzicus and Artace. When the fuller's shop was entered no body was found. It was seven years after
