AESCHINES (5th century B.C.)

This article appears in Volume V01, Page 272 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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AESCHINES (5th century B.C.) , an Athenian philosopher. According to some accounts he was the son of a sausage-maker, but others say that his father was

Lysanias

LYSANIAS

(Diog. Laert. ii. 6o; Suidas, s.v.). He was an intimate friend of Socrates, who is reported to have said that the sausage-maker's son alone knew how to honour him.

Diogenes

DIOGENES

Laertius preserves a tradition that it was he, not Crito, who offered to help Socrates to escape from prison. He was always a poor man, and Socrates advised him " to borrow from himself, by diminishing his expenditure." He started a perfumery shop in Athens on borrowed

capital

CAPITAL (i.e. capital stock or fund)
CAPITAL (Lat. caput, head)

, became bankrupt and retired to the Syracusan court, where he was well received by Aristippus. According to Diog. Laert. (ii. 61), Plato, then at Syracuse, pointedly ignored Aeschines, but this does not agree with

Plutarch

PLUTARCH
PLUTARCH (Gr. llXoi rapxos) (c. A.D. 46–120)

, De adulatore et amico (c. 26). On the expulsion of the younger

Dionysius

DIONYSIUS
DIONYSIUS (c. 432–367 B.C.)

, he returned to Athens, and, finding it impossible to profess philosophy publicly owing to the contempt of Plato and

Aristotle

ARISTOTLE
ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.)

, was compelled to teach privately. He wrote also forensic speeches; Phrynichus, in Photius, ranks him amongst the best orators, and mentions his orations as the standard of the pure Attic style.

Hermogenes

HERMOGENES

also spoke highly of him (Heist laec '). He wrote several philosophical dialogues: (I) Concerning virtue, whether it can be
taught; (2) Eryxias, or Erasistratus; concerning riches, whether they are good; (3) Axiochus: concerning death, whether it is to be feared, but those extant on the several subjects are not genuine remains. J. le Clerc has given a Latin

translation

TRANSLATION

of them, with notes and several dissertations, entitled Silvae Philologicae, and they have been edited by S. N. Fischer (

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1786), and K. F. Hermann, De Aeschin. Socrat. relig. (Gott. r85o). The genuine dialogues appear to have been marked by the Socratic irony; an amusing passage is quoted by Cicero in the De inventione (i.31).
See Hirzel, Der Dialog. i. 129-140; T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. iii. p. 342 (Eng. trans. G. G.

Berry

, London, 1905).

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