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ARISTIPPUS was a rich citizen of Cyrene, who came to Athens for the sake of the teaching of Socrates. He was a man of easy, inactive temper, though keenly alive to the pleasures of mental culture. Xenophon tells us that Socrates tried to rouse his ambition and energy by telling him the fable of the choice of Hercules, to whom the two paths of life, that of effort and that of pleasure, were pointed out in youth by two visionary forms representing Virtue and Vice. But the ideal of Aristippus lay neither in the direction of strenuous ambition nor of sensual pleasure, but in that of a man who, while enjoying, each in their degree, the pleasures life could bring, should place the higher above the lower and should be the slave of none. Some of the sayings recorded of him are characteristic. Asked of what use was philosophy; "To be able," he said, "to live as we do though all laws should be abolished." "It is better to beg than to be ignorant; to want money is less evil than to want humanity." An advocate whom he had engaged to defend him in a law court asked him of what use had Socrates been to him: "I owe it to him," he replied, "that the things you said in my behalf were true."
He instructed his daughter Aretê in his principles, which she handed on to her son, named after her father. The school of thought founded by Aristippus, and sometimes called Cyrenaic, is best represented by Epicurus, whose name it commonly bears.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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