Page:A new and general biographical dictionary; containing an historical and critical account of the lives and writings of the most eminent persons in every nation v1.djvu/345

 A R I S T A R C II U S. 309 lame purpofe, but not without opprobrium, derived partly from himfelf, yet more from the manners of modern verbal critics. Growing dropfical, he found no other remedy, than to (tarve himfelf to death. Suidas relates, that he died in Cyprus, aged 72. ARIST^NETUS, an ancient author, to whom are afcribcd certain Greek. epiuMes upon the fubjtcl: of love and gallantry ; but who he was, or when he lived, cannot be fettled with any degree of certainty, as it does not appear that any one writer or antiquity has mentioned him. Some have indeed Imagined that the name is fictitious; and that, as the letters appear to be only a compilation of the moft beautiful paflaoes from different writers, fuch as Plato, Lu- cian, Philoftratus, and others, they are the work of fome fophift, who meant to fhew thereby the ufe which might be made of fuch writers : but this is all an uncertainty. A very neat and elegant edition of thefe epiftles was publifhed by Cornelius de Pauw at Utrecht, 1736, ini2mo; to which is prefixed the, prefaces, and with which are accompanied the notes of former editors as well as his own. ARISTIDES (^ELIUS), a very famous fophift of antiquity, was born at Adrian!, a town of Myfia, and flourifhed under , T. ,, n Fabric. Bibl. Adrian and the two following emperors. He received lectures Gr Lib- iv< in eloquence from the belt matters ; from Herodes Atticus ate. 30. Athens, and Ariftocles at Pergamus. He fpent hib life in travelling and declaiming, He went all over Egypt four times, and penetrated even to ./Ethiopia. He was averfe to extemporary harangues : he called it vomiting orations. When Smyrna was dcftroyed by an earthquake in the year 178, he wrote fo afte6ti;ie, a letter to Marcus Aurelius, that the Emperor ordered it to be rebuilt immediately : upon which the inhabitants eredled a ftatue to Ariftides, as to the reftorer of their city. Notwuhftanding the high reputation of this Sophift, he appears to have been very fuperftitious and very vain. He gives us to underfbnc!, that he thought himfelf inferior to no orator that had lived before him ; and that this pre-eminence of his was as it were a fpecinl objeft with the gods, who had diredted him in dreams to the Uudy of elo- quence. He paid a wonderful deference to his fleeping ideas, which he often believed to be divinely infufcd ; and tells you particularly how lie was directed by ./Efculapius to (ome- ihing, which cured him of a long and inveccraie illnefs. He X died