ARISTIDES

97

ARITHMETIC

famous. His patron alone treated the poem with contempt, and soon dismissed Ariosto from his service. The Duke of Ferrara then became his patron, and made him governor of a small district. After three years of successful rule he returned to Ferrara, where he lived till his death in !533- Besides his great poem, he wrote a number of comedies and satires, and a theater was built for the playing of his pieces. The Orlando Furioso still stands in Italy at the head of all poems of chivalry, and has been translated into many languages. The plot is taken from the wars of the time of Charles the Great.

Aristi'des (âr'is-tî'dëz), called the Just, was. one of the statesmen of Athens, and helped to build up the greatness of his city. At the battle of Marathon, 490 B. C, he was one of the ten generals of the Athenians. He persuaded the others to give up their day of command to Miltiades, who was the most skillful commander. His rival at Athens was Themistocles and the contest between the two leaders grew so bitter, that it was deemed best to exile one of them by vote. When the vote was being taken, a man who did not know Aristides asked him to write for him the name Aristides on the shell which was used as a ballot. " Has he done you any injury?" asked Aristides. "No," was the reply, "but I am tired of hearing him called 'Aristides the Just.' " Aristides was banished for ten years; but in 480, when his country was in great danger from the Persians, he returned on the eve of the battle of Salamis, and helped his rival Themistocles. He also commanded the Athenians at the battle of Plataea. When many of the states decided to form an alliance against Persia, with Athens at its head, Aristides, because of his well-known honesty and fairness, was chosen to make the arrangements and to assess the expenses of the war on the different states. He died so poor about the year 468 B. C. that he was buried at the public cost; but he had done so much for Athens that the government gave his daughters dowries and his son a landed estate.

Aristophanes (ãr-is-tŏfa-nēz), the greatest Greek writer of comedies. Little is known of his life, although his writings have made him famous. He was born at Athens, probably about 448 B. C. He began writing when very young, and his first plays were brought out under another name, because he was not old enough to contend for the prize. He wrote, in all, fifty-four comedies, but only eleven have come down to us. The Knights and The Clouds are among his most admired pieces. Others are The Wasps, The Birds and The Frogs. Aristophanes laughed at everything and everybody, especially at everything new. He liked old Athens, "as it had

been in the days of the Persian wars," and thus failed to see the good in men like Socrates. One of his finest plays, The Clouds, is a satire against Socrates. His plays have in them specimens of the most beautiful and finished poetry. He died about 380 B. C.

Aristotle (ār'is-tŏt-l), the greatest of all the Greek philosophers, was born at Stageira in Thrace, 384 B. C. His father was a physician, and his own early education was in that direction. In his eighteenth year he went to Athens and became the pupil of Plato, who called him the "Intellect of the School." He stayed at Athens twenty years, until the death of Plato, 347 B. C., when he went to Atar-neas in Mysia and afterward to Mitylene. In the year 342 B. C, he was invited by Philip, king of Macedon, to educate his son Alexander in Macedonia. When Alexander set out on his expedition to Asia, 334 B. C, Aristotle returned to Athens, where at the age of fifty, he opened a school called the Lyceum, from its nearness to the temple of Apollo Lyceius. His school and pupils were called the Peripatetics, from his habit of walking up and down in the garden while giving his lectures. After the death of Alexander, he was accused of impiety by the party in power. With the fate of Socrates before his eyes, he chose a timely escape and fled to Chalcis in Eubcea, where he died 322 B. C. Many of his writings are lost; of those that remain, his Logic, Rhetoric, Poetics and Meteorologies are the most important. He almost created the science of logic and also that of natural science. In philosophy no one can be named whose influence has been greater or more lasting.

Arithmetic has been greatly influenced by modern educational thought, the same as other studies. Until very recent years the principal change taking place in the study consisted in a growing willingness to omit topics that had no close relation to our own lives. For instance, topics now wholly omitted or neglected are the surveyor's table, apothecaries' weight and troy weight; G.C.D. and L.C.M. as special topics, complex and compound fractions, except those of a very simple nature; annual interest and most of compound interest; partial payments, except under the United States rule, and with problems involving common amounts, as a principal of $100 with payments like fio and $25, rather than amounts like $251.44 and $19.79; profit and loss as a special topic; equation of payments; partnership; longitude and time, except problems based on the 15° scheme and a few others; and cube root. The conviction has been growing that there are too many quantitative matters intimately related to our lives to allow time to be spent on others that lack such relationship