Aristotle

Stagirite by birth (384 BC), son of the Asclepiad physician Nicomachus who had served at the Macedonian court; student of Plato at the Academy 367–347; invited back to Macedon by Philip II in 343 to tutor the thirteen-year-old Alexander and a circle of Macedonian noble boys (the future Companions) at the retreat of Mieza — the Nymphaion in the gardens that the emperor Hadrian would still visit five centuries later (Plut. *Alex.* 7–8). Returned to Athens in 335 to found the Lyceum; continued to correspond with Alexander, receiving specimens and travel reports from the Asian campaigns that Pliny *Natural History* 8.44 says became the material for his lost *Historia Animalium* project. Fled Athens after Alexander's death in 323 ('lest the Athenians sin twice against philosophy') and died the next year at Chalcis, 322 BC.

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