Aristotle(384 Bce–322 Bce)
Aristotle was born in Stagira, a Greek colony in Macedonia. His father was physician to the Macedonian king, and the family had both a tradition of learning and connections to the Macedonian elite. At the age of seventeen Aristotle came to Athens to study in Plato's Academy (he may also have briefly studied rhetoric under Isocrates). The community of the Academy included some people who would stay for a few years to learn some philosophy before pursuing political careers in their native cities, and others for whom philosophy was an end in itself, and who might spend their entire lives in the Academy. Aristotle was one of the latter, and stayed in the Academy for twenty years, until Plato's death in 348, when Plato's nephew Speusippus succeeded him as head of the Academy, while the other most prominent Academics, Aristotle and Xenocrates, went to Assos in Asia Minor. There they seem to have formed a kind of local branch of the Academic community under the patronage of the tyrant Hermias of Atarneus, whose niece (and adopted daughter) Aristotle married.
Aristotle spent thirteen years around the north and east Aegean: in Assos; on Lesbos, where he did biological research; in Macedonia, as tutor to the future Alexander the Great; and in Stagira, where he is said to have given laws when it was rebuilt after the Macedonians burned it.
