He is said to have given two kinds of lectures: the more detailed discussions in the morning for an inner circle of advanced students, and the popular discourses in the evening for the general body of lovers of knowledge. It was in connection with this that his followers came to be known in later years as the peripatetics, meaning “to walk about.” For the next thirteen years he devoted his energies to his teaching and composing his philosophical treatises.

When teaching at the Lyceum, Aristotle had a habit of walking about as he discoursed. He thus set up his own school at a place called the Lyceum.

He found the Platonic school flourishing under Xenocrates, and Platonism being the dominant philosophy of Athens. Aristotle’s work being finished, he returned to Athens, which he had not visited since the death of Plato. Upon the death of Philip, Alexander succeeded to the kingship and prepared for his subsequent conquests. These stories are probably false and certainly exaggerated. Both Philip and Alexander appear to have paid Aristotle high honour, and there were stories that Aristotle was supplied by the Macedonian court, not only with funds for teaching, but also with thousands of slaves to collect specimens for his studies in natural science. At the invitation of Philip of Macedonia he became the tutor of his 13 year old son Alexander (later world conqueror) he did this for the next five years. At the end of three years Hermeas was overtaken by the Persians, and Aristotle went to Mytilene. In later life he was married a second time to a woman named Herpyllis, who bore him a son, Nichomachus. He stayed three year and, while there, married Pythias, the niece of the King. At the invitation of his friend Hermeas, ruler of Atarneus and Assos in Mysia, Aristotle left for his court. But his divergence from Plato’s teaching was too great to make this possible, and Plato’s nephew Speusippus was chosen instead. At the death of Plato in 347, the pre-eminent ability of Aristotle would seem to have designated him to succeed to the leadership of the Academy. In the later years of his association with Plato and the Academy he began to lecture on his own account, especially on the subject of rhetoric.

He joined the Academy and studied under Plato, attending his lectures for a period of twenty years. At age 17 his guardian, Proxenus, sent him to Athens, the intellectual centre of the world, to complete his education. While he was still a boy his father died. His father Nichomachus was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia, and from this began Aristotle’s long association with the Macedonian Court, which considerably influenced his life. Aristotle was born in 384 BCE at Stagirus, a now extinct Greek colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace.

Aristotle metaphysics book