Macedon and Athens failed of its effect, and the peninsula was finally incorporated with the Macedonian kingdom. It is also important to note that the philosopher belonged by birth to a guild, the Asclepiadae, in which the medical profession was hereditary. His father Nicomachus was court physician to Amyntas II., the king for whose benefit the Spartans had put down the Chalcidic league. This early connection with medicine and with the Macedonian court explains largely both the predominantly biological cast of Aristotle's philosophical thought and the intense dislike of "princes" and courts to which he more than once gives expression. At the age of eighteen, in 367-6, Aristotle was sent to Athens for "higher" education in philosophy and science, and entered the famous Platonic Academy, where he remained as a member of the scientific group gathered round the master for twenty years, until Plato's death in 347-6. For the three years immediately following Aristotle was in Asia Minor with his friend and fellow-student Hermeias, who had become by force of sheer capacity monarch of the city of Atarneus in the Troad, and was maintaining himself with much energy against the Persian king. Pythias, the niece of Hermeias, became the philosopher's wife, and it seems that the marriage was happy. Examination of Aristotle's contributions to marine biology has shown that his knowledge of the subject is specially good for the Aeolic coast and the shores of the adjacent islands. This throws light on his occupations during his residence with Hermeias, and suggests that Plato had discerned the bent of his distinguished pupil's mind, and that his special share in the researches of the Academy had, like that of Speusippus, Plato's nephew and successor in the headship of the school, been largely of a biological kind. We also know that, presumably shortly after Plato's death, Aristotle had been one of the group of disciples who edited their teacher's unpublished lectures. In 343 Hermeias was assassinated at the instigation of Persia; Aristotle honoured his memory by a hymn setting forth the godlikeness of virtue as illustrated by the life of his friend. Aristotle now removed to the Macedonian court, where he received the position of tutor to the Crown Prince, afterwards Alexander the Great, at this time (343 B.C.) a boy of thirteen. The association of the great philosopher and the great king as tutor and pupil has naturally struck the imagination of later ages; even in Plutarch's Life of Alexander we meet already with the full-blown legend of the influence of Aristotle's philosophical speculations on Alexander. It is, however, improbable that Aristotle's influence counted for much in forming the character of Alexander. Aristotle's dislike of monarchies and their accessories is written large on many a page of his Ethics and Politics; the small self-contained city-state with no political ambitions for which he reserves his admiration would have seemed a mere relic of antiquity to Philip and Alexander. The only piece of contemporary evidence as to the relations between the master and the pupil is a sentence in a letter to the young Alexander from the Athenian publicist Isocrates who maliciously congratulates the prince on his preference for "rhetoric," the art of efficient public speech, and his indifference to "logic-choppers." How little sympathy Aristotle can have had with his pupil's ambitions is shown by the fact that though his political theories must have been worked out during the very years in which Alexander was revolutionising Hellenism by the foundation of his world-empire, they contain no allusion to so momentous a change in the social order. For all that Aristotle tells us, Alexander might never have existed, and the small city-state might have been the last word of Hellenic political development. Hence it is probable that the selection of Aristotle, who had not yet appeared before the world as an independent thinker, to take part in the education of the Crown Prince was due less to personal reputation than to the connection of his family with the court, taken together with his own position as a pupil of Plato, whose intervention in the public affairs of Sicily had caused the Academy to be regarded as the special home of scientific interest in politics and jurisprudence. It may be true that Alexander found time in the midst of his conquests to supply his old tutor with zoological specimens; it is as certain as such a thing can be that the ideals and characters of the two men were too different to allow of any intimate influence of either on the other.

When Alexander was suddenly called to the Macedonian throne by the murder of his father in 336 B.C., Aristotle's services were no longer needed; he returned to Athens and gave himself to purely scientific work. Just at this juncture the presidency of the Academy was vacant by the death of Speusippus, Aristotle's old associate in biological research. Possibly Aristotle thought himself injured when the school passed him over and elected Xenocrates of Chalcedon as its new president. At any rate, though he appears never to have wholly severed his connection with the Academy, in 335 he opened a rival institution in the Lyceum, or gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo Lyceus, to which he was followed by some of the most distinguished members of the Academy. From the fact that his instruction was given in the peripatos or covered portico of the gymnasium the school has derived its name of Peripatetic. For the next twelve years he was occupied in the organisation of the school as an abode for the prosecution of speculation and research in every department of inquiry, and in the composition of numerous courses of lectures on scientific and philosophical questions. The chief difference in general character between the new school and the Academy is that while the scientific interests of the Platonists centred in mathematics, the main contributions of the Lyceum to science lay in the departments of biology and history.

Towards the end of Alexander's life his attention was unfavourably directed on his old teacher. A relative of Aristotle named Callisthenes had attended Alexander in his campaigns as historiographer, and had provoked disfavour by his censure of the King's attempts to invest his semi-constitutional position towards his Hellenic subjects with the pomp of an Oriental despotism. The historian's independence proved fatal. He was accused of instigating an assassination plot among Alexander's pages, and hanged, or, as some said, thrown into a prison where he died before trial. Alexander is reported to have held Aristotle responsible for his relative's treason, and to have meditated revenge. If this is so, he was fortunately diverted from the commission of a crime by preoccupation with the invasion of India.

On the death of Alexander in 323 a brief but vigorous anti-Macedonian agitation broke out at Athens. Aristotle, from his Macedonian connections, naturally fell a victim, in spite of his want of sympathy with the ideals of Philip and Alexander. Like Socrates, he was indicted on the capital charge of "impiety," the pretext being that his poem on the death of Hermeias, written twenty years before, was a virtual deification of his friend. This was, however, only a pretext; the real offence was political, and lay in his connection with the Macedonian leader Antipater. As condemnation was certain, the philosopher anticipated it by withdrawing with his disciples to Chalcis, the mother city of his native Stagirus. Here he died in the following year, at the age of sixty-two or sixty-three.

The features of Aristotle, familiar to us from busts and intaglios, are handsome, but indicate refinement and acuteness rather than originality, an impression in keeping with what we should expect from a study of