Aristotle (384-322)

Life

• Father Macedonian court physician
• 367-348 studies w/ Plato
• 342 Court tutor in Macedon
• 335 back in Athens: founds Lyceum
• 323 leaves Athens; dies 322

"Esoteric" Works (= lecture notes?)

• Works on biology, zoology
• Logic: Categories
• Metaphysics: nature of being
• Literature: Rhetoric, Poetics
• Politics & research on "constitutions"
• Ethics: friendship, avoiding extremes

• build on predecessors’ work
• "preserve the phenomena"
• divide & categorize
• avoid fallacies (e.g. excluded middle)

Theban hegemony

• Pelopidas & Epaminondas
• the "Sacred Band"
• Defeat of Sparta at Leuctra (371)
• Battle of Mantinea (362)

• Language: dialect of Greek
• Government: king & associates
• On both sides in Peloponnesian War

• Briefly hostage at Thebes in youth
• King 359: consolidates power
• Development of phalanx
• Unifies Macedonia, upper Greece
• Demosthenes, Philippics
• Battle of Chaeronea (338)
• Assassinated at wedding