Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

by Edith Hall

Yet of all the brilliant men who helped Macedonia conquer the world, the most important was Aristotle, tutor and inspiration to both Alexander and his confidant, Hephaestion. Aristotle raised the bar on intellectual inquiry in a way that still profoundly affects science, literature, philosophy, and political theory. It is difficult to imagine a more formidable and cosmopolitan source of support available to Alexander. Aristotle came from Stagira, in northern Greece, originally a colony established by Ionian Greeks from the island of Andros in the seventh century. Stagira had been strategically more important than its size might suggest, and had seen a variety of conquerors. Xerxes occupied it during his invasion of Greece. It was a member of the Delian League and thus allied with Athens, but it withdrew from the league in 424 and had then sided with Sparta. Aristotle’s birth occurred during the reign of Philip’s father, Amyntas III. Stagira was dominated by its increasingly mighty neighbor to its north and east and was indeed destroyed by Philip in 348, when he and Aristotle were both in their thirties. Aristotle was an almost exact contemporary of Philip, who was born just two years after him, in 382. Since Aristotle’s father was physician to Philip’s father, King Amyntas, it is inevitable that the two boys, Philip and Aristotle, knew each other well from an early age.