Macedonia in order to take the principal hand in the education
of the King's son, Alexander, who was then thirteen years old,
and who was subsequently to play so great a role on the political
stage of the era as Alexander the Great. When Alexander as-
sumed the reins of the kingdom in 336-5, Aristotle left Macedonia
for Athens, by way of Stagira, his birthplace, which had been
rebuilt by Alexander in compensation for Aristotle's pedagogical
services.

Returning to Athens in 335-4, Aristotle founded his own
school, the Lyceum. For ten years he lived and worked there,
presenting the great body of his system in the form of lectures.
In 323, following the death of Alexander the Great, there was
in Greece a great reaction against the Macedonian suzerainty,
and Aristotle found himself in peril because of his association
with Alexander and because the Lyceum was established under
Macedonian protection. He therefore fled to Chalcis, the birth-
place of his mother, where he lived for a year before his death
in 322-1.

* * *

The circumstances surrounding Aristotle's writings are lodged
in a curious paradox. The writings which he designated for
general publication -- the esoteric works -- and which were well
known in antiquity, are now for the most part lost and unknown,
whereas those which were written for presentation to his students
and colleagues -- the pedagogical works -- and which were rela-
tively obscure in antiquity, are those which have survived. These
latter works are, of course, extremely complicated and axiomatic
in style due to the fact that they were intended for limited and
highly specialized scholarly consumption. On the other hand,
those works written for public consumption were of a much
more graceful literary style, fluidly oratorical and discursive,
and in quite stark contrast to the prosaic severity of his scholas-
tic writings. There remain of his public works only fragments,
the most numerous of which belong to the dialogues Protrepticus
and Eudemus. These fragments come out of his earliest writing
period, when he was still under the direct influence of Plato. It

-4-