Aristotle's Poetics

In the ancient classical periods, the Greek's Empire was known as most powerful and as a center of knowledge centralizing in Athens. Three main philosophers dominated that age: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Having the Poetics as a main topic for this research, I feel obliged, therefore, to give an introductory biography about its author; Aristotle.

Aristotle was born in a northern country in Greece called Stagira, ruled by the Macedonians at that time. His father, Nicomachus, was a friend of the Macedonian king Amyntus II and his personal physician. Some scholars suspect that his father's occupation later influenced his theories and studies. At the age of 18 or 17, after his father's death, he was sent to Athens to study at Plato's Academy, spending almost 20 years there first as a student, a very bright and distinguished student, then later as a teacher. After Plato's the academy was left under the leadership of Plato's nephew, while Aristotle traveled to Assos in Asia Minor where he married the king's niece Pythias.

Portrait of Aristoteles. Pentelic marble, copy of ...

Detail of The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio...

Alexander Muir Public School, Toronto, 1902 [OHQ-P...

After spending three years there and two more in Mytilence, he was invited by King Phillip II back to Stagira to tutor his 13 year old son Alexander (later world conqueror, Alexander the great). When Alexander became a king, Aristotle left to Athens and founded his own school at a place called the Lyceum and taught in it for thirteen years. During those thirteen years he has composed the greater number of his philosophical treaties. Due to the death of Alexander and fall of the Macedonian rule Aristotle was charged with impiety and, therefore, fled to Chalcis, where he met with his death a year later, leaving behind a fortune of his works and treaties from sciences of nature to politics.

Influenced by Plato, Aristotle's early writings...