ABSTRACT
The work that we have here under the title ‘the Metaphysics’ (ta meta ta phusika) is a series of fourteen books, all or most of which were written by Aristotle (384-322 BC). They belong to his latest period of work. Therefore the Metaphysics belongs to what Aristotle wrote after founding (in 335 BC) his own school of philosophy in Athens: the Lyceum or Peripatos. This means that, even if we take into account that the Metaphysics must have been written over an extended period of time, Aristotle must have produced the work some years after leaving the Academy, Plato’s school in Athens; for he became a pupil of Plato (427347 BC) at the age of seventeen, and he remained in Plato’s school, first as a pupil and later as a relatively independent researcher, for some twenty years. But he left the Academy after Plato died.
