ABSTRACT
Plato died in 347 BC. Upon his death, the stewardship of his Academy passed first to his nephew Speusippus, and then to Xenocrates. Aristotle, who had coveted the appointment, left Athens in dudgeon, later returning to found his own school in the Lyceum. Under Speusippus and his successors, the Academy gradually abandoned research to concentrate on producing an orthodox systematization of Plato’s metaphysics. Although Speusippus and Xenocrates made some original contributions,1 the Academy became an increasingly scholastic institution. Xenocrates was succeeded by Polemo in 314, who seems to have been scholarch until his death in about 275 BC, although his contemporaries Crates and Crantor also occupied important positions in the Academy during his headship, Crates finally succeeding him. Polemo influenced Zeno the Stoic, who attended his lectures (DL 7 25); and the debate between the early Stoics and the Academy of Arcesilaus is perhaps best seen as a quarrel over who can best lay claim to Socrates’ intellectual legacy.2
