ABSTRACT
One of the most memorable descriptions of Aristotle comes from the medieval poet Dante, in his Inferno, the first part of his epic poem, Divine Comedy. If an ancient legend is to be believed, it is somewhat of a fortunate accident to know of Aristotle and his writings. A major source about his life comes from Diogenes Laertius' third-century Lives of Eminent Philosophers, a work that cites some two hundred sources to give biographies of ancient philosophers ranging from the fifth to the third centuries bce. This work is helpful because it is one of the few ancient biographies that have come down. More recent telling of the Aristotle-Alexander connection is found in Alexander. Some films suggest that Aristotle is in the way responsible for Alexander's campaign of colonizing much of the world that was known to the ancient Greeks. Philosophically speaking, however, it might wonder how far apart were the worldviews of Alexander and Aristotle.
