Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in Stagira, a small town in Thrace. His father, Nicomachus, was a famous doctor who served as personal physician to King Amyntas II of Macedonia and had many connections at the royal court. It appears likely that Nicomachus played an important part in Aristotle's early intellectual development, encouraging his interest in biology and other natural sciences, and perhaps also training him in medicine.
After the deaths of both his parents, Aristotle went to Athens at the age of 17 to study at Plato's Academy. He remained there for nearly 20 years, toward the end supporting himself as a teacher of rhetoric. There were many popular stories in ancient times about personal conflicts between Plato and Aristotle during this period, but they have no factual basis and seem to have been prompted by Aristotle's later opposition to many of Plato's doctrines. Aristotle was very much under Plato's influence while studying at the Academy and his earliest written works were dialogues patterned after those of Plato and expressing conventional Platonic philosophical ideas. Even many years after Plato's death, when he was fully established in his own right as the head of a philosophical school, Aristotle continued to remember his teacher with the warmest affection and respect, as is shown by his comments in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics.
Nicknamed "the mind" and "the reader" by Plato, Aristotle rapidly became one of the most outstanding students at the Academy. When Plato died in 348 B.C., his nephew Speusippus was appointed head of the school. Having no personal loyalty to Speusippus and disagreeing with his tendency "to turn philosophy into mathematics," Aristotle decided to leave Athens. Some scholars have suggested that he resented not having gotten the post which Speusippus inherited.
