ARISTOTLE AND HIS ANCIENT SURROUNDINGS.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in the City of Stag'Ira, Chalk'Icide, a small town on the Northern Coast of Greece.
His father, Nico'Machus, was court physician to the Macedonian king Amyntas II. Although he died when Aristotle was just a young boy, Aristotle remained closely afiliated with and influenced by the Macedonian Court for the rest of his life. Pro'Xenus of At'Ar'Neus, who was married to Aristotle's older sister, Ar'Imne'Ste, became his guardian until he came of age.
Little is known about his mother, Phae'Stis; she is also believed to have died when leaving the young boy without parents. When he turned 17, Pro'Xenus sent him to Athens to pursue a higher education. At the time, Athens was considered the 'academic center of the universe.' In Athens, Aritotle enrolled in Plato's Academy, Greek's premier learning institution. Aristotle maintained a relationship with Plato, himself a student of Socrates, and his academy for 2 decades. Plato died in 347BC. Because Aristotle had disagreed with some Plato's philosophical treatises, Aristotle did not inherit the position of director of the academy.
Aristotle's friend Hermias, king of At'Ar'Neus and Ass'Os in Mysia, invited Aristotle to court. During his 3-year stay in Mysia, Aristotle met and married his first wife, Pythias, Hermias' niece. Together, the couple had a daughter, Pythias, named after her mother.
Stag'Ira, the birth place of Aristotle, was an ancient city, located in Central Macedonia, near the Eastern Coast of the Peninsula of Chalk'Idice. The name given to the peninsula is taken from a group of people native to this region, the Chalcideans, since the ancient times.
The peninsula, the easternmost 'finger' of the larger Chalk'Icide, hosts the Mount Athos with its densely forested slopes reaching up to 2,033 m/6,670fr. Though land-linked, the mountain is accessible only by ferry. Mount Cholomon covers almost all of the Central and East of Chalk'Icide. It resembles a hand with 3 fingers or peninsulas: Pallene (Kassandra), Sithonia, and Agion Oros (Acte) which contains Mount Athos.
Athos in Greek mythology is the name of one of the giants, a race of great strength and aggression, though not necessarily of great size, that challenged the Greek gods during the most important spiritual struggle between them. Athos threw a massive 'rock' against Poseidon which fell in the Aegean Sea and became Mount Athos.
The surroundings seas, especially at the end of the peninsula, are very dangerous. In ancient Greek history 2 fleet disasters in the area are recorded:- In 492BC Darius, the king of Persia, lost 300 ships and 20,000 men, by a strong North Wind while attempting to round the Coast near Mount Athos.  -In 411BC the Spartans lost a fleet of 50 ships.
Stag'Ira was founded in 655BC by Ionian settlers from Andros. The peninsula was on the invasion route of Xerxes I of Persia, who spent 3 years excavating a channel across the isthmus to allow the passage of his invasion fleet in 483BC. He occupied it in 480 BC. The city later joined the Delian League, an association of Greek city-states founded in 477BC, led by Athens, but left in 424BC. As a result, the Athenian demagogue Cleon laid siege to the city in 422BC. However, Cleon was a poor strategist and his conduct on the siege was very ineficient. He was satirised by Aristophanes in the play 'The Knights.' Cleo died in the same year, in the Battle of Amphipolis. Later Stag'Ira sided with Sparta against the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War.
In 384BC, Philip II of Macedon occupied and destroyed the city. In return for Aristotle's tutoring of his son Alexander, Philip later rebuilt the city and resettled the old city's inhabitants, who had been slaved. Many new structures were built at this time, including and aqueduct, 2 shrines to Demeter, and many houses.
In 338BC, Aristotle went home to Macedonia to start tutoring King Philip II's son, the then 13-year-old Alexander the Great. Philip and Alexander both held Aristotle in high esteem and ensured that the Macedonian court generously compensated him for his work.
In 335BC, after Alexander had succeeded his father as king and conquered Athens, Aristotle went back to the city. In Athens, Plato's academy, now run by Xeno'Crates, was still the leading influence on Greek thought. With Alexander's permission, Aristotle started his own school in Athens, called the Lyceum. On and off, Aristotle spent most of the remainder of his life working as a teacher, researcher, and writer at the Lyceum in Athens until the death of his former student Alexander the Great.
In the same year that Aristotle opened the Lyceum, his wife Pythias died. Soon after, Aristotle embarked in a romance with a woman named Herp'Yllis, who hailed from his hometown of Stag'Ira. She bore Aristotle children, including one son named Nico'Machus, after Aristotle's father.
In 323BC, after the sudden death of Alexander, the pro-Macedonian government was overthrown, and in light of anti-Macedonian sentiment. Aristotle was charged with impiety for his association with his former student and the Macedonian court. To avoid being prosecuted and executed, he left Athens and fled to Chalcis in the Island of Eu'Boea, where he remained until his death a year later.