1 8 Greek Biology 



But though the ethical view of nature overwhelmed science 

 in the end, the advent of the mighty figure of Aristotle (384-322) 

 stayed the tide for a time. Yet the writer on Greek Biology 

 remains at a disadvantage in contrast with the Historian of 

 Greek Mathematics, of Greek Astronomy, or of Greek Medi- 

 cine, in the scantiness of the materials for presenting an account 

 of the development of his studies before Aristotle. The huge 

 form of that magnificent naturalist completely overshadows 

 Greek as it does much of later Biology. 



2. Aristotle 



WITH Aristotle we come in sight of the first clearly defined 

 personality in the course of. the development of Greek biological 

 thought for the attribution of the authorship of the earlier 

 Hippocratic writings is more than doubtful, while the person- 

 ality of the great man by whose name they are called cannot 

 be provided with those clear outlines that historical treatment 

 demands. 



Aristotle was born in 384 B. c. at Stagira, a Greek colony in 

 the Chalcidice a few miles from the northern limit of the 

 present monastic settlement of Mount Athos. His father, 

 Nicomachus, was physician to Amyntas III of Macedonia and 

 a member of the guild or family of the Asclepiadae. From 

 Nicomachus he may have inherited his taste for biological 

 investigation and acquired some of his methods. At seventeen 

 Aristotle became a pupil of Plato at Athens. After Plato's 

 death in 347 Aristotle crossed the Aegean to reside at the court 

 of Hermias, despot of Atarneus in Mysia, whose niece, Pythias, 

 he married. It is not improbable that the first draft of Aris- 

 totle's biological works and the mass of his own observations 

 were made during his stay in this region, for in his biological 

 writings much attention is concentrated on the natural history 

 of the Island of Lesbos, or Mytilene, that lies close opposite to 



