Alexander of Aphrodisias was a Peripatetic philosopher and the most celebrated of the Ancient Greek commentators on the writings of Aristotle. He was a native of Aphrodisias in Caria and lived and taught in Athens at the beginning of the 3rd century, where he held a position as head of the Peripatetic school. He wrote many commentaries on the works of Aristotle, extant are those on the Prior Analytics, Topics, Meteorology, Sense and Sensibilia, and Metaphysics. Several original treatises also survive, and include a work On Fate, in which he argues against the Stoic doctrine of necessity; and one On the Soul. His commentaries on Aristotle were considered so useful that he was styled, by way of pre-eminence, "the commentator".
16th century CE engraving
Opening paragraph of the treatise On Fate (Peri eimarmenes) by Alexander of Aphrodisias dedicated to Emperors (autokratoras). From an anonymous edition published in 1658.
Andrea Briosco, Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias, 16th century plaquette, Bode-Museum
Commentaria in meteorologica Aristotelis, 1548
The Peripatetic school was a philosophical school founded in 335 BC by Aristotle in the Lyceum in Ancient Athens. It was an informal institution whose members conducted philosophical and scientific inquiries. After the middle of the 3rd century BC, the school fell into decline, and it was not until the Roman Empire that there was a revival.
Aristotle and his disciples – Alexander, Demetrius, Theophrastus, and Strato, in an 1888 fresco in the portico of the National University of Athens
Aristotle's School, a painting from the 1880s by Gustav Adolph Spangenberg