Page "Aristotle" Paragraph 4

Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon.

During that time he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander.

Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric.

In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be ' a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants '.