Peripatetic School also called Peripatos, the philosophical community founded by Aristotle at a public gymnasium (the Lyceum) after his return to Athens in c.335 B.C. The derivation of ‘Peripatetic’ from the alleged Aristotelian custom of ‘walking about’ (peripatein) is probably wrong. The name should be explained by reference to a ‘covered walking hall’ (peripatos) among the school facilities. A scholarch or headmaster presided over roughly two classes of members: the presbyteroi or seniors, who probably had some teaching duties, and the neaniskoi or juniors. No evidence of female philosophers in the Lyceum has survived. During Aristotle’s lifetime his own lectures, whether for the inner circle of the school or for the city at large, were probably the key attraction and core activity; but given Aristotle’s knack for organizing group research projects, we may assume that young and old Peripatetics spent much of their time working on their own specific assignments either at the library, where they could consult works of earlier writers, or at some kind of repository for specimens used in zoological and botanical investigations. As a resident alien, Aristotle could not own property in Athens and hence was not the legal owner of the school. Upon his final departure from Athens in 322, his longtime collaborator Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos (c.370–287) succeeded him as scholarch. Theophrastus was an able Aristotelian who wrote extensively on metaphysics, psychology, physiology, botany, ethics, politics, and the history of philosophy. With the help of the Peripatetic dictator Demetrius of Phaleron, he was able to secure property rights over the physical facilities of the school. Under Theophrastus, the Peripatos continued to flourish and is said to have had 2,000 students, surely not all at the same time. His successor, Strato of Lampsakos (c.335–269), had narrower interests and abandoned key Aristotelian tenets. With him a progressive decline set in, to which the early loss of Aristotle’s personal library, taken to Asia Minor by Neleus of Skepsis, certainly contributed. By the first century B.C. the Peripatos had ceased to exist. Philosophers of later periods sympathetic to Aristotle’s views have also been called Peripatetics. See also ARISTOTLE , LYCEUM. A.G.-L.