 One significant impact on the way the practice of philosophy developed toward the end of the 2nd century CE was the intervention of the imperial power in matters of education. This intervention seems to go as far back as the Emperor Antoninus Pius, who is said to have established public chairs of rhetoric and philosophy in the provinces. But it was Marcus Aurelius who first established Imperial chairs of philosophy in Athens in 176 CE. From our ancient sources we are told that those chairs were in Platonic, Stoic, Peripatetic, and Epicurean philosophy. In all probability, the first holder of the chair in Aristotelian philosophy was Alexander of Damascus, an older contemporary of Galen described by him as “knowledgeable about the doctrines of Plato but more inclined to those of Aristotle” (Galen, De praenotione XIV 627–628 Kühn). The holder of the Imperial chairs of philosophy was a public teacher and received an annual salary. His teaching consisted in lecturing on the texts of the founder of the school. Alexander of Aphrodisias was one of these teachers publicly appointed to a chair of Aristotelian philosophy. Alexander refers to himself as a teacher—namely, a didaskalos (De fato 164.15). As a teacher of Aristotelian philosophy, Alexander was concerned not only with explicating this philosophy but also with defending it in the context of debates between philosophical schools. His attitude toward Aristotle is best expressed at the very beginning of his De anima. This treatise is not a commentary on Aristotle’s De anima but an investigation of the soul based on the principles established in Aristotle’s De anima. The task that here Alexander sets for himself is that of clarifying and promoting the views of Aristotle: