 The best example of his procedure is Alexander’s construal of an Aristotelian conception of fate in the treatise On Fate. Though its long, and at times inelegant, passages do not make for easy reading, this is no doubt the essay that is most interesting for a general public (cf. Sharples 1983 and 2001, 1). Not only is it the most comprehensive surviving document in the centuries-long debate on fate, determinism, and free will that was carried on between the Stoics, the Epicureans and the Academic Skeptics, it also contains some original suggestions and points of criticism, as a comparison with Cicero’s On Fate would show. It is unclear whether there had been a genuinely Peripatetic contribution to this debate before Alexander. If there was not, Alexander clearly filled a significant gap. Though Aristotle himself in a way touches on all important aspects of the problem of determinism — logical, physical, and ethical — in different works, he was not greatly concerned with this issue, nor does he entertain the notion of fate (heimarmenê) as a rational cosmic ordering-force, as the Stoics were going to introduce. In De interpretatione 9, he famously proposed to solve the problem of ‘future truth’ by suspending truth-values for statements in the future tense concerning individual contingent events. In his ethics he deals with the question of whether individuals have free choice, once their character is settled. As Aristotle sees it, there is little or no leeway, but he holds individuals responsible for their actions because they collaborated in the acquisition of their character (EN III, 1–5). In his physical works Aristotle limits strict necessity to the motions of the stars, while allowing for a wide range of events in the sublunary realm that do not happen of necessity but only for the most part or by chance (Phys. II, 4–6). Though he subscribes to the principle that the same causal constellations have the same effects, he also allows for ‘fresh starts’ in a causal series (Metaph. E 3). Given these various limitations, Aristotle had no reason to treat determinism as a central philosophical problem either in his ethics or in his physics. The situation changed, however, once the Stoics had established a rigorously physicalist system ruled by an all-pervasive divine mind. It is this radicalization of the determinist position that sharpened the general consciousness of the problematic, as witnessed by the relentless attacks on the Stoics by their opponents, most of all by the Academic skeptics and the Epicureans, which lasted for centuries.