              Aristotle’s influence is difficult to overestimate. After his death, his school, the Lyceum, carried on for some period of time, though precisely how long is unclear. In the century immediately after his death, Aristotle’s works seem to have fallen out of circulation; they reappear in the first century B.C.E., after which time they began to be disseminated, at first narrowly, but then much more broadly. They eventually came to form the backbone of some seven centuries of philosophy, in the form of the  commentary tradition,  much of it original philosophy carried on in a broadly Aristotelian framework. They also played a very significant, if subordinate role, in the Neoplatonic philosophy of  Plotinus  and  Porphyry.  Thereafter, from the sixth through the twelfth centuries, although the bulk of Aristotle’s writings were lost to the West, they received extensive consideration in  Byzantine Philosophy,  and in Arabic Philosophy,  where Aristotle was so prominent that be became known simply as The First Teacher (see the entry on the  influence of Arabic and Islamic philosophy on the Latin West).  In this tradition, the notably rigorous and illuminating commentaries of Avicenna and Averroes interpreted and developed Aristotle’s views in striking ways. These commentaries in turn proved exceedingly influential in the earliest reception of the Aristotelian corpus into the Latin West in the twelfth century.