Aristocles of Messene (/əˈrɪstəˌkliːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοκλῆς ὁ Μεσσήνιος), in Sicily,[1] was a Peripatetic philosopher, who probably lived in the 1st century AD.
Asclepius of Tralles and John Philoponus, in their commentaries on Nicomachus of Gerasa's Introduction to Arithmetic, reproduce five meanings of the word "wise" that were set out in the treatise On Philosophy.
According to this teaching, the survivors of natural disasters (plagues and especially great floods like that of the time of Deucalion) were forced to rediscover inventions such as agriculture because of the lack of food.
In the third epoch, people turned to political affairs and introduced laws and rules that served to organize coexistence in cities.
At the fifth level of culture there was a turning to the divine, transcendental and completely unchangeable beings; knowledge of this realm was called wisdom in the highest sense (metaphysics).
His account contains information not only about the views of the early Pyrrhonean skeptics, Pyrrho of Elis and Timon of Phlius, but also about later Pyrrhonists including Aenesidemus.
He criticizes the tenets of the skeptics and, moreover, tries to show that it is impossible to live consistently according to their principles; through the renunciation of judgments and the resultant abolition of moral concepts, respect for the law is destroyed and the floodgates are wide open to crime.