This chapter summarizes what is known of Augustine's access to the text of the Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.) and, in general, Aristotle's naturalistic account of human agency and happiness. It considers the impact of the Aristotelian conception of eudaimonia on Augustine's own treatment of human beatitude. The appropriation of this Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia is already evident in Augustine's early philosophical dialogues. Yet, in the same works one also finds a transformation and extension of Aristotle's philosophical conception of happiness. The chapter provides a paradigmatic account of the role Aristotle's ethics played in Augustine's thought. Among Latin Christians of the fourth century, Aristotle's reputation was largely that of a dialectician. Aristotle provided the necessary ontological connection in N.E., where he establishes the nature of the highest human good on the foundation of a functional analysis of human nature in terms of the capacity for rational activity.

Two late Hellenistic authors display detailed knowledge of Aristotle's ethics. In Stobaeus' compendium of ancient philosophical schools, Eclogae II, one can find a summary of "The Ethics of Aristotle and the Other Peripatetics". Arius' presentation of Peripatetic ethics draws heavily on Stoic terminology. After the death of Theophrastus, his associate Neleus of Scepsis, incidentally, the son of Aristotle's "everyman" Coriscus, inherited all the books in Theophrastus' possession, thereby cutting off later Peripatetics from Aristotle's and Theophrastus' most important work. According to Kenny, the ten-book Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.) that we know was most likely created by the Aristotle commentator Aspasius in the second century AD through an inventive act of cut-and-paste. This chapter follows Irwin's lead and examines the relationship between Zeno's eudaimonism and the account of happiness defended by Aristotle in N.E. It revisits Long's arguments for supposing that Aristotle exerted a profound influence on early Stoic ethics.