ARISTIPPUS, HENRICUS. — Archdeacon of Catania, lived in the 12th century; of his life, only a few data are historically certain. He was probably born between 1105 and 1110 in the Greco-Roman Calabria, and specifically (according to the well-founded hypothesis of Valentin Rose) at Santa Severina. It is likely that he formed his culture in the environment of the Greek abbey of S. Maria del Patire near Rossano. It is, however, historically certain that in 1155 A. succeeded one Achettinus in the title and office of archdeacon of Catania, officially entering the ecclesiastical and also political life of Sicily. In 1160, following the conspiracy that removed Majone of Bari, he was appointed prime minister of William I; but in 1162 he was imprisoned and there met his death.
A scholar of wide culture and profound knowledge of Greek, his greatest fame rests on his Latin translations of Plato’s dialogues *Meno* (1154) and *Phaedo* (1156), and of various Aristotelian writings, including certainly Book IV of the *Meteorology* and the *Apodictica*, as well as versions from Gregory Nazianzen and Diogenes Laertius, and that of the Ptolemaic *Almagest*, carried out together with the poet and translator Eugenius the Emir; all this between the years 1156 and 1160. As a Hellenist and scholar, he undoubtedly occupies an eminent place in the circle of Greek, Latin, and Arab learned men of the 12th century.