THE TRADITIONAL corpus aristotelicum contains several works which were certainly or probably not written by Aristotle. A single asterisk against the title of a work indicates that its authenticity has been seriously doubted; a pair of asterisks indicates that its spuriousness has never been seriously contested. These asterisks appear both in the Table of Contents and on the title pages of the individual works concerned.
The title page of each work contains a reference to the edition of the Greek text against which the translation has been checked. References are by editor’s name, series or publisher (OCT stands for Oxford Classical Texts), and place and date of publication. In those places where the translation deviates from the chosen text and prefers a different reading in the Greek, a footnote marks the fact and indicates which reading is preferred; such places are rare.
The numerals in brackets throughout the text key the translation to Immanuel Bekker’s standard edition of the Greek text of Aristotle of 1831. References consist of a page number, a column letter, and a line number. Thus “1343a” marks column one of page 1343 of Bekker’s edition; and the following “5,” “10,” “15,” etc. stand against lines 5, 10, 15, etc. of that column of text. Bekker references of this type are found in most editions of Aristotle’s works, and they are used by all scholars who write about Aristotle.
NOTE (1994): This is an unrevised reprint of the first edition; but a small number of typographical errors have been corrected. Many of these errors were generously communicated to the editor by Mr. M. W. Dunn, who recorded the translation for the blind.