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In the twelfth volume of the Oxford Translation, Sir David Ross published a selection of fragments from Aristotle’s lost works. Ross limited his attention to passages bearing upon Aristotle’s dialogues and upon his logical and philosophical writings. He presented those passages at generous length, including large amounts of context and often transcribing several variants of the same report.
Like Ross, we have attempted to give a fairly full collection of the fragments of Aristotle’s juvenilia, which have occupied much scholarly attention in the past five decades, and also of the texts relating to the more philosophically interesting of his lost works. But we have been less generous than Ross in matters of context, repetitious variants, and dubiously valuable reports.
Unlike Ross, we have paid some attention to the fragments of Aristotle’s other lost works—fragments which account for some two thirds of our total information about the lost writings. Here we have, for want of space, been highly selective: our aim has been to give a fair sample of the range of Aristotle’s intellectual concerns, as it is exhibited in the fragments, and at the same time to illustrate those parts of his work which are less well represented in the surviving treatises.
We have prefaced the selection with a translation of the Catalogue of Aristotle’s works; and we have closed it with versions of his letters and of his poems.
All the translations have been done afresh from the originals; but we have based ourselves on Ross’s versions where those are available, and for the fragments of the Protrepticus we have leaned heavily on Düring’s translation. As for the Greek texts, we have generally taken the latest, or the standard, editions of the various authors concerned. For much of the Protrepticus we have again made use of Düring’s work; for On Ideas we have followed Harlfinger’s edition of the text of Alexander.
We present the passages in the order in which they occur in Rose’s third edition of the Fragmenta (Teubner, Leipzig, 1886). “F I R3” thus refers to fragment one in this edition. The few passages not occurring there have been interpolated at the most appropriate points. We have retained Rose’s division of the fragments into ten categories. Rose’s arrangement is not ideal; but we felt that, on balance, any fresh arrangement would have caused more inconvenience than it produced enlightenment.
Finally, a few words of caution. Most of the passages we print are not, in the strict sense, fragments of Aristotle’s lost works: most of the passages do not purport to quote Aristotle’s actual words. Rather, they offer paraphrases or summaries of his opinions and arguments; and in many cases they are little more than casual allusions to his views. Some of the passages we quote refer to works which were in all probability not written by Aristotle at all; several of the passages may plausibly be construed as relaxed allusions to the extant treatises rather than as close paraphrases of lost works; and in some cases—and those not the least celebrated—we ourselves are not convinced that any genuinely Aristotelian matter is conserved.
J.B.
G.L.
(Diogenes Laertius, V 22–27)
He wrote a vast number of books, which I have thought it appropriate to list because of the man’s excellence in all fields of enquiry:—
On Justice, 4 books
On Poets, 3 books
On Philosophy, 3 books
On the Statesman, 2 books
On Rhetoric, or Grylus, 1 book
Nerinthus, 1 book
Sophist, 1 book
Menexenus, 1 book
Eroticus, 1 book
Symposium, 1 book
On Wealth, 1 book
Protrepticus, 1 book
On the Soul, 1 book
On Prayer, 1 book
On Good Birth, 1 book
On Pleasure, 1 book
Alexander, or On behalf of Colonies, 1 book
On Kingship, 1 book
On Education, 1 book
On the Good, 3 books
Excerpts from Plato’s Laws, 3 books
Excerpts from Plato’s Republic, 2 books
Economics, 1 book
On Friendship, 1 book
On being affected or having been affected, 1 book
On the Sciences, 2 books
On Eristics, 2 books
Eristical Solutions, 4 books
Sophistical Divisions, 4 books
On Contraries, 1 book
On Genera and Species, 1 book
On Properties, 1 book
Notes on Arguments, 3 books
Propositions on Excellence, 3 books
Objections, 1 book
On things spoken of in many ways or by addition, 1 book
On Feelings or On Anger, 1 book
Ethics, 5 books
On Elements, 3 books
On Knowledge, 1 book
On Principles, 1 book
Divisions, 16 books
Division, 1 book
On Question and Answer, 2 books
On Motion, 2 books
Propositions, 1 book
Eristical Propositions, 4 books
Deductions, 1 book
Prior Analytics, 9 books
Great Posterior Analytics, 2 books
On Problems, 1 book
Methodics, 8 books
On what is better, 1 book
On the Idea, 1 book
Definitions prior to the Topics, 1 book
Topics, 7 books
Deductions, 2 books
Deduction and Definitions, 1 book
On the desirable and on accidents, 1 book
Pre-topics, 1 book
Topics aimed at definitions, 2 books
Feelings, 1 book
Division, 1 book
Mathematics, 1 book
Definitions, 13 books
On Pleasure, 1 book
Propositions, 1 book
On the Voluntary, 1 book
On the Noble, 1 book
Argumentative theses, 25 books
Theses on love, 4 books
Theses on friendship, 2 books
Theses on the soul, 1 book
Politics, 2 books
Lectures on Politics (like those of Theophrastus), 8 books
On Just Acts, 2 books
Collection of Arts, 2 books
Art of Rhetoric, 2 books
Art, 1 book
Art (another work), 2 books
Methodics, 1 book
Collection of the Art of Theodectes, 1 book
Treatise on the Art of Poetry, 2 books
Rhetorical Enthymemes, 1 book
On Magnitude, 1 book
Divisions of Enthymemes, 1 book
On Diction, 2 books
On Advice, 1 book
Collection, 2 books
On Nature, 3 books
Nature, 1 book
On the Philosophy of Archytas, 3 books
On the Philosophy of Speusippus and Xenocrates, 1 book
Excerpts from the Timaeus and from the works of Archytas, 1 book
Against Melissus, 1 book
Against Alcmaeon, 1 book
Against the Pythagoreans, 1 book
Against Gorgias, 1 book
Against Xenophanes, 1 book
Against Zeno, 1 book
On the Pythagoreans, 1 book
On Animals, 9 books
Dissections, 8 books
Selection of Dissections, 1 book
On Composite Animals, 1 book
On Mythological Animals, 1 book
On Sterility, 1 book
On Plants, 2 books
Physiognomonics, 1 book
Medicine, 2 books
On Units, 1 book
Storm Signs, 1 book
Astronomy, 1 book
Optics, 1 book
On Motion, 1 book
On Music, 1 book
Memory, 1 book
Homeric Problems, 6 books
Poetics, 1 book
Physics (alphabetically ordered), 38 books
Additional Problems,1 2 books
Standard Problems, 2 books
Mechanics, 1 book
Problems from Democritus, 2 books
On the Magnet, 1 book
Conjunctions of Stars, 1 book
Miscellaneous, 12 books
Explanations2 (arranged by subject), 14 books
Claims, 1 book
Olympic Victors, 1 book
Pythian Victors in Music,3 1 book
On Pytho, 1 book
Lists of Pythian Victors, 1 book
Victories at the Dionysia, 1 book
On Tragedies, 1 book
Didascaliae, 1 book
Proverbs, 1 book
Rules for Messing, 1 book
Laws, 4 books
Categories, 1 book
On Interpretation, 1 book
Constitutions of 158 States (arranged by type: democratic, oligarchical, tyrannical, aristocratic)
Letters about the Selymbrians4
Letters to Alexander (4), to Antipater (9), to Mentor (1), to Ariston (1), to Olympias (1), to Hephaestion (1), to Themistagoras (1), to Philoxenus (1), to Democritus (1)
Poems, beginning: “Holy one, most honoured of the gods, far-shooting …”
Elegies, beginning: “Daughter of a mother of fair children …”
Appendix:
(A) Titles found in the Vita Menagiana but not in Diogenes:
Peplos
Hesiodic Problems,5 1 book
Metaphysics, 10 books
Cycle on Poets, 3 books
Sophistical Refutations or On Eristics
Prior Analytics, 2 books
Messing Problems, 3 books
On Blessedness, or Why did Homer invent the cattle of the sun?
Problems from Archilochus, Euripides, Choerilus, 3 books
Poetical Problems, 1 book
Poetical Explanations
Lectures on Physics, 16 books
On Generation and Destruction, 2 books
Meteorologica, 4 books
On the Soul, 3 books
History of Animals, 10 books
Movement of Animals, 3 books
Parts of Animals, 3 books
Generation of Animals, 3 books
On the Rising of the Nile
On Substance in Mathematics
On Reputation
On Voice
On the Common Life of Husband and Wife
Laws for Man and Wife
On Time
On Vision, 2 books
Nicomachean Ethics
Art of Eulogy
On Marvellous Things heard
Eulogies or Hymns
On Differentia
On the Nature of Man
On the Generation of the World
Customs of the Romans
Collection of Foreign Customs
(B) Titles in the Life of Ptolemy but neither in Diogenes nor in the Vita Menagiana:
On Indivisible Lines, 3 books
On Spirit, 3 books
On Hibernation, 1 book
Magna Moralia, 2 books
On the Heavens and the Universe, 4 books
On Sense and Sensibilia, 1 book
On Memory and Sleep, 1 book
On Length and Shortness of Life, 1 book
Problems of Matter, 1 book
Platonic Divisions, 6 books
Divisions of Hypotheses, 6 books
Precepts, 4 books
On Regimen, 1 book
Farming, 15 books
On the Moist, 1 book
On the Dry, 1 book
On Relatives, 1 book
F 1–111 R3
(Cicero, ad Atticum IV xvi 2):
. . . since I am having a preface in each book, as Aristotle does in the books he calls exoteric . . .
(Cicero, ad Atticum XIII xix 4):
In what I have written recently, I have followed the Aristotelian custom, according to which the conversation of the others is so arranged that the writer himself has the chief part.
(Plutarch, adversus Colotem III5BC):
As for the Ideas, over which he upbraids Plato, Aristotle attacks them everywhere and introduces all the puzzles about them—in his ethical works, in his metaphysics, in his physics, in his exoteric dialogues: to some he seemed more ambitious than philosophical . . . 1 these doctrines, as though proposing to subvert Plato’s philosophy; so far was he from following Plato.
(Numenius, apud Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica XIV vi 9–10):
Cephisodorus, when he saw his master Isocrates being attacked by Aristotle, was ignorant of and unversed in Aristotle himself; but, seeing the repute which Plato’s views enjoyed, he thought that Aristotle was following Plato. So he waged war on Aristotle, but was really attacking Plato. His criticism began with the Ideas and finished with the other doctrines—things which he himself did not know; he was only guessing at the meaning of the opinions held about them. This Cephisodorus was not attacking the person he was at war with, but was attacking the person he did not wish to make war upon.
(Asclepius, Commentarius in Metaphysica 112. 16–19):
About these first principles, he [sc. Aristotle] says, we have already spoken in the Physics; and he promises to speak about these in Book α [sc. of the Metaphysics], and to raise and solve the puzzles about them in the work On Philosophy.
F 1 R3 (Plutarch, adversus Colotem 1118C):
Of the inscriptions at Delphi that which was thought to be the most divine was “Know Thyself”; it was this, as Aristotle has said in his Platonic works, that started Socrates off puzzling and inquiring.
F 2 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, II 23):
Aristotle says that he [sc. Socrates] went to Delphi.
F 3 R3 (Porphyry apud Stobaeus, Anthologium III xxi 26):
What and whose was the sacred injunction at Delphi, which bids him who is to seek anything from the god to know himself? . . . or was it even before the time of Chilon already inscribed in the temple that was founded after the one of feathers and bronze, as Aristotle has said in his work On Philosophy?
F 4 R3 (Clement, Stromateis I xiv 61.2):
Aristotle and his followers think that it [sc. “Give a pledge and you’re ruined”] comes from Chilon.
F 5 R3 (Etymologicon Magnum s.v. σoφιστής):
Aristotle calls the Seven Sages sophists.
F 6 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, I 8):
Aristotle in the first book of On Philosophy says that they [sc. the Magi] are more ancient than the Egyptians, and that according to them there are two first principles, a good spirit and an evil spirit, one called Zeus and Oromasdes, the other Hades and Arimanius.
F 7 R3 (Philoponus, Commentarius in de Anima 186. 24–26):
Aristotle says “so-called . . .” because the poems are thought not to be the work of Orpheus, as he himself says in the books On Philosophy: the opinions are those of Orpheus, but they say that Onomacritus set them to verse.
F 7 R3 (Cicero, de natura deorum I xxxviii 107):
Aristotle says the poet Orpheus never existed; the Pythagoreans ascribe this Orphic poem to a certain Cercon.
(Sextus Empiricus, adversus mathematicos X 46):
Its existence [i.e. the existence of motion] is denied by Parmenides and Melissus, whom Aristotle has called immobilists1 and unnaturalists—immobilists because they maintain the immobility of things, unnaturalists because nature is a source of motion and in saying that nothing moves they abolished nature.
F 8 R3 (Proclus, apud Philoponus, de aeternitate mundi II 2):
. . . and in his dialogues, where he [sc. Aristotle] announces most clearly that he cannot agree with this doctrine [sc. the Theory of Ideas], even if he should be thought to be opposing it from ambition.
F 9 R3 (Syrianus, Commentarius in Metaphysica 159.35–160.3):
This is shown by what he [sc. Aristotle] says in the second book of the work On Philosophy: “Thus if the Ideas are a different sort of number, not mathematical number, we can have no understanding of it; for of the majority of us, at all events, who understands any other number?”
(Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 117.23–118.1)
Aristotle sets out their view, which he has also stated in the work On Philosophy. Wishing to refer the things that exist (he always calls the things that exist substances) to the first principles which they assumed (for them the first principles of existing things were the great and the small, which they called the indefinite dyad)—wishing to refer everything to this, they said that the first principles of length were the short and the long (on the grounds that length takes its origin from a long and short, i.e. a great and small, or that every line falls under one or other of these), and that the first principles of the plane were the narrow and wide, which are themselves also great and small.
(Simplicius, Commentarius in de Anima 28.7–9):
Aristotle now [sc. in the de Anima] applies the name On Philosophy to his work On the Good (taken down from Plato’s seminar), in which he relates both the Pythagorean and the Platonic opinions about what exists.
([Alexander], Commentarius in Metaphysica 777.16–21):
The principle of the One, he [sc. Aristotle] says, they did not all introduce in the same way. Some said that the numbers themselves introduced the Forms into magnitudes, e.g. the number 2 doing so for line, the number 3 for plane, the number 4 for solid (Aristotle relates this about Plato in the work On Philosophy, and that is why he here [sc. in the Metaphysics] expounds their theory only briefly and concisely); while others explained the form of the magnitudes by participation in the One.
F 10 R3 (Sextus Empiricus, adversus mathematicos IX 20–23):
Aristotle used to say that men’s concept of god sprang from two sources—the experiences of the soul and the phenomena of the heavens. From the experiences of the soul, because of its inspiration and prophetic power in dreams. For, he says, when the soul gets by itself in sleep, it then assumes its nature and foresees and foretells the future. The soul is also in such a condition when it is severed from the body at death. At all events, he accepts even Homer as having observed this; for he has represented Patroclus, in the moment of his death, as foretelling the death of Hector, and Hector as foretelling the end of Achilles. It was from such events, he says, that men came to suspect the existence of something divine, of something in itself akin to the soul and of all things most knowledgeable. And from the heavenly bodies too: seeing by day the revolution of the sun and by night the well-ordered movement of the other stars, they came to think that there was a god who is the cause of such movement and order.
F 12 R3 (Cicero, de natura deorum II xxxvii 95):
Thus Aristotle brilliantly remarks: ‘Suppose there were men who had always lived underground, in good and well-lighted dwellings, adorned with statues and pictures, and furnished with everything in which those who are thought happy abound. Suppose, however, that they had never gone above ground, but had learned by report and hearsay that there was a divine spirit and power. Suppose that then, at some time, the jaws of the earth opened, and they were able to escape and make their way from those hidden dwellings into these regions which we inhabit. When they suddenly saw earth and seas and skies, when they learned the grandeur of clouds and the power of winds, when they saw the sun and realized not only its grandeur and beauty but also its power, by which it fills the sky with light and makes the day; when, again, night darkened the lands and they saw the whole sky picked out and adorned with stars, and the varying light of the moon as it waxes and wanes, and the risings and settings of all these bodies, and their courses settled and immutable to all eternity; when they saw those things, most certainly would they have judged both that there are gods and that these great works are the works of gods’. Thus far Aristotle.
F 14 R3 (Seneca, quaestiones naturales VII xxx 1):
Aristotle excellently says that we should nowhere be more modest than in discussions about the gods. If we compose ourselves before we enter temples, . . . how much more should we do so when we discuss the constellations, the stars, and the nature of the gods, lest from temerity or impudence we should make ignorant assertions or knowingly tell lies.
F 15 R3 (Synesius, Dio 48A):
. . . as Aristotle claims that those who are being initiated are not to learn anything but to experience something and be put into a certain condition . . .
F 16 R3 (Alexander, apud Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo 289.1–15):
He [sc. Aristotle] speaks of this in his On Philosophy. In general, where there is a better there is also a best. Since, then, among existing things one is better than another, there is also something that is best, which will be the divine. Now that which changes is changed either by something else or by itself, and if by something else, either by something better or by something worse, and if by itself, either to something worse or through desire for something nobler. But the divine has nothing better than itself by which it will be changed (for that other thing would then have been more divine), nor is it right for the better to be affected by the worse; besides, if it were changed by something worse, it would have admitted something bad into itself—and nothing in it is bad. Nor yet does it change itself through desire for something nobler, since it lacks none of its own nobilities; nor yet does it change itself for the worse, since not even a man willingly makes himself worse, nor does it possess anything bad such as it would have acquired from a change to the worse. This proof too Aristotle took over from the second book of Plato’s Republic.
F 17 R3 (Scholia in Proverbia Salomonis, cod. Paris gr. 174, fol. 46a):
Aristotle: ‘There is either one first principle or many. If there is one, we have what we are looking for; if there are many, they are either ordered or disordered. Now if they are disordered, their products are more so, and the world is not a world but a chaos; and that which is contrary to nature exists while that which is in accordance with nature does not exist. If on the other hand they are ordered, they were ordered either by themselves or by some outside cause. But if they were ordered by themselves, they have something common that joins them, and that is the first principle’.
F 18 R3 (Philo, de aeternitate mundi III 10–11):
Aristotle was surely speaking piously and devoutly when he objected that the world is ungenerated and imperishable, and convicted of grave ungodliness those who maintained the opposite and thought that the great visible god, which contains in truth sun and moon and the remaining pantheon of planets and fixed stars is no different from an artefact; he used to say in mockery (we are told) that in the past he had been afraid for his house lest it be destroyed by violent winds or by fierce storms or by time or by lack of proper maintenance, but that now a greater fear hung over him, from those who by an argument were destroying the whole world.
F 19 R3 (Philo, de aeternitate mundi V 20–24):
The arguments which prove the world to be ungenerated and imperishable should, out of respect for the visible god, be given their proper precedence and placed earlier in the discussion. All things that admit of being destroyed are subject to two causes of destruction, one inward, the other outward. Iron, bronze and such-like substances you will find being destroyed from themselves, when rust invades and devours them like a creeping disease, and from without when a house or city is set on fire and they catch fire from it and are destroyed by the fierce rush of flame; and similarly death comes to living beings from themselves when they fall sick, and from outside when they have their throats cut or are stoned or burned to death or suffer the unclean death by hanging. Thus if the world, too, is destroyed, it must be either by something outside or by one of the powers in itself. Now each of these is impossible. For there is nothing outside the world, since all things have contributed to its completeness. For so will it be one, whole, and ageless: one, because if some things had been left out another world like the present world would come into being; whole, because all substance has been expended on it; ageless and diseaseless, because bodies caught by disease and old age are destroyed by the violent assault from without of heat and cold and the other contrary forces, none of which powers can escape and circle round and attack the world, since all without exception are entirely enclosed within it. If then there is anything outside, it must be a complete void or an impassive nature which cannot suffer or do anything. Nor again will the world be destroyed by anything within it—first, because the part would then be both greater and more powerful than the whole, which is most absurd; for the world, wielding unsurpassable power, directs all its parts and is directed by none; secondly, because, there being two causes of destruction, one within and one without, things that can suffer the one are susceptible also to the other. Oxen and horses and men and such-like animals, because they can be destroyed by iron, will also perish by disease. For it is hard, or rather impossible, to find anything that is naturally subject to the external cause of destruction and entirely insusceptible to the internal. Since, then, it was shown that the world will not be destroyed by anything without, because absolutely nothing has been left outside, neither will it be destroyed by anything within, because of the preceding demonstration to the effect that that which is susceptible to the one cause is also by nature susceptible to the other.
F 20 R3 (Philo, de aeternitate mundi VI 28-VII 34):
This may be put in another way. Of composite bodies all that are destroyed are dissolved into their components; dissolution is then nothing but return to the natural state of each thing, so that conversely composition has forced into an unnatural state the parts that have come together. And indeed it seems to be so beyond a doubt. For we men were put together by borrowing little parts of the four elements, which belong in their entirety to the whole universe—earth, water, air and fire. Now these parts when mixed are robbed of their natural position, the upward-travelling heat being forced down, the earthy and heavy substance being made light and seizing in turn the upper region, which is occupied by the earthiest of our parts, the head. The worst of bonds is that which is fastened by violence; this is brief and shortlived, for it is broken sooner by the things bound, because they shake it off through longing for their natural movement, to which they hasten to return. For, as the tragic poet says, “Things born of earth return to earth, things born of an ethereal seed return to the pole of heaven again; nothing that comes into being dies; one departs in one direction, one in another, and each shows its own form.”1 For all things that perish, then, this is the law and this is the rule prescribed—when the parts that have come together in the mixture have settled down they must in place of their natural order have accepted disorder, and must move to the opposite places, so that they seem to be in a sense exiles; but when they are separated they turn back to their natural lot. Now the world has no part in the disorder which is found in the things we have spoken of. For let us consider: if the world is perishing, its parts must now each have been arranged in a region unnatural to it. But this it is not right to suppose; for to all the parts of the world have fallen perfect position and harmonious arrangement, so that each, as though fond of its own country, seeks no change to a better. For this reason, then, earth was assigned the midmost position, to which all earthy things, even if you throw them up, descend. This is an indication of their natural place; for that region in which a thing brought thither stays and rests, when under no compulsion, is its allotted home. Water is spread over the earth, and air and fire have moved from the middle to the upper region, to air falling the region between water and fire, and to fire the highest region of all. And so, even if you light a torch and throw it to the ground, the flame will none the less strive against you and lighten itself and return to the natural motion of fire. If, then, the cause of destruction of other creatures is their unnatural situation, but in the world each of its parts is arranged according to nature and has its proper place assigned to it, the world may justly be called imperishable.
F 21 R3 (Philo, de aeternitate mundi VIII 39–43):
The most demonstrative argument is that on which I know countless people to pride themselves, as on something most precise and quite irrefutable. They ask why god should destroy the world. Either to save himself from continuing in world-making, or in order to make another world. The former of these purposes is alien to god; for what befits him is to turn disorder into order, not order into disorder; and further, he would be admitting a change of mind, and hence an affection and disease of the soul. For he should either not have made a world at all, or else, if he judged the work becoming to him, should have rejoiced in the product. The second alternative deserves full examination. For if in place of the present world he is to make another, the world he makes is bound to be either worse or like or better, and each of these possibilities is open to objection. If it is worse, its artificer too will be worse; but the works of god are blameless, free from criticism and incapable of improvement, fashioned as they are by the most perfect art and knowledge. For, as the saying goes, ‘not even a woman is so lacking in good judgement as to prefer the worse when the better is available’; and it is fitting for god to give shape to the shapeless and to deck the ugliest things with marvellous beauties. If the new world is like the old, its artificer will have laboured in vain, differing in nothing from silly children, who often when playing on the beach make great piles of sand and then undermine them with their hands and pull them down again. Much better than making a similar world would be neither to take away nor to add anything, nor change anything for better or for worse, but to leave the original world in its place. If he is to make a better world, the artificer himself must become better, so that when he made the former world he must have been more imperfect both in art and in wisdom—which it is not right even to suspect. For god is equal and like to himself, admitting neither slackening towards the worse nor tautening towards the better.
F 22 R3 (Cicero, Academica II xxxviii 119):
When your Stoic sage has said all these things to you syllable by syllable, Aristotle will come, pouring out his golden flow, to say that the Stoic is talking nonsense; he will say that the world was never generated, because there was never a beginning based on a new plan for such a brilliant work, and that it is so well designed in every part that no force can effect such great movements and so great a change, and no old age can come upon the world by lapse of time, so that this splendid world should ever fall to pieces and perish.
F 23 R3 (Cicero, de natura deorum II xv 42):
Since some living things have their origin in earth, others in water, others in air, Aristotle thinks that it is absurd to suppose that in that part which is fittest to generate living things no animal should be born. Now the stars occupy the ethereal region; and since that region is the most rare and is always in movement and activity, any animal born in it must have the keenest perception and the swiftest movement. Thus since it is in ether that the stars are born, it is proper that in these there should be perception and intelligence. From which it follows that the stars should be reckoned among the gods.
F 24 R3 (Cicero, de natura deorum II xvi 44):
Aristotle is to be praised, too, for judging that all things that move do so either by nature or by force or voluntarily, and that the sun and moon and all the stars are in movement, and that things that move by nature are carried either downwards by their weight or upwards by their lightness, neither of which happens to the stars, because their movement is in an orbit or circle. Nor again can it be said that some greater force makes the stars move contrary to nature; for what force can be greater? What remains, then, is that the movement of the stars is voluntary.
F 25 R3 (Censorinus, de die natali XVIII 11):
There is, further, the year which Aristotle calls greatest (rather than great), which the spheres of the sun, the moon and the five wandering stars complete when they return together to the same point where once they were all together; the winter of such a year is a great cataclysm or flood, the summer an ecpyrosis or conflagration of the world; for at these alternate periods the world seems now to be consumed in fire, now to be covered in water.
F 26 R3 (Cicero, de natura deorum I xiii 33):
Aristotle, in the third book of his On Philosophy, creates much confusion by dissenting from his master Plato. For now he ascribes all divinity to mind, now he says that the world itself is a god, now he sets another god over the world and ascribes to him the part of ruling and preserving the movement of the world by a sort of backward rotation. Then he says that the heat of the heavens is a god, not realising that the heavens are a part of the world, which he has himself elsewhere called a god.
(Cicero, Academica I vii 26):
The fifth kind, from which are made stars and minds, Aristotle thought to be something distinct, and unlike the four I have mentioned above.
(Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes I × 22):
Aristotle, who far exceeded all others—Plato I always except—both in intellect and in industry, after taking account of the four well-known kinds of first principles from which all things were derived, considers that there is a fifth kind of thing, from which comes mind; for thought, foresight, learning, teaching, discovery, remembering many things, love and hate, desire and fear, distress and joy, these and their like he thinks cannot be included in any of those four kinds; he adds a fifth kind, which lacks a name, and so he calls the mind itself by a new name, ἐνδελέχεια, as being a sort of continuous and endless movement.
(Aristoxenus, Elementa harmonica II 30–31):
This, as Aristotle was always saying, was the experience of most of those who heard Plato’s lecture On the Good. Each of them attended on the assumption that he would hear about one of the recognised human goods—such as wealth, health, strength, and in general some marvellous happiness. When Plato’s lectures turned out to be about mathematics—numbers, geometry, astronomy—and to crown all about the thesis that the good1 is one, it seemed to them, I fancy, something quite paradoxical; and so some people despised the whole thing, while others criticised it.
(Philoponus, Commentarius in de Anima 75.34–76.1):
By the books On Philosophy Aristotle means the work entitled On the Good; in this Aristotle reports Plato’s unwritten seminars; the work is genuine. He relates there the view of Plato and the Pythagoreans about what exists and about first principles.
F 27 R3 (Vita Aristotelis Latina 33):
In the work On the Good he says: ‘Not only he who is in luck but also he who offers a proof should remember he is a man’.
F 28 R3 (Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 55.20–56.35):
Both Plato and the Pythagoreans assumed numbers to be the first principles of existing things, because they thought that that which is primary and incomposite is a first principle, and that planes are prior to bodies (for that which is simpler and not destroyed along with something else is primary by nature), and on the same principle lines are prior to planes, and points (which the mathematicians call sêmeia but they called units) to lines, being completely incomposite and having nothing prior to them; but units are numbers; therefore numbers are the first of existing things. And since Forms or Ideas are prior to the things which according to him have their being in relation to them and derive their being from them (the existence of these he tried in several ways to establish), he said that the Forms are numbers. For if that which is one in kind is prior to the things that exist in relation to it, and nothing is prior to number, the Forms are numbers. This is why he also said that the first principles of number are first principles of the Forms, and the One is the first principle of all things.
Again, the Forms are the first principles of all other things, and the first principles of number are first principles of Ideas since they are numbers; and he used to say that the first principles of number are the unit and the dyad. For, since there are in numbers both the One and that which is other than the One (i.e. the many and the few), he assumed that the first thing there is in number, apart from the One, is the first principle both of the many and of the few. Now the dyad is the first thing apart from the One, having in itself both manyness and fewness; for the double is many and the half is few, and these are in the dyad; and the dyad is contrary to the One, since the latter is indivisible and the former is divided.
Again, thinking to prove that the equal and the unequal are first principles of all things, both of things that exist in their own right and of opposites (for he tried to refer all things to these as their simplest elements), he assigned equality to the monad, and inequality to excess and defect; for inequality involves two things, a great and a small, which are excessive and defective. This is why he called it an indefinite dyad—because neither the excessive nor the exceeded is, as such, definite; they are indefinite and unlimited. But when limited by the One the indefinite dyad, he says, becomes the numerical dyad; for this kind of dyad is one in form.
Again, the dyad is the first number; its first principles are the excessive and the exceeded, since it is in the dyad that the double and the half are first found; for while the double and the half are excessive and exceeded, the excessive and the exceeded are not thereby double and half; so that these are elements of the double. And since the excessive and the exceeded when they have been limited become double and half (for these are no longer indefinite, nor is the treble and third, or the quadruple and quarter, or anything else that already has its excess limited), and this is effected by the nature of the One (for each thing is one in so far as it is a ‘this’ and is limited), the One and the great and the small must be elements in the numerical dyad. But the dyad is the first number. These then are the elements in the dyad. It is for some such reasons that Plato used to treat the One and the dyad as the first principles both of numbers and of all existing things, as Aristotle says in his work On the Good.
F 28 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Physica 151.6–11):
Alexander says that according to Plato the first principles of all things, and of the Ideas themselves, are the One and the indefinite dyad, which he used to call great and small, as Aristotle relates in his work On the Good. One might gather this also from Speusippus and Xenocrates and the others who were present at Plato’s lecture on the Good; for they all wrote down and preserved his doctrine, and they say he used these as first principles.
F 28 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Physica 453.25–30):
They say that Plato maintained that the One and the indefinite dyad were the first principles of sensible things as well. He placed the indefinite dyad also among the objects of thought and said it was unlimited, and he made the great and the small first principles and said they were unlimited, in his lectures on the Good; Aristotle, Heraclides, Hestiaeus, and other associates of Plato attended these and wrote them down in the enigmatic style in which they were delivered.
F 29 R3 (Sextus Empiricus, adversus mathematicos III 57–58):
But Aristotle says . . . that the length without breadth of which they [sc. the geometers] speak is not inconceivable, but that we can without any difficulty arrive at the thought of it. He rests his argument on a rather clear and illuminating example: we grasp the length of a wall, he says, without considering also its breadth, so that it must be possible to conceive of the length without any particular breadth of which the geometers speak—for the phenomena are our way of seeing what is non-evident.
F 30 R3 (Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 59.28–60.2):
One might ask how it is that, though Plato mentions both an efficient cause . . . and also that for the sake of which and the end . . ., Aristotle mentions neither of these causes in his account of Plato’s doctrines. Is it because he mentioned neither of them in what he said about causes (as he has shown in On the Good), or because he does not treat these as causes of things that come into being and perish, and did not even work out any theory about them?
F 31 R3 (Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 250.17–20):
For the proof that practically all contraries are referred to the One and plurality as their first principle, Aristotle sends us to the Selection of Contraries, where he has treated expressly of the subject. He has also spoken about this selection in the second book On the Good.
F 34 R3 (Pliny, naturalis historia XXX ii 3):
Eudoxus related that this Zoroaster lived six thousand years before the death of Plato; Aristotle agrees.
F 37 R3 (Cicero, de divinatione I xxv 53):
What, is the singular, the almost divine, intellect of Aristotle in error, or does he wish others to fall into error, when he writes that his friend Eudemus of Cyprus while on a journey to Macedonia came to Pherae, a Thessalian town of considerable note at that time, but held in cruel subjection by the tyrant Alexander? Now in that town, he says, Eudemus fell so ill that all the doctors feared for his life. He dreamed that a handsome young man told him that he would soon recover, that in a few days the tyrant Alexander would die, and that five years later Eudemus himself would return home. And indeed, Aristotle writes, the first two predictions were fulfilled forthwith: Eudemus recovered and the tyrant was killed by his wife’s brothers. But towards the end of the fifth year, when the dream had led him to hope that he would return from Sicily to Cyprus, he died in battle at Syracuse. And so the dream was interpreted as meaning that when Eudemus’ soul had left his body it had returned to its home.
(al-Kindi, cod. Taimuriyye Falsafa 55):
Aristotle tells of the Greek king whose soul was caught up in ecstasy, and who for many days remained neither alive nor dead. When he came to himself, he told the bystanders of various things in the invisible world, and related what he had seen—souls, forms, and angels; he gave the proofs of this by foretelling to all his acquaintances how long each of them would live. All he had said was put to the proof, and no-one exceeded the span of life that he had assigned. He prophesied too that after a year a chasm would open in the country of Elis, and after two years a flood would occur in another place; and everything happened as he had said. Aristotle asserts that the reason for this was that his soul had acquired this knowledge just because it had been near to leaving his body and had been in a certain way separated from it, and so had seen what it had seen. How much greater marvels of the upper world of the kingdom would it have seen, then, if it had really left his body.
F 38 R3 (Themistius, Commentarius in de Anima 106.29–107.4):
Almost all the weightiest arguments that he [sc. Plato] used about the immortality of the soul make reference to the intellect. . . . as is also the case with the more convincing of those worked out by Aristotle himself in the Eudemus.
F 39 R3 (Elias, Commentarius in Categorias 114.25–115.3):
Aristotle establishes the immortality of the soul in his acroamatic works as well, and there he establishes it by compelling arguments; but in the dialogues he naturally uses plausible arguments. . . . In his dialogues he says that the soul is immortal because all we men instinctively make libations to the departed and swear by them, but no-one ever makes a libation to or swears by that which is completely non-existent . . . [115.11–12]. It is chiefly in his dialogues that Aristotle seems to announce the immortality of the soul.
F 40 R3 (Proclus, Commentarius in Timaeum 323.31–324.4):
Aristotle in emulation of him [sc. Plato] treats scientifically of the soul in the de Anima, saying nothing either about its descent or about its fortunes; but in his dialogues he dealt separately with those matters and set down the preliminary discussion.
F 41 R3 (Proclus, Commentarius in Rem Publicam II 349.13–26):
The excellent Aristotle also gives the reason why the soul on coming hither from there forgets the sights it saw there, but on going hence remembers there its experiences here. We must accept the argument; for he himself says that on their journey from health to disease some people forget even the letters they have learned, but that no-one ever has this experience when passing from disease to health; and that life without the body, being natural to souls, is like health, and life in the body, as being unnatural, is like disease. For there they live according to nature, but here contrary to nature; so that it not unreasonably results that souls that pass thence forget the things there, while souls that pass hence thither continue to remember the things here.
F 42 R3 (Damascius, Commentarius in Phaedonem 530):
That there must actually be a whole race of men which is nourished in this way is shown by the case of the man who was nourished by the sun’s rays alone, as recorded by Aristotle from his own observation.
F 43 R3 (Plutarch, quaestiones convivales 733C):
Aristotle has related how in Cilicia Timon’s grandmother used to hibernate for two months each year, showing no sign of life apart from breathing.
F 44 R3 ([Plutarch], Consolatio ad Apollonium 115BE):
Many wise men, as Crantor says, not of today but of long ago, have wept for the human lot, thinking life to be a punishment and birth the beginning of the greatest disaster for a man. Aristotle says that Silenus stated this opinion to Midas after he had been captured—but let me set down the philosopher’s actual words; he says this in the work entitled Eudemus or On the Soul:
‘For that reason, best and most blessed of all men, in addition to thinking that the dead are blessed and happy, we hold it impious to speak any falsehood about them or to slander them, since they have now become better and greater. And these customs are so ancient and long-established among us that no one at all knows when they began or who first established them, but they have been continuously acknowledged for an indefinite age. In addition to that, you observe the saying which has been on men’s lips for many years’.
‘What is that?’, he said.
He said in reply: ‘That not to be born is best of all, and to be dead better than to be alive. Heaven has given this testimony to many men. They say that when Midas had caught Silenus he interrogated him after the hunt and asked him what was the best thing for men and what the most desirable of all. Silenus at first would not say anything but maintained an unbroken silence; but when, after using every device, Midas with difficulty induced him to address him, he said under compulsion: “Shortlived seed of a toiling spirit and a harsh fortune, why do you force me to say what is better for you not to know? For a life lived in ignorance of its own ills is most painless. It is quite impossible for the best thing of all to befall men, nor can they share in the nature of what is better. For it is best, for all men and women, not to be born; and second after that—the first of things open to men—is, once born, to die as quickly as possible.” It is clear that he meant that time spent dead is better than time spent alive’.
F 45 R3 (Philoponus, Commentarius in de Anima 141.33–142.6, 144.21–145.7):
Some . . . thought that the soul was an attunement of the body, and that the different kinds of soul answered to the different attunements of the body. This opinion Aristotle states and refutes. In the present work [i.e. the de Anima] he first merely records the opinion itself, but a little later on he also sets out the arguments that led them to it. He had already opposed this opinion elsewhere—I mean, in the dialogue Eudemus—and before him Plato in the Phaedo had used five arguments against the view. . . .
These are Plato’s five arguments. Aristotle himself, as I have said, has used the two following arguments in the dialogue Eudemus. One goes thus: ‘Attunement’, he says, ‘has a contrary, lack of attunement; but the soul has no contrary. Therefore the soul is not an attunement’.. . . Secondly: ‘The contrary of the attunement of the body is the lack of attunement of the body; and the lack of attunement of the living body is disease, weakness, and ugliness—of these, disease is lack of attunement of the elements, weakness lack of attunement of the uniform parts, ugliness lack of attunement of the instrumental parts. Now if lack of attunement is disease, weakness, and ugliness, then attunement is health, strength and beauty; but soul is none of these—I mean, neither health nor strength nor beauty; for even Thersites, the ugliest of men, had a soul. Therefore the soul is not an attunement’.
F 45 R3 (Damascius, Commentarius in Phaedonem 383):
Aristotle in the Eudemus argues as follows: ‘Lack of attunement is contrary to attunement; but soul has no contrary—for it is a substance. And the conclusion is obvious. Again, if the lack of attunement of the elements of an animal is disease, their attunement must be health, not soul’.
F 46 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in de Anima 221.28–30):
And because of this he [sc. Aristotle] says in the Eudemus, his dialogue on the soul, that the soul is a sort of form. . .
F 47 R3 ([Plutarch], de musica 1139B):
On the theme that harmony is something noble, divine and grand, Aristotle, the pupil of Plato, says: ‘Harmony is heavenly, by nature divine, beautiful and inspired; having by nature four parts potentially, it has two means, the arithmetical and the harmonic, and the parts of it, their extents, and their excesses one over another, have numerical and proportionate relations; for tunes are arranged in two tetrachords.’
F 48 R3 (Olympiodorus, Commentarius in Phaedonem 9):
Proclus would have heavenly bodies possess only sight and hearing, as Aristotle also would; for of the senses they have only those which contribute to well-being, not those that contribute to being, which is what the other senses do. The poet testifies to this, saying, “Sun, who seest and hearest all things”—which implies that the heavenly bodies have only sight and hearing. Also because these senses, most of all, have knowledge by way of activity rather than of passivity, and are fitter for the unchanging heavenly bodies.
F 49 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo 485.19–22):
That Aristotle has the notion of something above mind and substance is shown by his saying clearly at the end of his book On Prayer that god is either mind or something even beyond mind.
F 50 R3 (Stobaeus, Anthologium IV xxxii 21):
Zeno said that Crates, while sitting in a cobbler’s workshop, read [B 1]1 Aristotle’s Protrepticus which he wrote to Themison, king of Cyprus, saying that no-one had more goods than he for devoting himself to philosophy; for he had great wealth, so that he could spend money on this, and a good reputation as well.
F 57 R3 (Oxyrrhynchus Papyrus 666; cf. Stobaeus, Anthologium III iii 25):
[B2] . . . prevents them from choosing and doing what they should; hence, contemplating the misfortune of these men, we ought to avoid it and believe that happiness consists not in the acquisition of much property but rather in the manner of the disposition of the soul. For one would not say that it is a body adorned with splendid clothing that is blessed, but one which is healthy and has a good disposition, even if it has none of the things just mentioned; in the same way, if the soul is educated, such a soul and such a man must be called happy, not the man splendidly adorned with external goods but himself worthless. It is not the horse that has a golden curb-chain and costly harness but whose nature is bad that we think worth anything; rather we praise the one that has a good disposition. [B 3] Besides, when worthless men get abundant possessions, they come to value these even more than the goods of the soul; and this is the basest of all conditions. For just as a man would be a laughing-stock if he were inferior to his own servants, so too those for whom possessions are more important than their own nature must be considered miserable. [B 4] This is indeed so: surfeit, as the proverb says, breeds insolence; lack of education combined with power breeds folly. For those who are ill-disposed in soul neither wealth nor strength nor beauty is good; the more lavishly one is endowed with these conditions, the more grievously and the more often they hurt him who possesses them but lacks understanding.2 The saying ‘No knife for a child’ means ‘Do not give bad men power’. [B 5] But all men would agree that understanding comes from learning and from seeking the things that philosophy enables us to seek; surely, then, we should pursue philosophy unhesitatingly and. . .
F 51 R3 (Alexander, Commentarius in Topica 149.11–15):
E.g. if someone were to say that one should not philosophize, then, since [B 6] to philosophize is both to inquire into the very question whether one should philosophize or not, as he [sc. Aristotle] himself said in the Protrepticus, and also to pursue philosophical contemplation, by showing that each of them is proper for a man we shall wholly refute the view stated.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 37.13–22 Pistelli):
[B 9] Again, some kinds of knowledge produce the good things in life, others use the first kind; some are ancillary, others prescriptive; and in these last, as being more authoritative, rests the true good. If, then, only that kind of knowledge which involves correctness of judgment and uses reason and contemplates the good as a whole—that is to say, philosophy—can use all other kinds of knowledge and prescribe to them according to nature, we ought in every way to philosophize, since philosophy alone comprises right judgment and an infallible prescriptive understanding.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 49.3–51.6 Pistelli):
[B 11] Of things that come into being some come from some kind of thought or art, e.g. a house or a ship (for the cause of both of these is a certain art and process of thought), while others come into being through no art but by nature; for nature is the cause of animals and plants, and all such things come into being according to nature. But some things also come into being as a result of chance; for of most of the things that come into being neither by art nor by nature nor of necessity, we say that they come into being by chance. [B 12] Now of the things that come into being by chance none comes into being for the sake of anything, nor have they an end; but in the case of things that come into being by art there is an end and that for the sake of which (for he who possesses the art will always tell you the reason why he wrote, and for the sake of what he did so), and this is better than that which comes into being because of it. I mean the things of which art is the cause by its own nature and not by accident; for we should properly describe medicine rather as the art of health than as that of disease, and architecture as the art of building houses, not of pulling them down. Everything, therefore, that is according to art comes into being for the sake of something, and this is its best end; but that which comes into being by chance does not come into being for the sake of anything: something good might come into being by chance, yet in respect of chance and insofar as it results from chance it is not good—for that which comes into being by chance is always indeterminate.
[B 13] But that which comes into being according to nature does so for the sake of something and is always constituted for the sake of something better than the product of art; for nature does not imitate art, but art nature, and art exists to aid nature and to fill up what nature leaves undone. For some things nature seems able to complete by itself without aid, but others it does with difficulty or cannot do at all; an example close to hand is what happens when something comes into being: some seeds obviously generate without protection, whatever ground they fall into, others need the art of farming as well; similarly, some animals too attain their full nature by themselves, but man needs many arts for his preservation, both at birth and in the matter of nutrition later. [B 14] If, then, art imitates nature, it is from nature that the arts have derived the characteristic that all their products come into being for the sake of something. For we should assume that everything that comes into being rightly comes into being for the sake of something. Now that which comes into being well, comes into being rightly; and everything that comes or has come into being according to nature, comes into being well, since that which is contrary to nature is bad and the opposite of that which is according to nature; natural coming into being, therefore, is for the sake of something. [B 15] This one can see from any one of our parts; if, for example you consider the eyelid, you would see that it has come into being not in vain but to aid the eyes, in order to give them rest and to ward off things that fall on to them. Thus that for which something has come into being is the same as that for which it should have come into being; e.g. if a ship ought to have been built to provide transport by sea, it is for the sake of that that it has come into being.
[B 16] Now either absolutely all animals belong to the class of things that have come into being by nature and according to nature, or the best and most honourable of them do; for it makes no difference if someone thinks most animals have come into being contrary to nature because of some destruction and evil. The most honourable of the animals in the world is man; so that clearly he has come into being by nature and according to nature.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 51.16–52.5 Pistelli):
[B 17] If, then, the end of each thing is always better than the thing (for everything that comes into being does so for the sake of its end, and that for the sake of which is better and the best of all things), and if a natural end is that which is completed last in order of generation when this proceeds continuously; now the bodily parts of man are completed first, the parts concerned with the soul later, and the completion of the better is somehow always later than its generation; now soul is later than body, and understanding is what emerges last in soul (for we see that it is by nature the last thing to come into being for men, and this indeed is why old age lays claim to this alone of good things): therefore, some form of understanding is by nature our end and the exercise of it the final activity for the sake of which we have come into being. Now if we have come into being, clearly we also exist to understand and to learn.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 51.6–15 Pistelli):
[B 18] Then what is it among existing things for the sake of which nature and god have brought us into being? Pythagoras, when asked about this, answered, ‘To observe the heavens’, and used to say that he was an observer of nature and had come into life for the sake of this. [B 19] And when somebody asked Anaxagoras for what end one would choose to come into being and to live, he is said to have answered the question by saying, ‘To observe the heavens and the stars, moon and sun in them’, everything else being worth nothing.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 52.6–16 Pistelli):
[B 20] According to this argument, then, Pythagoras was right in saying that every man has been made by god in order to acquire knowledge and contemplate. But whether the object of this knowledge is the universe or some other nature we must consider later; what we have said suffices as a first conclusion; for if understanding is our natural end, to understand must be the best of all things. [B 21] Therefore the other things we do we ought to do for the sake of the goods that are in man himself, and of these those in the body for the sake of those in the soul, and excellence for the sake of understanding; for this is the supreme end.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 34.5–35.18 Pistelli):
[B 23] As possessing reason, nature of every kind does nothing at random but everything for an end, and banishing chance cares for the end in a higher degree than the arts—for they are, as we know, imitations of nature. Since man is by nature composed of soul and body, and soul is better than body, and that which is inferior is always servant to that which is superior, then the body must exist for the sake of the soul. Recalling that the soul has a rational and an irrational part, we conclude that the irrational part exists for the sake of the rational part. Mind belongs to the rational part: the demonstration thus compels us to state that everything exists for the sake of mind. [B 24] The activities of mind are thoughts, and thinking is the seeing of objects of thought, just as the activity of the faculty of sight is seeing the objects of sight. It is, then, for the sake of mind and thinking that everything is desirable for man; for other things are desirable for the sake of the soul, mind is the best part of the soul, and the other things exist for the sake of the best. [B 25] Again, of thoughts, those are free which are pursued for their own sake, but those which bring about1 knowledge for the sake of something else are like slaves; a thing pursued for itself is always superior to one pursued for something else, so that2 that which is free is superior to that which is not. [B 26] Now if in our actions we use our intellect, even though we take into account our own advantage and consider things from that point of view, yet we follow the guidance of our intellect; we also need our body as a servant and are exposed to chance too. . . .3 [B 27] Of acts of thought, then, those which are done just because of pure contemplation itself are more honourable and better than those useful for some other ends. Contemplative thinking is in itself honourable and wisdom of the mind is in this kind of thinking desirable; but thinking which involves understanding is honourable because of the actions it produces. The good and the honourable, then, is found in contemplation involving wisdom, but certainly not in every kind of contemplation. . . . [B 28] Man deprived of perception and mind is reduced to the condition of a plant; deprived of mind alone he is turned into a brute; deprived of irrationality but retaining mind, he becomes like god.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 36.7–13 Pistelli):
[B 29] For what distinguishes us from the other animals shines through in this sort of life alone, a life in which there is nothing ordinary or of little value. For animals too have some small sparks of reason and understanding, but are entirely deprived of contemplative wisdom . . . ;1 as to sense-perception and impulses, man has less exactness and strength than many animals.
F 52 R3 (Iamblichus, Protrepticus 37.22–40.1 Pistelli):
[B 31] Moreover, since everyone chooses what is possible and expedient, we must admit that these two characteristics are found in philosophy, and also that the difficulty of acquiring it is more than outweighed by its usefulness; for we all do with greater pleasure that which is easy. [B 32] It is easy to show that we are capable of acquiring the sciences that deal with the just and the expedient and also those that deal with nature and the rest of reality. [B 33] The prior is always more knowable than the posterior, and that which is better by nature than that which is worse. For knowledge is more concerned with things that are defined and ordered than with their contraries, and more with causes than with effects. Now good things are more defined and ordered than bad things, just as a good man is more defined and ordered than a bad man: there must be the same difference. Besides, things that are prior are causes rather than things that are posterior; for if the former are removed, the things that have their substance from them are removed—lines if numbers are removed, planes if lines are removed, solids if planes are removed, the so-called syllables if letters are removed. [B 34] Therefore, if soul is better than body (being by nature more able to command), and there are arts and forms of understanding concerned with the body, namely medicine and gymnastics (for we reckon these as sciences and say that some people possess them), clearly with regard to the soul too and its excellences there is a care and an art, and we can acquire it, since we can do this even with regard to things of which our ignorance is greater and knowledge is harder to come by.
[B 35] So too with regard to nature; for it is far more necessary to have understanding of the causes and elements than of things posterior to them; for the latter are not among the highest realities, and the first principles do not arise from them, but from and through the first principles all other things manifestly proceed and are constituted. [B 36] For whether it is fire or air or number or any other natures that are the causes and principles of other things, if we are ignorant of them we cannot know any of the other things; for how could one recognise speech if one did not know the syllables, or know these if one knew none of the letters? [B 37] So much, then, on the theme that there is a science of truth and of the excellence of the soul, and that we can acquire these.
[B 38] That it [sc. understanding] is the greatest of goods and the most useful of all will be clear from what follows: we all agree that the best man and he who is by nature strongest ought to rule, and that the law alone is ruler and has authority; and the law is a sort of understanding and a formula based on understanding. [B 39] Again, what accurate standard or what boundary-marker of what is good do we have apart from the man of understanding? For the things that such a man will choose if his choice follows his knowledge are good and their contraries bad. [B 40] Now since all men choose what accords with their own dispositions (the just man choosing to live justly, the brave man to live bravely, the temperate man to live temperately), similarly it is clear that the man of understanding will choose above all things to understand; for that is the task of this capacity. It is clear, then, that according to the most authoritative opinion understanding is the greatest of goods.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 41.6–11 Pistelli):
[B 41] One would see the same point more clearly from the following argument. To understand and to come to know is in itself desirable for men (for it is not possible to live a human life without these activities), and useful too for life; for no good comes to us unless it is accomplished after we have calculated and acted in accordance with understanding.
F 58 R3 (Iamblichus, Protrepticus 52.16–54.5 Pistelli):
[B 42] To seek from all knowledge a result other than itself and to demand that it must be useful is the act of one completely ignorant of the distance that from the start separates good things from necessary things; for they differ completely. For the things that are loved for the sake of something else and without which life is impossible must be called necessities and joint-causes; but those that are loved for themselves, even if nothing else follows from them, must be called goods in the strict sense; for this is not desirable for the sake of that, and that for the sake of something else, and so ad infinitum—there is a stop somewhere. It is really ridiculous, then, to demand from everything some benefit besides the thing itself, and to ask ‘What is the gain to us’? and ‘What is the use’? For in truth, as we maintain, such a man is in no way like one who knows the noble and the good or who distinguishes causes from joint-causes. [B 43] One would see the absolute truth of what we are saying if someone as it were carried us in thought to the Isles of the Blest. For there there would be need of nothing and no profit from anything; and there remain only thought and contemplation, which even now we describe as the free life. If this is true, would not any of us be rightly ashamed if when the chance was given us to settle in the Isles of the Blest, he were by his own fault unable to do so? The reward that knowledge brings men is, then, not to be despised, nor is the good that comes from it slight. For as, according to the wise among the poets, we receive the gifts of justice in Hades, so, it seems, we gain those of understanding in the Isles of the Blest.
[B 44] It is not at all strange, then, if it [sc. understanding] does not show itself useful or advantageous; for we call it not advantageous but good, and it should be chosen not for the sake of something else but for itself. For as we travel to Olympia for the sake of the spectacle itself, even if nothing more were to follow from it (for the spectacle itself is worth more than much money), and as we view the Dionysia not in order to gain anything from the actors (indeed, we spend money on them), and as there are many other spectacles we should prefer to much money, so too the contemplation of the universe is to be honoured above all things that are thought useful. For surely we should not take great pains to go to see men imitating women and slaves, or fighting and running, and yet not think it right to view without payment the nature and reality of things.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 54.10–56.12 Pistelli):
[B 46] But that contemplative understanding is also of the greatest usefulness to us for our practical life can easily be seen from the arts. For as clever doctors and most experts in physical training pretty well agree that those who are to be good doctors or trainers must have a general knowledge of nature, so good lawmakers too must have a general knowledge of nature—and indeed much more than the former. For the former only produce excellence in the body, while the latter, being concerned with the excellences of the soul and claiming to teach about the happiness and misery of the state, need philosophy still more. [B 47] For just as in the ordinary crafts the best tools were discovered from nature, as for instance in the builder’s art the plumbline, the ruler and the compasses—for some come from water, others from light and the rays of the sun—, and it is by reference to these that we determine what is to the senses sufficiently straight and smooth, in the same way the statesman must have certain boundary-markers taken from nature itself and from truth by reference to which he will determine what is just, what is good, and what is expedient. For just as there these tools excel all others, so too the best law is that which has the greatest possible conformity to nature.
[B 48] Nobody, however, who has not practised philosophy and learned truth is able to do this. Furthermore, in the other arts and crafts men do not take their tools and their most accurate reasonings from first principles and so attain something approaching knowledge: they take them from what is second or third hand or at a distant remove, and base their reasonings on experience. The philosopher alone imitates that which is exact; for he looks at the exact things themselves, not at imitations. [B 49] Consequently, as a man is not a good builder if he does not use the ruler or any other such instrument but takes his measure from other buildings, so presumably if a man either lays down laws for cities or performs actions by looking at and imitating other human actions or constitutions, whether of Sparta or Crete or of any other state, he is not a good or serious lawgiver; for an imitation of what is not good cannot be good, nor can an imitation of what is not divine and stable in its nature be immortal and stable. But it is clear that to the philosopher alone among craftsmen belong laws that are stable and actions that are right and noble. [B 50] For he alone lives by looking at nature and the divine. Like a good helmsman he moors his life to that which is eternal and unchanging, drops his anchor there, and lives his own master.
[B 51] This knowledge is indeed contemplative, but it enables us to frame all our practice in accordance with it. For just as sight makes and shapes nothing (since its only work is to judge and to show us everything than can be seen), yet enables us to act as it directs and gives us the greatest assistance towards action (for we should be almost entirely motionless if deprived of it), so it is clear that, though knowledge is contemplative, yet we do innumerable things in accordance with it, choose some things and avoid others, and in general gain as a result of it everything that is good.
F 52 R3 (Iamblichus, de communi mathematica scientia 79.15–80.1 Festa):
[B 52] Now he who is to consider these matters must not forget that all things good and useful for human life reside in use and action, not in mere knowledge; for we become healthy not by knowing the things that produce health but by applying them to our bodies; we become wealthy not by knowing wealth but by possessing much property; most important of all, we live well not by knowing something of that which exists, but by doing well; for this is true happiness. It follows that philosophy too, if it is useful, must be either a doing of good things or useful as a means to such acts.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 40.1–41.5 Pistelli):
[B 53] Now we ought not to flee philosophy if it is, as we think, the acquisition and exercise of wisdom, and wisdom is among the greatest goods; and if in pursuit of gain we run many risks by sailing to the pillars of Hercules, we should not shrink from labour or expense in the pursuit of understanding. It is slave-like to desire to live rather than to live well, to follow the opinions of the many instead of expecting the many to follow one’s own, to seek money but show no concern at all for what is noble.
[B 54] As to the value and the greatness of the thing, I think we have sufficiently proved our case; that the acquisition of wisdom is much easier than that of other goods, one might be convinced by the following arguments. [B 55] The fact that those who pursue philosophy get no reward from men to spur them to the considerable efforts they make, and1 that having spent much on acquiring other skills, nevertheless in a short time their progress in exact knowledge is rapid, seems to me a sign of the easiness of philosophy. [B 56] So too that all men feel at home in philosophy and wish to spend their lives in the pursuit of it, leaving all other cares, is no small evidence that it is pleasant to sit down to it; for no-one is willing to work hard for a long time. Besides, the exercise of philosophy differs very much from all other labours: those who practise it need no tools or places for their work; wherever in the whole world one sets one’s thought to work, one is everywhere equally able to grasp the truth as if it were actually present. [B 57] Thus it has been proved that philosophy is possible, that it is the greatest of goods, and that it is easy to acquire; so that on all counts it is fitting that we should eagerly lay hold of it.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 41.15–42.29 Pistelli):
[B 59] Further, part of us is soul, part body; the one rules, the other is ruled; the one uses, the other is present as its instrument. Again, the use of that which is ruled, i.e. the instrument, is always arranged to fit that which rules and uses. [B 60] Of the soul one part is reason (which by nature rules and judges in matters concerning ourselves), the other part follows and is of a nature such as to be ruled; everything is well arranged in accordance with its appropriate excellence—for to attain this is good. [B 61] And indeed, when the most authoritative and most honourable parts attain their excellence, then it is well arranged; now the natural excellence of that which is naturally better is the better, and that which is by nature more fit to rule and more authoritative is better, as man is in relation to the other animals; consequently soul is better than body (for it is fitter to rule), and of soul, that part which has reason and thought (for such is that which commands and forbids and says that we ought or ought not to act). [B 62] Whatever excellence, then, is the excellence of this part must be, for all beings in general and for us, the most desirable of all things; for one would, I think, maintain that we are this part, either alone or especially.
[B 63] Further, when a thing best produces that which is—not by accident but in itself—its product, then that thing must be said to be good too, and that excellence in virtue of which each thing can achieve precisely this result must be termed its supreme excellence. [B 64] Now that which is composite and divisible into parts has several different activities; but that which is by nature simple and whose substance does not consist in a relation to something else must have only one proper excellence of its own. [B 65] If, then, man is a simple animal and his substance is ordered according to reason and mind, he has no other product than the most exact truth and a true account of the things that exist; but if he is composed of several faculties, it is clear that when someone can produce several things, the best of them is always his product, e.g. health is of the doctor and safety of the helmsman. Now we can name no better product of thought and the thinking part of the soul than truth. Truth therefore is the supreme product of this part of the soul.
[B 66] Now this it does, generally speaking, by knowledge, and more so by knowledge of a more perfect kind; and the supreme end of this is contemplation. For when of two things one is desirable for the sake of the other, the latter is better and more desirable for the same reason as the other is desirable; e.g. pleasure than pleasant things, health than healthy things; for these are said to be productive of those. [B 67] Now nothing is more worthy of choice, when one state is compared with another, than understanding, which we maintain to be the faculty of the supreme element in us; for the cognitive part, whether taken alone or in combination with the other parts, is better than all the rest of the soul; and its excellence is knowledge.
[B 68] Therefore none of what are called the particular excellences is its product; for it is better than all of them and the end produced is always better than the knowledge that produces it. Nor is every excellence of the soul in this way its product; nor is happiness. For if it is to be productive, it will produce results different from itself; as the art of building produces a house but is not part of a house. But understanding is part of excellence and of happiness; for we say that happiness either comes from it or is it. [B 69] According to this argument too, then, it cannot be a productive knowledge; for the end must be better than that which is coming to be and nothing is better than understanding, unless it is one of the things we have named—and none of these is a product distinct from it. Therefore we must say that this form of knowledge is contemplative, since it is impossible that its end should be production.
[B 70] Hence understanding and contemplation are the product of the soul, and this is of all things the most desirable for men, comparable, I think, to eyesight. For one would choose to have sight even if nothing other than sight itself were to result from it. [B 71] Again, if we love one thing because something else necessarily results from it, clearly we shall wish more for that which possesses this quality more fully; e.g. if a man chooses walking because it is healthy but finds that running is more healthy and that he can get it, he will prefer running and, if he knows, would choose to run. If, therefore, true opinion is similar to understanding, and if true opinion is desirable precisely according to the manner and extent to which it is like understanding by reason of being true, then if this is found more in understanding, understanding is more desirable than believing truly.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 43.25–27 Pistelli):
[B 72] Again, if we love sight for its own sake, that is sufficient evidence that all men love understanding and knowing most of all.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 44.26–45.3 Pistelli):
[B 73] For in loving life they love understanding and knowing; they value life for no other reason than for the sake of perception, and above all for the sake of sight; they evidently love this faculty in the highest degree because it is, in comparison with the other senses, simply a kind of knowledge.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 44.9–26 Pistelli):
[B 74] Indeed, living is distinguished from not living by perception, and life is determined by its presence and power: if this is taken away life is not worth living; it is as though life itself were removed by the loss of perception. [B 75] Now of perceptions the power of sight is distinguished by being the clearest, and it is for this reason that we prefer it to the other senses; but every sense is a cognitive power which works through the body, as hearing perceives sound through the ears. [B 76] Therefore, if life is desirable for the sake of perception and perception is a kind of knowing, and if it is because the soul can come to know by means of it that we desire to live; [B 77] further, if, as we said just now, of two things, the one which possesses the desirable quality more fully is always more desirable, then of the senses sight must be the most desirable and honourable; and understanding is more desirable than it and than all the other senses, and than life itself, since it has a stronger grasp of truth; hence all men aim at understanding, most of all things.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 56.13–59.17 Pistelli):
[B 78] That those who have chosen to live according to mind also enjoy life most will be clear from the following argument. [B 79] Things are said to be alive in two senses, in virtue of a potentiality and in virtue of an actuality; for we describe as seeing both those animals which have sight and are naturally capable of seeing, even if they happen to have their eyes shut, and those which are using this faculty and are looking at something. Similarly with knowing and cognition: we sometimes mean by it the use of the faculty and contemplation, sometimes the possession of the faculty and having knowledge. [B 80] If, then, we distinguish life from non-life by the possession of perception, and perceiving has two senses—properly of using one’s senses, in another way of being able to use them (it is for this reason, it seems, that we say even of a sleeping man that he perceives)—it is clear that living will correspondingly be taken in two senses: a waking man must be said to live in the true and proper sense; as for a sleeping man, because he is capable of passing into the activity in virtue of which we say that a man is waking and perceiving something, it is for this reason and with reference to this that we describe him as living. [B 81] When, therefore, each of two things is called by the same term, the one by being active the other by being passive, we shall say that the former possesses the property to a greater degree; e.g. we shall say that a man who uses knowledge knows to a greater degree than a man who possesses knowledge, and that a man who is looking at something sees to a greater degree than one who can do so. [B 82] For we use ‘to a greater degree’ not only in virtue of an excess (in the case of things which share a single account) but also in virtue of priority and posteriority; e.g. we say that health is good to a greater degree than healthy things, and that what is by its own nature desirable is so to a greater degree than what is productive of this; yet we see that there is not a single account1 predicated of both when we say both of useful things and of excellence that each is good. [B 83] Thus we say that a waking man lives to a greater degree than a sleeping man, and that a man who is exercising his soul lives to a greater degree than a man who possesses it; for it is because of the former that we say that the latter lives, because he is such as to be active or passive in this manner. [B 84] The use of anything, then, is this: if the capacity is for a single thing, then it is doing just that thing; if it is for several things, then it is doing whichever is the best of these. E.g. a flute: a man uses a flute only or especially when he plays it—for the other cases presumably also fit here. Thus we must say that he who uses a thing aright uses it to a greater degree; for he who uses something well and accurately uses it for the natural end and in the natural way.
[B 85] Now thinking and reasoning are, either alone or above everything else, the products of the soul. It is now simple and easy for anyone to infer that the man who thinks aright lives to a greater degree, and that he who reaches truth in the highest degree lives in the highest degree, and that this is the man who understands and contemplates according to the most precise knowledge; and it is then and to these men that perfect life must be ascribed—to those who understand and are men of understanding. [B 86] Now if for every animal to live is the same as to exist, it is clear that the man of understanding will exist to the highest degree and in the most proper sense, and most of all when he is exercising this faculty and contemplating what is most knowable of all things.
[B 87] Again, perfect and unimpeded activity contains in itself delight; so that the activity of contemplation must be the most pleasant of all. [B 88] Further, there is a difference between enjoying oneself while drinking and enjoying drinking; for there is nothing to prevent a man who is not thirsty, or is not getting the drink he enjoys, from enjoying himself while drinking—not because he is drinking but because he happens at the same time to be looking at something or to be looked at as he sits. So we shall say that such a man enjoys himself, and enjoys himself while drinking, but not that he does so because he is drinking, nor that he is enjoying drinking. In the same way we shall say that walking, sitting down, learning, any activity, is pleasant or painful, not if we happen to feel pain or pleasure in the presence of these activities, but if we are all pained or pleased by their presence. [B 89] Similarly, we shall call that life pleasant whose presence is pleasant to those who have it; and we shall say that not all who have pleasure while living enjoy living, but only those to whom living is itself pleasant and who rejoice in the pleasure that comes from life.
[B 90] So we assign life to the man who is awake rather than to him who is asleep, to him who understands rather than to him who is foolish, and we say the pleasure of living is the pleasure we get from the exercise of the soul—for that is true life. [B 91] If, then, there is more than one exercise of the soul, still the chief of all is that of understanding as well as possible. It is clear, then, that necessarily the pleasure arising from understanding and contemplation is, alone or most of all, the pleasure of living. Pleasant life and true enjoyment, therefore, belong only to philosophers, or to them most of all. For the activity of our truest thoughts, nourished by the most real of things and preserving steadfastly for ever the perfection it receives, is of all activities the most productive of joy.
(Iamblichus, Protrepticus 59.19–60.10 Pistelli):
[B 93] If we should not only infer this from the parts of happiness but also go deeper and establish it on the basis of happiness as a whole, let us state explicitly that as philosophizing is related to happiness so it is related to our character as good or bad men. For it is as leading to or following from well-being that all things are worthy of choice, and of the sources of happiness some are necessary others pleasant. [B 94] Thus we lay it down that happiness is either understanding and a form of wisdom, or excellence, or genuine pleasure, or all of these. [B 95] Now if it is understanding, clearly philosophers alone will enjoy a happy life; if it is excellence of the soul or enjoyment, then too it will belong to them alone or most of all—for excellence is that which governs our life, and understanding is, if one thing is compared with another, the most pleasant of all things. Similarly, if one says that all these things together are identical with happiness, it must be defined by understanding. [B 96] Therefore all who can should practise philosophy; for this is either the perfect life or of all single things most truly the cause of it for souls.
F 55 R3, F 59 R3, F 60 R3, F 61 R3 (Iamblichus, Protrepticus 45.4–48.21 Pistelli):
[B 97] It is no bad thing to throw light on the subject by adducing what appears clearly to everyone. [B 98] To everyone this much is quite plain, that no-one would choose to live in possession of the greatest1 possible wealth and power but deprived of understanding and mad, not even if he were to be pursuing with delight the most violent pleasures, as some madmen do. All men, then, it seems, shun folly above all things. Now the contrary of folly is understanding; and of two contraries one is to be avoided, the other to be chosen. [B 99] Thus as illness is to be avoided, so health is to be chosen. Hence according to this argument too, in the light of common conceptions, it seems that understanding is most desirable of all things, and not for the sake of anything that follows from it. For even if a man had everything but were destroyed and diseased in his understanding, his life would not be desirable, since even the other good things could not profit him. [B 100] Therefore all men, insofar as they can come within reach of understanding and taste its savour, reckon other things as nothing, and for this reason not one of us would endure being drunk or a child throughout his life.
[B 101] For this reason too, though sleep is a very pleasant thing, it is not desirable, even if we suppose the sleeper to have all possible pleasures, because the images of sleep are false while those of waking men are true. For sleep and waking differ in nothing else but the fact that the soul when awake often knows the truth but in sleep is always deceived; for the whole nature of dreams is an image and a falsity. [B 102] Further, the fact that most men shrink from death shows the soul’s love of learning. For it shrinks from what it does not know, from darkness and obscurity, and naturally seeks what is manifest and knowable. This is, above all, the reason why we say we ought to honour exceedingly those who have caused us to see the sun and the light, and to revere our fathers and mothers as causes of the greatest of goods—they are, it seems, the causes of our understanding and seeing. It is for the same reason that we delight in things and men that are familiar, and call dear those whom we know. These things, then, show plainly that what is knowable and manifest and clear is a thing to be loved; and if what is knowable and clear, then also knowing and understanding.
[B 103] Besides this, just as in the case of property it is not the same possession that conduces to life and to a happy life for men, so it is in the case of understanding too: we do not, I think, need the same understanding with a view to mere life and with a view to the good life. The majority of men may well be pardoned for doing this: they certainly pray for happiness, but they are content if they can merely live. But unless one thinks one ought to endure living on any terms whatever, it is ridiculous not to suffer every toil and bestow every care to gain that kind of understanding which will know the truth. [B 104] One might recognise this from the following facts too, if one viewed human life in a clear light. For one will find that all the things men think great are mere scene-painting; hence it is rightly said that man is nothing and that nothing human is stable. Strength, size, beauty are a laugh and of no worth;. . .2 only because we see nothing accurately. [B 105] For if one could see as clearly as they say Lynceus did, who saw through walls and trees, would one ever have thought a man endurable to look at if one saw of what poor materials he is made? Honours and reputation, things so envied, are more than other things full of indescribable folly; for to him who catches a glimpse of things eternal it seems foolish to crave for these things. What is there among human things that is long-lived or lasting? It is owing to our weakness, I think, and the shortness of our life that even this appears great. [B 106] Which of us, looking to these facts, would think himself happy and blessed? For all of us are from the very beginning (as they say in the initiation rites) shaped by nature as though for punishment. For it is an inspired saying of the ancients that the soul pays penalties and that we live for the punishment of great sins. [B 107] For indeed the conjunction of the soul with the body looks very much like this. For as the Etruscans are said often to torture captives by chaining dead bodies face to face with the living, fitting part to part, so the soul seems to be extended throughout and affixed to all the sensitive members of the body.
[B 108] Mankind possesses nothing divine or blessed that is of any account except what there is in us of mind and understanding: this alone of our possessions seems to be immortal, this alone divine. [B 109] By virtue of being able to share in this faculty, life, however wretched and difficult by nature, is yet so cleverly arranged that man seems a god in comparison with all other creatures. [B 110] For mind is the god in us—whether it was Hermotimus or Anaxagoras who said so—and mortal life contains a portion of some god. We ought, therefore, either to philosophize or to say farewell to life and depart hence, since all other things seem to be great nonsense and folly.
F 51 R3 (Elias, Prolegomena Philosophiae 3.17–23):
. . . or like Aristotle in his work entitled Protrepticus; for he puts it like this: If you ought to philosophize you ought to philosophize; and if you ought not to philosophize you ought to philosophize: therefore, in any case you ought to philosophize. For if philosophy exists, we certainly ought to philosophize, since it exists; and if it does not exist, in that case too we ought to inquire why philosophy does not exist—and by inquiring we philosophize; for inquiry is the cause of philosophy.
F 53 R3 (Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes III xxviii 69):
Thus Aristotle, accusing the old philosophers who taught that philosophy had been perfected by their own talents, says that they were either very stupid or very conceited; but that he sees that, since in a few years a great advance has been made, philosophy will in a short time be brought to completion.
F 54 R3 (Calcidius, Commentarius in Timaeum 225.21–226.2 Waszink):
. . . Aristotle agrees, saying that at first children, before they are weaned, think that all men are their fathers and all women their mothers, and that as they grow older they make the distinction but they are not always successful in distinguishing and often are taken in by false images and stretch out their hands towards the image.
F 54 R3 (Calcidius, Commentarius in Timaeum 226.8–15 Waszink):
It is the height of madness not merely to be ignorant but not to realize that you are ignorant and therefore to assent to false images and to suppose that true images are false—as when men think that wickedness is advantageous and virtue an impediment that brings destruction; and such an opinion accompanies to their last years many men who believe that doing injury is very expedient and acting rightly disadvantageous, and who are therefore reviled. Aristotle calls such people aged children, because their minds hardly differ from those of children.
F 56 R3 (Plutarch, Pelopidas 279B):
For of the majority of people, as Aristotle says, some do not use it [sc. wealth] through meanness, and others misuse it through extravagance—and the latter spend their lives as slaves to every passing pleasure, the former as slaves to their business.
F 61 R3 (Cicero, de finibus II xiii 40):
. . . man, as Aristotle says, was born for two things, understanding and action, as though he were a mortal god.
F 62 R3 (Plutarch, quaestiones convivales 734D):
Coming into contact with Aristotle’s Scientific Problems, which had been brought to Thermopylae, Florus himself came to teem with many puzzles—as is normal and proper to philosophical natures—and passed them on to his companions; he thus bore witness to Aristotle’s remark that much learning is the beginning of many puzzles.1
F 63 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, IX 53):
He [sc. Protagoras] was the first to discover the so-called ‘knot’ on which they carry their burdens, as Aristotle says in his On Education; for he was a porter, as Epicurus too says somewhere.
F 64 R3 (Themistius, orationes 295CD):
This man, after some slight association with my studies or amusements, had almost the same experience as the philosopher Axiothea, Zeno of Citium, and the Corinthian farmer. . . . The Corinthian farmer, after coming into contact with Gorgias—not Gorgias himself, but the dialogue Plato wrote in criticism of the sophist—at once gave up his farm and his vines, mortgaged his soul to Plato, and sowed and planted Plato’s views there. This is the man whom Aristotle honours in his Corinthian1 dialogue.
F 65 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, VIII 57):
Aristotle in the Sophist says that Empedocles was the first to discover rhetoric, Zeno dialectic.
F 66 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, VIII 63):
Aristotle says that he [sc. Empedocles] was a free spirit and averse to all authority, if (as Xanthus says in his account of him) he refused the kingship which was offered to him, plainly setting more value on simplicity.
F 67 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, IX 54):
Pythodorus, son of Polyzelus, one of the Four Hundred, accused him [sc. Protagoras]; but Aristotle says that Euathlus did.
F 68 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, II 55):
Aristotle says that a vast number of people wrote eulogies and memorials to Grylos, partly in the wish to please his father.
F 69 R3 (Quintilian, II xvii 14):
Aristotle, as is his custom, has in the Grylos produced for the sake of inquiry certain arguments of his usual subtlety [to show that rhetoric is not an art] . . .
F 70 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, VIII 57–58):
In his On Poets he [sc. Aristotle] says that Empedocles was both Homeric and skilled in his diction, using metaphor and the other devices of poetry; and that although he wrote other poems too—the Crossing of Xerxes, and a Prelude to Apollo—a sister of his (or, as Hieronymus says, a daughter) later burned them, the Prelude by accident, the Persian verses deliberately because they were unfinished. And he says in general that he also wrote tragedies and works on politics.
F 71 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, VIII 51–52):
Eratosthenes, in his Olympic Victors, says that Meton’s father1 won his victory in the seventy-first Olympiad: his authority is Aristotle. . . . Aristotle, and also Heraclides, say that he [sc. Empedocles] died at the age of sixty.
F 72 R3 (Athenaeus, 505C):
Aristotle in his work On Poets writes thus: ‘Are we then to deny that the so-called mimes of Sophron, which are not even in verse,1 or those of Alexamenus of Teos, which were written before2 the Socratic dialogues, are dialogues3 and imitations?’ Thus Aristotle, the most learned of men, says outright that Alexamenus wrote dialogues before Plato.
F 73 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, III 37):
Aristotle says that the form of his [sc. Plato’s] writings was in between poetry and prose.
F 74 R3 (Macrobius, V xviii 19–20):
I will quote Aristotle’s own words in the second book of his On Poets, where he says this about Euripides: ‘Euripides says that the sons of Thestius went with their left foot unshod—at all events, he writes that:
In their left step they were unshod of foot, while the other had sandals, so that they should have one knee light.
Now the custom of the Aetolians is just the opposite: their left foot is shod, the right unshod—I suppose because the leading foot should be light, but not the one which remains fixed’.
F 75 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, II 46):
He [sc. Socrates] had as rivals, according to Aristotle in the third book of his On Poetry, a certain Antilochus of Lemnos and Antiphon the soothsayer—just as Pythagoras had Cylon of Croton; Homer when alive Syagrus and when dead Xenophanes of Colophon; Hesiod when alive Cercops and when dead the aforesaid Xenophanes; Pindar, Amphimenes of Cos; Thales, Pherecydes; Bias, Salaros of Priene; Pittakos, Antimenidas and Alcaeus; Anaxagoras, Sosibius; and Simonides, Timocreon.
F 76 R3 ([Plutarch], Vita Homeri 3):
Aristotle in the third book of his On Poetry says that in the island of Ios, at the time when Neleus the son of Codrus was leading the Ionian settlement, a certain girl who was a native of the island became pregnant by a spirit which was one of the companions of the Muses in the dance. Being ashamed of what had happened because of the size of her belly, she went to a place called Aegina. Pirates raided the place, enslaved the girl, and took her to Smyrna which was then under the Lydians; they did this as a favour to Maeon, who was the king of Lydia and their friend. He fell in love with the girl for her beauty and married her. While she was living near the Meles the birth-pangs came upon her and she gave birth to Homer on the bank of the river. Maeon adopted him and brought him up as his own child, Critheis having died immediately after her delivery. Not long after, Maeon himself died. When the Lydians were being oppressed by the Aeolians and had decided to leave Smyrna, and their leaders had called on any who wished to follow them to leave the town, Homer, who was still an infant, said he too wished to follow (όμηρεῖν); for which reason he was called Homer instead of Melesigenes.
F 78 R3 (Cicero, ad Quintum fratrem III ν I):
. . . Aristotle says in his own name what he has to say about the state and the outstanding man.
F 79 R3 (Syrianus, Commentarius in Metaphysica 168.33–35):
In the second book of the Politicus he [sc. Aristotle] says the same as his predecessors about this subject—his words are: ‘The good is the most accurate measure of all things’.
F 80 R3 (Seneca, de ira I ix 2):
Anger, Aristotle says, is necessary, nor can any battle be won without it—unless it fills the mind and kindles the spirit. But we must treat it not as a commander but as a soldier.
(Philodemus, Volumina Rhetorica II. 175, frag. XV):
A hare that makes its appearance among hounds cannot escape, Aristotle says, nor can that which is deemed despicable and shameless survive among men.
F 82 R3 (Demetrius, de elocutione 28):
At all events, in Aristotle’s work On Justice, if the speaker who is bewailing the fate of Athens were to say ‘The enemy city they captured, their own they forsook,’ he would have used the language of emotion and lament; but if he makes it assonant—‘The enemy city they took, their own they forsook’—by heaven he will not rouse any emotion or pity but only tears of laughter.
F 83 R3 (Athenaeus, 6D):
Others call Philoxenus a fish-lover, but Aristotle calls him simply a dinner-lover. He writes, I think, as follows: ‘When they are making speeches to crowded audiences they spend the whole day in relating marvels, and that to men who have just sailed in from the Phasis or the Borysthenes, when they have read nothing themselves but the Dinner of Philoxenus—and not the whole of that.’
F 84 R3 (Suetonius, de blasphemiis 84 Taillardat):
Aristotle in the first book of his On Justice says that he [sc. Eurybatos] was a thief who, when he was caught and put in chains, was encouraged by the warders to show how he got over walls and into houses: on being set free, he fastened the spikes to his feet and took the sponges—then he easily climbed up, broke through the roof, and got away.
F 86 R3 (Plutarch, de Stoicorum repugnantiis 1040E):
. . . he [sc. Chrysippus] says in criticism of Aristotle on the subject of justice that he is not right in saying that if pleasure is the end justice is destroyed, and with justice each of the other excellences.
F 87 R3 (Boethius, Commentarius in de Interpretatione, ed. 2,1 i 27):
In his work On Justice he [sc. Aristotle] makes it clear that nouns and verbs are not sounds that signify objects of perception; he says: ‘the objects of thought and the objects of perception are from the start distinct in their natures’.
F 89 R3 (Cicero, de officiis II xvi 56–57):
How much more serious and true is Aristotle’s criticism of us for not being astonished at these vast sums of money spent on captivating the populace. For he says1 that if men besieged by an enemy should be compelled to pay a mina for a pint of water, that seems at first incredible to us and everyone is astonished; but when they think about it, they pardon it as due to necessity. Yet in the case of this enormous outlay and endless expenditure, we are not greatly astonished at all—even though necessity is not being relieved or respect increased, and the pleasure of the populace itself lasts only a very short time and moreover derives from the most trivial of objects where at the moment of gratification even the memory of the pleasure dies. He rightly infers that these things gratify children, womenfolk, slaves, and slavelike free men; but they can in no way be approved of by a serious man who weighs events with a sure judgment.
(Philodemus, de oeconomia XXI 28–35):
. . . which happened to Aristotle in respect of the argument in the work On Wealth1 to show that the good man is also a good money-maker and the bad man a bad money-maker (as Metrodorus proved).
F 91 R3 (Stobaeus, Anthologium IV xxix A 24):
From Aristotle On Good Birth. ‘In short, with regard to good birth, I for my part am at a loss to say whom one should call well-born.’
‘Your difficulty’, I said, ‘is quite reasonable; for among the many and even more among the wise there is division of opinion and obscurity of statement, particularly about its value. What I mean is this: is it a valuable and good thing, or, as Lycophron the sophist wrote, something altogether empty? For, comparing it with other goods, he says the nobility of good birth is obscure, and its dignity a matter of words—the preference for it is a matter of opinion, and in truth there is no difference between the low-born and the well-born.’
F 92 R3 (Stobaeus, Anthologium IV xxix A 25):
In the same book. ‘Just as it is disputed what height is good, so it is disputed who those are who ought to be called well-born. Some think it is those born of good ancestors, which was the view of Socrates; he said that because Aristides was good his daughter was nobly born. They say that Simonides, when asked who it is that are well-born, said “those whose family has long been rich”; but at that rate Theognis’ reprimand is wrong, and so is that of the poet who wrote “Mortals honour good birth, but marry rather with the rich”. Good heavens, is not a man who is rich himself preferable to one who had a rich great-grandfather or some other rich ancestor, but is himself poor?’
‘Surely’, he said.
‘And one ought to marry with the rich rather than with the well-born; for it is people who were once rich who are well-born, but people who are now rich who are more powerful. Is it not much the same, then, if one supposes that it is not those born into a once rich family but those born into a once good family who are well-born? One would suppose that recent goodness is better than ancient, that a man has more in common with his father than with his great-grandfather, and that it is more desirable to be good oneself than to have a great-grandfather or some other ancestor who was good.’
‘You are right’, he said.
‘Well, then, since we see that good birth does not consist in either of these things, should we not look elsewhere to see what it consists in?’2
‘ “Good (τὀ εὖ)” means, I suppose, something praiseworthy and excellent; e.g. having a good face or good eyes means, on this showing, something good or fine.’ ‘
‘Certainly’, he said.
‘Well then, having a good face is having the excellence proper to a face, and having good eyes is having the excellence proper to eyes, is it not?’
‘Yes’, he said.
‘But one family (γένoς) is good, another bad and not good.’
‘Certainly’, he said.
‘And we say each thing is good in virtue of the excellence proper to it, so that a family is good in the same way.’
‘Yes’, he said.
‘Clearly, then’, I said, ‘good birth (εὐγένεια) is excellence of family.’
F 93 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, II 26):
Aristotle says that he [sc. Socrates] had two wives, first Xanthippe from whom he had Lamprocles, and secondly Myrto, the daughter of Aristides the Just, whom he took without a dowry and from whom he had Sophroniscus and Menexenus.
F 93 R3 (Plutarch, Aristides 335CD):
Demetrius of Phaleron, Hieronymus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus the writer on music, and Aristotle (if the work On Good Birth is to be reckoned among his genuine works) relate that Myrto, grand-daughter of Aristides, lived with the sage Socrates, who was married to another woman but took Myrto under his protection when she was widowed because she was poor and lacking in the necessities of life.
F 94 R3 (Stobaeus, Anthologium IV xxix C 52):
From Aristotle’s work On Good Birth: ‘It is evident, then’, I said, ‘on the subject which has for so long puzzled us, why those born into once rich or once good families are thought to be better born than those whose possession of these advantages is recent. For a man’s own goodness is nearer to him than that of a grandfather, and on that basis it would be the good man who is well born. And some have said this, claiming by this deduction to argue against good birth: Euripides, for example, says that good birth belongs not to those whose ancestors have long been good, but to a man who is himself good, simply. That is not so; those are right who give preference to ancient excellence. Let us state the reasons for this. Good birth is excellence of family, and excellence is good; and a good family is one in which there have been many good men. Now this happens when the family has had a good origin; for an origin has the power of producing many products like itself: this is the function of an origin—to produce many results like itself. When, then, there has been one man of this kind in the family, a man so good that many generations inherit his goodness, the family is bound to be good. There will be many good men if the family is human, many good horses if it is equine, and so too with the other animals. Thus it is reasonable that not rich men nor good men but those born into once rich or once good families should be well born. The argument has its eye on the truth: the origin counts more than anything else. Yet not even those born of good ancestors are in every case well born, but only those who have among their ancestors originators who are good.1 When a man is good himself but has not the natural power to beget many like him, the origin has not in such a case the power we have ascribed to it. . .2 People are well born if they come of such a family—not if their father is well born but if the originator of the family is so. For it is not by himself that a father begets a good man, but because he came of such a family.’
F 96 R3 (Athenaeus, 564B):
Aristotle said that lovers look to no other part of the bodies of their beloved than their eyes, in which modesty dwells.
F 97 R3 (Plutarch, Pelopidas 287D):
It is said also that Iolaus, who was the beloved of Hercules, shares in the contests of the Thebans and fights alongside them. Aristotle says that even in his day lovers and their beloved still pledged their troth on the tomb of Iolaus.
F 98 R3 (Plutarch, Amatorius 761 A):
Aristotle says that Cleomachus died in a different way, after defeating the Eretrians in battle, and that the man embraced by his lover was one of the Chalcidians from Thrace who had been sent to help the Chalcidians in Euboea—hence the Chalcidian song, ‘O children. . .’.
(al-Dailami, cod. Tubingen Weisweiler 81):
It is said in a certain book of the ancients that the pupils of Aristotle assembled before him one day. And Aristotle said to them: ‘While I was standing on a hill I saw a youth who stood on a terrace roof and recited a poem, the meaning of which was this: whoever dies of passionate love, let him die in this manner—there is no good in love without death’. Then said his pupil Issos: ‘O philosopher, inform us concerning the essence of love’. And Aristotle replied: ‘Love is an impulse which is generated in the heart; when it is once generated, it moves and grows; afterwards it becomes mature. When it has become mature it is joined by affections of appetite whenever the lover in the depth of his heart increases in his excitement, his perseverance, his desire, his concentrations, and his wishes. And that brings him to cupidity and urges him to demands, until it brings him to disquieting grief, continuous sleeplessness, and hopeless passion and sadness and destruction of mind’.
Aristotle in the Symposium says that we offer nothing mutilated to the gods, but only what is perfect and whole; and what is full is perfect; and garlanding signifies a certain sort of filling.
F 103 R3 (Apollonius, Historiae mirabiles 25):
Aristotle in his On Drunkenness says that Andron of Argos, though he ate many salty and dry foods, remained all through his life without thirst and without drink. Besides, he twice travelled to Ammon through the desert, eating dry barley-groats but taking no liquid.
F 104 R3 (Athenaeus, 641 DE):
Aristotle, in his On Drunkenness, talks of second courses in the same way as we do, thus: ‘We must consider that a sweetmeat differs entirely from a foodstuff, as much as what is eaten differs from what is nibbled (‘nibbles’ was the old Greek word for things served as sweetmeats); so that the first person to speak of ‘second courses’ seems to have been justified—for the eating of sweets is a sort of extra dinner, and the sweetmeats form a second meal’.
F 105 R3 ([Julian], Letters 391 BC):
The fig . . . is so useful to mankind that Aristotle actually says that it is an antidote to every poison, and that for precisely that reason it is served at meals both as an hors d’oeuvre and as a dessert—as though it were being wrapped round the iniquities of the food in preference to any other sacred antidote.
F 106 R3 (Athenaeus, 447AB):
Aristotle in his work On Drunkenness says . . . : ‘Something peculiar happens in the case of the barley-liquor which they call pinon. Those who are drunk on other intoxicants fall in all directions—to left, to right, face down, face up: those who are drunk on pinon only1 fall backwards and face up’.
F 107 R3 (Athenaeus, 429CD):
Aristotle in his work On Drunkenness says: ‘If wine is boiled down slightly, it is less intoxicating when drunk; for when it is boiled down its potency becomes weaker. Older men’, he says, ‘get drunk very quickly because of the scarcity and weakness of the natural heat in them; and very young men get drunk fairly quickly because of the abundance of heat in them—for they are easily overcome by the added heat from the wine. And of the lower animals, pigs get drunk when they are fed on masses of pressed grapes, ravens and dogs when they have eaten the so-called wine-plant, monkeys and elephants when they drink wine. That is why men hunt for monkeys and ravens after getting them drunk on wine or on the wine-plant’.
F 108 R3 (Plutarch, quaestiones convivales 650A):
Florus was surprised that Aristotle, having written in his work On Drunkenness that old men are most susceptible to drunkenness and women least so, did not work out the cause, although he does not normally omit such inquiries.
F 109 R3 (Athenaeus, 429F):
Aristotle says that a pint and a half of watered Samagorian wine, as they call it, will make more than forty men drunk.
F 110 R3, F 111 R3 (Athenaeus, 464CD):
Aristotle in his work On Drunkenness says: ‘The cups they call Rhodian are introduced at drinking-parties both because of their taste and because when heated they make the wine less intoxicating. For they put myrrh, rushes, and other such stuffs into water and bring it to the boil; when this is added to the wine it is less intoxicating’. In another part of the work he says: ‘Rhodian cups are made by boiling together myrrh, rushes, dill, saffron, balsam, cardamom, and cinnamon. The liquor resulting from this is added to the wine and inhibits intoxication to such an extent that, by working on the spirits, it even dispels sexual desire’.
F 112 R3 (Alexander, Commentarius in Topica 63.11–13):
But problems put forward in this way are physical problems, as he [sc. Aristotle] has said in his On Problems; for physical phenomena whose causes are unknown constitute physical problems.
F 114 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, III 80):
Plato, Aristotle says, used to divide things in this way: of goods, some are in the soul, some in the body, some external. For example, justice, wisdom, courage, temperance, and the like are in the soul; beauty, good condition, health, and strength in the body; friends, the happiness of one’s country, and wealth fall among external goods.
F 114 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, III 109):
Thus of existing things, some exist in their own right, others are relative. And according to Aristotle, he [Plato] used to divide the primary things too in this way.
F 116 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Categorias 65.2–10):
But in which [sc. category] are negations, privations, and the various inflexions of the verb to be placed? This question Aristotle himself answered in his Notes. For in his Methodics, in his Divisions, and in another set of Notes entitled On Language (which, even if it is thought by some not to be a genuine work of Aristotle, is at all events the work of some member of the school)—in all of these, after putting forward the categories, he adds ‘I mean these with their cases’ (i.e. inflexions), and he connects his exposition of them with negations, privations, and indefinite terms.
F 117 R3 (Ammonius, Commentarius in Categorias 13.20–25):
It should be known that in the old libraries forty books of Analytics have been found and two of Categories. One began: Of existing things, some are called homonymous, others synonymous’. The other is the one now before us. . . . This version has been preferred as being superior in order and in matter, and as everywhere proclaiming Aristotle as its begetter.
F 118 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Categorias 387.17–388.1):
But now that the language of Aristotle has been clarified, let us see what the more famous interpreters make of the passage. For since the Stoics pride themselves on their working out of logical problems, they are anxious in the matter of contraries—as well as in all other matters—to show that Aristotle furnished the starting point for everything in one book which he called On Opposites, in which there is an immense number of problems set forth. Of these the Stoics have set out a small portion: the rest it would not be reasonable to include in an introduction, but those which the Stoics set out in agreement with Aristotle must be mentioned. There has been laid down an ancient definition of contraries, which we have mentioned previously, viz. that they are the things which differ most from one another within a genus: in his work On Opposites Aristotle subjected this definition to all kinds of tests, and amended it. He asked whether things that differ are contraries, and whether difference can be contrariety, and whether complete divergence is maximum difference, and whether the things that are furthest apart are identical with those that differ most, and what distance is, and how we are to understand maximum distance. Since all this proves to lead to absurdity, something must be added to the genus, so that the definition comes to be ‘the things that are furthest apart in the same genus’. He pointed out the absurdities consequent upon this; he asked whether contrariety is otherness,1 and whether the things that are most different are contraries, and added many other criticisms.. . .[388.13–14] This is only a small part of the difficulties raised by Aristotle in his work On Opposites.
F 119 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Categorias 389.5–10):
He [sc. Aristotle] in his book On Opposites says that justice is contrary to injustice, but that the just man is not said to be contrary, but to be contrarily disposed, to the unjust man. If these too are contraries, he says, ‘contrary’ will be used in two ways: things will be called contraries either in themselves, like excellence and badness, movement and rest, or by virtue of sharing in contraries, e.g. that which moves and that which rests, or the good and the bad.
F 120 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Categorias 389.28–390.5):
This distinction was first drawn by Aristotle, who held that a simple term is not contrary to the definition of its contrary, e.g. that wisdom is not contrary to ignorance of things good, bad and neutral; but that, if there is contrariety here at all, definition is to be opposed to definition, and the definitions should be said to be contrary by being definitions of contrary things. He elaborates further on this by saying that a definition is contrary to a definition if their subjects are contrary in genus or in differentiae or in both; e.g. let the definition of beauty be mutual symmetry of parts; mutual asymmetry of parts is contrary to this, and the contrariety is in respect of the genus; but in other cases it is by virtue of differentiae: e.g. white is colour that pierces the sight, black is colour that compresses it—in these the genus is the same, but there is contrariety in respect of the differentiae.
F 121 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Categorias 390.19–25):
Aristotle himself in his book On Opposites considered whether if someone who has lost one of two things does not of necessity gain the other, there must be something between the two; or whether this is not in all cases so. For a man who has lost a true opinion does not necessarily acquire a false one, nor does he who has lost a false one necessarily acquire a true—sometimes you pass from one opinion to a complete absence of opinion or else to knowledge. But there is nothing between true and false opinion, if ignorance and knowledge are not.
F 122 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Categorias 402.30–403.1):
Aristotle took his distinction between state and privation not from the realm of custom but from that of nature, where the antithesis of state and privation is properly applied.. . . In his book On Opposites he himself says that some privations are privations of natural states, others of customary states, others of possessions, others of certain other things—blindness a privation of a natural state, nakedness a privation of a customary state, loss of money a privation of something acquired in practice. There are several other types of privation, and some it is impossible some possible to lose.
F 124 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in Categorias 409.30–410.2):
In the book On Opposites he added to these types of contrariety also that of things neither good nor bad to things neither good nor bad, saying that it is in this way that white is contrary to black, sweet to bitter, high to low, rest to movement.
F 136 R3 (Cicero, de inventione II ii 6–7):
Aristotle brought together in a single compilation the ancient writers on the art of rhetoric, going right back to their founder and inventor, Tisias; with great care he sought out the main tenets of each author name by name, wrote them down clearly, and meticulously expounded the difficult passages. And with the charm and brevity of his diction he so excelled the inventors themselves that no-one looks to learn their precepts from the original books, but everyone who wants to understand what they were resorts to Aristotle as a far more convenient expositor. Thus Aristotle published his own views and also those of his predecessors, so that from this work we become acquainted both with his own views and with the others.
F 137 R3 (Cicero, Brutus XII 46–48):
Eloquence is the companion of peace, the ally of leisure, and, so to say, the offspring of a well-ordered state. And for this reason, Aristotle says, it was when the tyrants in Sicily had been removed and restitution in private matters was after a long interval being sought in the courts, that for the first time—since that people was sharp and born to controversy—the Sicilians Corax and Tisias wrote Arts and Precepts of rhetoric; for before that no-one was accustomed to speak with the methodical application of technique, although there were several who spoke carefully and precisely. Some discussions of important topics—what are now called commonplaces—were written and prepared by Protagoras; Gorgias too did the same thing, writing speeches in praise and condemnation of particular topics, because he thought that the ability to inflate a topic with praise and again to belittle it with disparagement was the most essential part of being an orator; Antiphon of Rhamnous produced some similar works (and Thucydides, a reliable source, who actually heard him, says that no-one ever offered a better defence against a capital charge than he did when defending himself). Lysias indeed began by claiming to be versed in the art of rhetoric; but later, seeing that Theodorus was more sophisticated in matter of theory though weaker in his speeches, he took to writing speeches for others and abandoned theory; in a similar fashion, Isocrates began by denying that there was any art of rhetoric, during which period he wrote speeches for others to use in the law-courts; but when he found himself repeatedly in court on a charge of breaking the law against circumvention by judicial procedure, he gave up writing speeches for others and devoted himself entirely to composing Arts.
F I40 R3 (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Isocrates XVIII 576–77):
Let no-one suppose that I do not know either that Aphareus (who was an ancestor of mine and was adopted by Isocrates) claimed in his speech against Megacleides on the Antidosis that his father wrote no speeches for the law-courts. or that Aristotle says that a large number of volumes of Isocrates’ forensic speeches were published by the book-sellers. I am indeed aware of these men’s statements, and I neither believe Aristotle (because he wanted to discredit the man) nor fall in with Aphareus (who was putting together a fine-seeming speech on his behalf). I think that Cephisodorus the Athenian is a sufficient judge of the truth here: he lived with Isocrates, was a most faithful pupil, and made a splendid speech for the defence in the counter-pleas against Aristotle. And so I believe that Isocrates did write some speeches for the law-courts—but not many.
F 144 R3 (Athenaeus, 556DF):
One might be surprised, Aristotle says, that nowhere in the Iliad did Homer portray a concubine sleeping with Menelaus, yet presented everyone else with women. Indeed, even the old men—Nestor and Phoenix—sleep with women according to him. For they had not exhausted their bodies in their youth through drunkenness or sex or even through the dyspeptic effects of gluttony, and so not unnaturally they are enjoying a vigorous old age. Thus the Spartan seems to respect his wife Helen, on whose behalf he had actually collected the army; and this is why he avoids sleeping with any other women. Agamemnon is disparaged by Thersites as a womaniser. . . . But it is hardly likely, Aristotle says, that this number of women was for use—it was rather a mark of status; after all, it was not for getting drunk that he had a large supply of wine.
F 149 R3 (Porphyry, apud Scholiast to Homer, Iliad III 277):
Why, having said the sun looks over all things and hears all things, did Homer portray him as needing a messenger in the case of his oxen?. . .
Aristotle resolves this by saying that it is either because the sun indeed sees all things but not at one and the same time; or because Lampetia was messenger to the sun in the way sight is to man; or because, he says, it was appropriate to speak in this way both for Agamemnon when swearing the oath in the Single Combat—‘and sun, you who look over all things and hear all things’—and for Odysseus when addressing his companions; for he does not also see what goes on in Hades.
F 160 R3 (Porphyry, apud Scholiast to Homer, Iliad X 153):
The placing of the spears on their spikes is thought to be poor; especially since a single one of them, by falling over, had already created panic everywhere at night. Aristotle resolves this by saying that Homer always portrays things as they were at that time. And the ancient practice was the same as present practice among the barbarians; and this is the custom of many of the barbarians.
F 161 R3 (Porphyry, apud Scholiast to Homer, Iliad X 252):
For example, it is agreed that the following is one of the old puzzles: ‘and now the star had advanced, and more than two parts of the night had passed, and a third part still remained’. For how is it that if two parts and more have gone, yet the third part is left and not a fraction of the third?. . . Aristotle thinks to resolve it as follows, where he says: ‘Division into two may in this case be division into equal parts. Now since1 what is more than half is indeterminate, when it is increased to such an extent that a third of the whole is left, a stickler for accuracy would determine this and indicate how much remains in order to make clear by how much the half of the whole has been increased. For example, 3 is half of 6. If 6 were divided into two equal parts, they will be 3. If one part is increased, it is unclear whether this is by a fraction or by a whole unit. Now if it becomes larger by a whole unit2, the part still remaining will be a third of the whole; and if you say “one of the two parts became more and left a third part,” you indicate that the increase has been by a unit—since the three have become four and there remain two, which is a third of the original six. Now since the twelve parts of night can be divided into two equal divisions—into sixes—and one of these parts was increased and became larger, and it was unclear by how many hours it had been increased (for the increase could have been by one, two, three, or more hours), the poet determines the size of this indeterminate “more” and, because it was increased by two hours, he adds that a third was left—since eight hours have gone by and four remain, which is a third of the whole. Thus too, if something had 18 parts (dividing into two nines) and you were to say that more than one part of the two-part division has gone and the third part remains, you would make clear, by saying that the third (i.e. 6) remains, that you mean that 12 have been taken. Suppose we ask the same question of the hours of a full day, and suppose someone to say that more than one part of the two-part division of the hours has passed—still without determining how much—and to add that the third part of the whole remains: it is clear that, since the two-part division is into 12 and 12 and a third of the whole (i.e. 8) remains, the “more” of the one part amounts to 4, so that 16 hours have passed in all and 8 remain. Thus when there is a division into two and into three equal parts, anyone who adds to one part of the two-part division and leaves a third of the three-part division, determines in how much more the increase consists. Thus the poet cleverly indicates how large the indeterminate part3 of the increase of the half was—that it consisted of two hours and that the eighth hour has passed4—by saying “and a third part still remained.” For, if you know that the night contains 12 hours in all, and that division into two parts gives 6 and 6, and division into three 4 and 4 and 4,5 and if you hear that more than one part of the two-part division has passed and then learn that a third of the three-part division, i.e. 4 hours, remains, you know at once that two hours have gone by since midnight’.
F 166 R3 (Porphyry, apud Scholiast to Homer, Iliad XXIV 15):
Why did Achilles go on dragging Hector around the tomb of Patroclus, treating the corpse contrary to established custom? There is a solution, Aristotle says, referring to the customs of the time—they were like that, since even today in Thessaly men drag [corpses] around the tombs.
F 170 R3 (Scholiast to Homer, Odyssey V 93):
‘And she mixed red nectar’:
If the gods drink nothing but nectar, why does Calypso give it to Hermes after mixing it? For if it has been mixed with water, they drink not only nectar but water also. And yet, he says, she served him plain ambrosia ‘and mixed red nectar’. Now Aristotle in resolving this says that ‘she mixed’ means either to combine one liquid with another one or to pour out; for ‘to mix’ means both. So here ‘and she mixed red nectar’ means not to combine but simply to pour out.
F 171 R3 (Scholiast to Homer, Odyssey V 334):
Aristotle asks why he speaks of Calypso and Circe and Ino alone as ‘having speech (αὐδἡεσσα)’; for all the others had voices. He did not want to solve this, but emends the text, in some places to αὐλἡεσσα—by which he says is meant that they were solitary—and in the case of Ino to οὐδἡεσσα—for this characteristic belonged to all and only these people since they all resided on earth.
F 172 R3 (Scholiast to Homer, Odyssey IX 106):
Aristotle asks how Polyphemus the Cyclops was a Cyclops himself when neither his father (who was Poseidon) nor his mother was a Cyclops. He himself solves it by reference to another myth; for horses were sired by Boreas, and the horse Pegasus had Poseidon and Medusa as parents.
F 175 R3 (Eustathius, 1717, on Homer, Odyssey XII 130):
It should be recognized that they say that Aristotle gives an allegorical account of these herds, and especially of the herds of oxen, associating them with the days of the twelve lunar months, which number three hundred and fifty; for that is also the number of the seven herds which each contain fifty beasts. That is why Homer says that they neither are born nor die; for those days never vary in amount.
F 182 R3 (David, Prolegomena Philosophiae 74. 17–25):
He [sc. Aristotle] also wrote on economy, where he discusses household management (he says there that four things must come together in a household: the relation of man to wife, love of father for children, fear of slaves for masters, and that expenditure be commensurate with income—for each lack of measure is ignoble: if income is found to be large, expenditure small, there is something ignoble—such a man is found to be miserly; if income is small, expenditure large, there is something ignoble—such a man is found to be extravagant).
F 183 R3 (Clement, Paedagogus III xii 84):
1 would advise even married men not to kiss their wives at home in front of the servants; for Aristotle does not even allow us to laugh in front of our slaves, still less to let our wives be seen to be embraced in their presence.
F 185 R3 (Syrianus, Commentarius in Metaphysica 120.33–121.4):
That he [sc. Aristotle] has nothing more than this to say against the theory of Forms is shown both by the first book of this treatise [i.e. the Metaphysics] and by the two books he wrote On the Forms; for it is by taking everywhere practically these same arguments, and sometimes cutting them up and subdividing them, sometimes putting them forward more concisely, that he tries to correct his predecessors in philosophy.
F 186 R3 (Scholiast to Dionysius Thrax, 116.13–16 Hilgard):
And one must realize that it is of universals and things eternal that there are definitions, as Aristotle too has said in On Ideas, which he wrote against Plato’s Ideas. For while particular things all change and never remain in the same condition, universals are unchangeable and eternal.
(Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 79.3–88.2):
They [sc. the Platonists] made further use of the sciences in establishing the Ideas, and in more ways than one, as he [sc. Aristotle] says in the first book of On Ideas; and the arguments he seems to have in mind at the present moment [i.e. [5] in the Metaphysics] are the following sort. If every science performs its task by referring to some one and the same thing and not to any of the particulars, then there will be with respect to each science something different apart from perceptible individuals, eternal and a pattern for the things produced in each science; and such a thing is the Idea. Again, the things of which there are sciences exist; the sciences are of certain different things apart from particulars (for the latter are infinite and indeterminate, while the sciences are of determinate things); so there are certain [10] things apart from particulars, and these are the Ideas. Again, if medicine is not a science of this particular health but of health simply, there will be a certain health-itself; and if geometry is not a science of this particular equal and this particular commensurate, but of equal simply and the commensurate simply, there will be a certain equal-itself and a commensurate-itself; and these are the Ideas. [15]
Now such arguments do not prove the thesis at issue, which was that there are Ideas; but they do prove that there are certain things apart from particulars and perceptibles. But it does not follow that if there are certain things which are apart from particulars, these are Ideas; for the common objects, which we say are also the objects of the sciences, are apart from the particulars. Again, these arguments show that there are also Ideas of the things that fall under the arts. For every art too [20] refers what is produced by it to some one thing, and things of which there are arts exist, and the arts are of certain different things apart from particulars. And the last argument, besides equally failing to prove that there are Ideas, will also be thought to establish Ideas of things for which they do not wish there to be Ideas. For [80.1] if, because medicine is not a science of this particular health but of health simply, there is some thing health-itself, then such will be the case also in each of the arts. For an art is not of the particular nor of this, but of that simply which is its concern, e.g. carpentry is of chair simply but not of this particular one, and of bed simply but [5] not of this particular one; and sculpture, painting, building, and each of the other arts are similarly related to the things that fall under them. So there will be an Idea of each of the things that fall under the arts—which they do not want.
They also use the following argument to establish the Ideas. If each of the many men is a man, and each of the animals is an animal, and similarly in the other [10] cases; and if in the case of each of these it is not that something is predicated of itself but that some one thing is being predicated of all of them while not being the same as any one of them, then there will be something which is apart from the particulars which exist, separated from them and eternal; for it is predicated always alike of all [15] the changing particulars. And that which is one over many, both separated from them and eternal, is an Idea; so there are Ideas.
This argument, he [sc. Aristotle] says, establishes Ideas even of negations and of things that do not exist. For one and the same negation is predicated of many things and of things which do not exist, and is not the same as any one of the things which it is truly predicated of. For ‘not-man’ is predicated of horse and of dog and of [20] everything apart from man, and for this reason is one thing over many and is not the same as any one of the things of which it is predicated. Again, it always remains alike true of like things; for ‘not-musical’ is true of many things (of everything [81.1] non-musical), and similarly ‘not-man’ of non-men; consequently, there are Ideas also of negations. But that is absurd; for how could there be an Idea of non-being? For if one were to accept that, there would be a single Idea for things that are of different kinds and that differ in every respect—of, as it might be, line and man; for [5] all these are non-horses. Again, there will be a single Idea both of things that are indeterminate and of things that are infinite. But also of what is primary and what is secondary; for both man and animal are non-wood, of which the one is primary, the other secondary—and they did not want there to be either genera or Ideas of such things. Clearly, this argument too fails to show that there are Ideas; but it too [10] tends to show that what is commonly predicated is other than the particulars of which it is predicated. Again, the very people who wish to prove that what is commonly predicated of several things is some single thing and in fact an Idea, try to establish it from negations. For if someone in denying something of several things will do so by referring to some single thing (for someone who says of a man that he is not white and of a horse that it is not white is not in each case denying something [15] peculiar to it but is making reference to some single thing and denying the same white of each), then someone in affirming the same thing of several things will not be affirming something different in each case but there will be some single thing which he is affirming, e.g. man, with reference to some one and the same thing; for as with negation so with affirmation. So there is something that is different apart from what is in the perceptibles, which is the cause of the affirmation that is both true of several things and common, and this is the Idea. Now this argument, he says, [20] produces Ideas not only of things that are affirmed but also of things that are denied; for in both cases there is a similar reference to something single.
The argument that tries to establish that there are Ideas from thinking is as [25] follows. If whenever we think of man or footed or animal, we are thinking of something that is both among the things that exist yet is not one of the particulars (for when the latter have perished the same thought remains), clearly there is something apart from particulars and perceptibles, which we think of whether the latter exist or not; for we are certainly not then thinking of something non-existent. [82.1] And this is a Form and an Idea. Now he says that this argument also establishes Ideas of things that are perishing and have perished, and in general of things that are both particulars and perishable—e.g. of Socrates, of Plato; for we think of these men and keep some image of them even when they no longer exist. And indeed we also think of things that do not exist at all, like a Hippocentaur, a Chimaera: [5] consequently neither does this argument show that there are Ideas.
The argument that tries to establish Ideas from relatives is as follows. In those cases where some same thing is predicated of several things not homonymously but as revealing some single nature, it is true of them either by their strictly being what [83.1] is indicated by what is predicated, as when we say Socrates is a man and Plato is; or by their being likenesses of the genuine things, as when we predicate man of painted men (for in the case of these latter we reveal the likenesses of men by indicating the same particular nature in all of them); or on the grounds of one of them being the [5] pattern, while the rest are likenesses, as if we were to call both Socrates and likenesses of him men. And we predicate the equal itself of things here, although it is predicated of them only homonymously; for neither does the same account fit all of them, nor do we indicate things that are truly equal; for among perceptibles quantity changes and shifts continuously and is not determinate. Nor moreover do [10] any of the things here accurately receive the account of the equal. And no more indeed on the grounds of one of them being pattern, the other likeness; for one is no more pattern or likeness than the other. And even if someone were to accept that the likeness is not homonymous with its pattern, it still follows that these equal things are equal as likenesses of that which is strictly and truly equal. And if this is the case, there is some equal itself quite strictly, relative to which things here, as [15] likenesses, are both produced and called equal, and this is an Idea, a pattern for those things which are produced relative to it.
This argument, Aristotle says, establishes Ideas even of relative terms. At any rate the present proof has been advanced in the case of the equal, which is a relative; but they used to say that there were no Ideas of relatives because while Ideas, being for them kinds of substances, existed in their own right, relatives had their being in [25] their relationship to one another. And again, if the equal is equal to an equal, there will be more than one Idea of the equal; for the equal-itself is equal to an equal-itself; for if it were not equal to something, it would not be equal at all. Again, by the same argument there will have to be Ideas of unequals too; for opposites are [30] in a similar case—there will or will not be Ideas of both; and the unequal is admitted by them too to involve more things than one.
The argument which introduces the third man is as follows. They say that what are commonly predicated of substances both are strictly such things and are Ideas. [84.1] And again, things that are like each other are like each other by sharing in the same certain thing, which is strictly the thing in question; and this is the Idea. But if this is the case, and what is commonly predicated of certain things, if it is not the same as any one of those things of which it is predicated, is some other thing apart from it (for that is why man-himself is a genus—because while being predicated of the [5] particulars it is not the same man as any of them), then there will be some third man apart both from the particular, e.g. Socrates and Plato, and from the Idea; and this too will be itself one in number.
And there was an argument presented by the sophists introducing the third man as follows. If when we say ‘a man is walking’ we are saying neither that man as [10] an Idea is walking (for the Idea is not capable of motion) nor that some particular individual is (how could we when we do not know who it is? For while we know that a man is walking we do not know which particular man it is of whom we are saying it), we are saying that some other third man apart from these is walking: so there [15] will be a third man of whom we predicated the walking. Now this argument, which is sophistical, is given encouragement by those who separate what is common from the particulars, as those who posit the Ideas do. And Phanias says, in Against Diodorus, that the sophist Polyxenus introduced the third man by saying “If it is both by participation and sharing in the Idea, i.e. in man-himself, that man exists, then there must be some man who will have his existence relative to the Idea. But [20] neither man-himself, i.e. the Idea, exists by participation in the Idea, nor does any particular man. It remains then that there is some third man who has his existence relative to the Idea.”
The third man is proved also in the following way. If what is predicated truly of several items is also something other apart from the things of which it is predicated, separated from them (for it is this that those who posit the Ideas think to [25] prove; for in their opinion man-himself is something because man is predicated truly of particular men, who are more than one in number, and is different from these particular men)—but if this is so, there will be some third man. For if the man that is predicated is different from those of whom he is predicated, and exists on his own, and man is predicated both of the particular men and of the Idea, then there [85.1] will be some third man apart both from the particular and from the Idea. On this basis there will be also a fourth man, predicated of the third man, of the Idea, and of the particulars; and similarly also a fifth, and so on ad infinitum.
This argument is the same as the first; this comes about for them because they [5] supposed that like things were like by sharing in the same thing; for both men and the Ideas are like. Now he refuted both these arguments though they were thought to be rather refined, the one on the grounds that it established Ideas even of relative terms, and the other because it introduces a third man and then multiplies men to infinity. And a similar multiplication will be suffered by any of the other things of which they say there are Ideas. While others have used the first exposition of the third man—there is a specially clear use by Eudemus in his On Diction—the last [10] was used by Aristotle himself both in the first book of On Ideas and a little later on in the present work [i.e. the Metaphysics].
Now they are more—in fact most—concerned to establish that there are first [15] principles; for first principles are for them first principles of the Ideas themselves. And the one and indefinite dyad are first principles, as he has said a little earlier and has himself explained in his On the Good; but in their view these are the first principles of number too. Now he says that these arguments for establishing the Ideas destroy these first principles.
And if these are destroyed, the things after the first principles will also be [20] destroyed, given that they come from the first principles; so consequently the Ideas too will be. For if in the case of all things which have a common predicate it is both separated and an Idea, and if the dyad is predicated of the indefinite dyad too, there will be something primary and an Idea of this latter; and consequently the indefinite dyad will no longer be a first principle. But nor will the dyad in its turn be both primary and a first principle; for number is predicated of it in its turn since it is an [25] Idea; for the Ideas are assumed by them to be numbers: consequently number, being a kind of Idea, will be primary for them. And if this is so, number will be prior to the [86.1] indefinite dyad, which is for them a first principle, but not the dyad to number; and if this is so, the dyad would no longer be a first principle, if it is what it is by sharing in something. Again, while it is assumed to be a first principle of number, yet according to the argument just stated number becomes prior to it; but if number is relative (for every number is a number of something), and number is first of the [5] things that exist, given that it is prior even to the dyad which they assumed as a first principle, then on their view what is relative will be prior to what exists in its own right. And that is absurd; for everything relative is secondary. For a relative indicates the condition of a pre-existing nature, which is prior to that condition which happens to belong to it. . . . But even if someone were to say that number is a [10] quantity and not a relative, it would have as a consequence that quantity was prior to substance.
Again, they are committed to saying that what is relative is both a first principle of and prior to what exists in its own right, in so far as the Idea is in their view a first principle of substances, and what it is for an Idea to be an Idea lies in its [15] being a pattern, and a pattern is relative; for a pattern is a pattern of something. Again, if being for Ideas lies in their being patterns, then things that come into being in relation to them and of which they are Ideas will be likenesses of them; and so someone might say that according to them all naturally constituted things become relative; for all things are likenesses and patterns. Again, if being for Ideas [20] lies in their being patterns, and a pattern exists for the sake of what comes into being relative to it, and what exists on account of something else is less worthy than that thing, then the Ideas will be less worthy than what comes into being relative to them.
The following are some of the arguments which, in addition to those already stated, through the positing of Ideas destroy their first principles. If what is [87.5] commonly predicated of certain things is both the first principle and Idea of those things, and if first principle is commonly predicated of the first principles and element of the elements, there will be something prior to and a first principle of the first principles and of the elements; and in this way there will be neither first principles nor elements. Again Idea is not prior to Idea; for all Ideas similarly are first principles. And the one-itself and the dyad-itself are alike Ideas—as is [10] man-itself and horse-itself and each of the other Ideas; so there will not be any of these that is prior to any other—so that none will be a first principle either; so it is not the case that the one and the indefinite dyad are first principles. Again, it is absurd that an Idea should be given form by an Idea; for all are Forms; but if the one and the indefinite dyad are first principles, there will be Ideas given form by Ideas; for the dyad-itself will be given form by the one-itself; for it is in this way that they say that these are first principles—in the sense that one is form, the dyad [15] matter; so these are not first principles. And if they say that the indefinite dyad is not an Idea, then first there will be something prior to it although it is a first principle; for there is the dyad-itself, by sharing in which even this is a dyad, since this is not the dyad-itself; for it is by virtue of sharing that dyad will be predicated of it, since the same goes for particular dyads. Again, if the Ideas are simple, they will not come from different first principles, but the one and the indefinite dyad are [20] different. Again, the number of dyads will be amazing if one is the dyad-itself, another the indefinite dyad, another the mathematical dyad, which we use in counting and which is not the same as either of the former, and again besides these another in numerable and perceptible things. This is absurd; so that clearly by [88.1] following the very assumptions made by them it is possible to destroy the first principles, which are for them more important than the Ideas.
(Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 97.27–98.24):
That it is not, as Eudoxus and some others thought, by mixture with the Ideas that other things exist: Aristotle says it is easy to infer many impossibilities as consequences of this opinion. If the Ideas are mixed with the other things, in the [98.1] first place, they will be bodies; for it is of bodies that there is mixture. Again, they will be contrary to each other; for mixture occurs with respect to contrariety. Again, mixture will occur in such a way that either a whole Idea will be in each of the things with which it is mixed or else part of one. But if a whole, then what is one in number will be in several things; for an Idea is one in number. While if in parts, a [5] man will be what participates in a part of man-himself, not what participates in man-himself as a whole. Again, Ideas will be divisible and partible, although they are impassive. Then they will be uniform if all things which have some part from it are like each other. But how can the Forms be uniform? For part of man cannot be a [10] man, as a part of gold is gold. Again, as Aristotle himself says a little later [sc. in the Metaphysics], in each thing there will not be one Idea mixed but many; for if there is one Idea of animal and another of man, and a man is both an animal and a man, he will participate in both Ideas. And man-himself, the Idea, insofar as it is also an animal, will also itself participate in animal; and consequently the Ideas will no longer be simple but composed from many, and some of them primary, others [15] secondary. But if it is not an animal, surely it is absurd to say that man is not an animal? And again, if they are mixed with things that are relative to them, how can they still be patterns, as they say they are? For it is not in this way, as the result of a mixture, that patterns are causes of the similarity that their likenesses have to them. And again, they will be destroyed along with the destruction of the things they are in. Nor yet will they be in themselves separable, but will be in the things that [20] participate in them. In addition to these points, they will no longer be unchangeable—and all the other absurdities which Aristotle in his examination of this opinion in the second book of his On Ideas showed it to have. For it was for this reason that he said ‘for it is easy to infer many impossibilities against this view’—for they were inferred there.
F 191 R3 (Apollonius, historiae mirabiles 6):
Again in Caulonia, according to Aristotle . . .1 in addition to much other information about him, he says that in Tyrrhenia he killed a deadly biting snake by biting it himself. He also says that Pythagoras foretold to the Pythagoreans the coming political strife; that is why he departed to Metapontum unobserved by anyone, and while he was crossing the Cosas he, with others, heard the river say “Good morning, Pythagoras”—and those present were terrified. He once appeared both at Croton and at Metapontum on the same day and at the same hour. Once, while sitting in the theatre, he stood up—so Aristotle tells—and showed those sitting there his own thigh, which was golden.
F 191 R3 (Aelian, varia historia II 26):
Aristotle says that Pythagoras was called by the people of Croton the Hyperborean Apollo. The son of Nicomachus adds that Pythagoras was once seen by many people, on the same day and at the same hour, both at Metapontum and at Croton; and at Olympia, during the games, he got up and showed that one of his thighs was golden.2 The same writer says that while crossing the river Cosas he was hailed by the river, and that many people heard him so hailed.
F 192 R3 (lamblichus, vita pythagorica VI 31):
Aristotle relates in his books On the Pythagorean Philosophy that the following division was preserved by the Pythagoreans as one of their greatest secrets: of rational living creatures, some are gods, some men, and some beings like Pythagoras.
F 193 R3 (Apuleius, de deo Socratis XX 166–7):
But I suppose Aristotle is a sufficient witness to the fact that the Pythagoreans marvelled greatly at anyone who said he had never seen a divine being.
F 194 R3 (Aulus Gellius, IV xi 12):
Since the fact is unexpected, I add Plutarch’s own words: ‘Aristotle says the Pythagoreans abstain from eating womb and heart, the sea anemone, and certain other such things, but use all other kinds’.
F 194 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, VIII 19):
Aristotle says that at times they [sc. the Pythagoreans] abstain from womb and red mullet.
F 195 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, VIII 34):
Aristotle says in his work On the Pythagoreans that he [sc. Pythagoras] enjoyed abstention from beans either because they are like the genitals or because they are like the gates of Hades . . .1 (for they alone have no joints), or because they are destructive, or because they are like the nature of the universe, or because they are oligarchical (being used in the choice of rulers by lot).
F 196 R3 (Porphyry, Vita Pythagorae 41):
Pythagoras used to say certain things in a mystical and symbolic way, and Aristotle has recorded many of these; e.g. that he called the sea the tears of Cronos, the Bears the hands of Rhea, the Pleiades the lyre of the Muses, the planets the dogs of Persephone; the ringing sound of bronze when struck was, he said, the voice of a divine being imprisoned in the bronze.
F 197 R3 (Porphyry, Vita Pythagorae 42):
There was also another kind of symbol, of the following sort: ‘Do not step over a balance’, i.e. do not be covetous: ‘Do not poke the fire with a sword’, i.e. do not vex with sharp words a man swollen with anger; ‘Do not pluck the crown’, i.e. do not offend against the laws which are the crowns of cities. Or again, ‘Do not eat heart’, i.e. do not vex yourself with grief: ‘Do not sit on the corn ration’, i.e. do not live in idleness; ‘When on a journey do not turn back’, i.e. when you are dying, do not cling to this life; ‘Do not walk the highway’, i.e. do not follow the opinions of the many but pursue those of the few and educated; ‘Do not receive swallows in your house’, i.e. do not take into your house talkative men who cannot control their tongues; ‘Add to the burdens of the burdened, do not lighten them’, i.e. contribute to no man’s sloth, but to his excellence; ‘Do not carry images of the gods in your rings’, i.e. do not make your thought and speech about the gods manifest and obvious, nor show it to many; ‘Make your libations to the gods at the ear of the cup’, i.e. celebrate and honour the gods with music, for this goes through the ears.
F 198 R3 (Martianus Capella, VII 731):
(Philosophy speaks). ‘Although Aristotle, one of my followers, reasoning from the fact that it [sc. the unit] itself is one alone and wishes always to be sought after, asserts that it is called Desire because it desires itself, since it has nothing beyond itself and, never carried beyond itself or linked with other things, turns its own ardours on itself.’
F 199 R3 (Theo of Smyrna, p. 22. 5–9 Hiller):
But Aristotle in his Pythagoreans says that the One partakes of the nature of both; for added to an even number it makes an odd, and added to an odd an even, which it could not do if it did not share in both natures; and that for this reason the One was called even-odd.
F 200 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo, 386.20–23):
Right, above and before they called good, and left, below and behind evil, as Aristotle himself related in his collection of Pythagorean doctrines.
F 201 R3 (Stobaeus, Eclogae I xviii 1c):
In the first book of his work On the Philosophy of Pythagoras Aristotle writes that the heaven is one, and that time and breath and the void, which divides for ever the regions of different things, are drawn in from the infinite.
F 202 R3 (Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 75.15–17):
Of the arrangement in the heavens which the Pythagoreans assigned to the numbers, Aristotle informs us in the second book of his work On the Belief of the Pythagoreans.
F 203 R3 (Alexander, Commentarius in Metaphysica 38.8–41.2):
He [sc. Aristotle] has shown what likenesses the Pythagoreans said there were between numbers and the things that exist and come into being; for assuming that [10] reciprocity and equality were properties of justice and finding them to exist in numbers, they said, for this reason, that the first square number was justice, for in every case the first of a number of things that admit of the same definition is most truly that which it is said to be. Now this number some declared to be the number 4, because, being the first square number, it is divided into equals and is itself equal [15] (being twice 2), while others declared it to be the number 9, which is the first square number produced by multiplying an odd number (3) by itself. Again, they said the number 7 was season; for natural things seem to have their perfect seasons of birth and completion in terms of sevens, as in the case of man. Men are born after seven months, they begin to grow their teeth in seven months, they reach puberty about the end of the second set of seven years, and grow beards about the end of the third. [20] The sun, too, since it is itself thought to be (as he says) the cause of seasons, they maintain to be established where the number 7 resides, which they identify with season; for the sun holds the seventh place among the ten bodies that move round [39.1] the centre and hearth of the universe; it moves after the sphere of the fixed stars and the five spheres of the planets; after it come the moon, eighth, and the earth, ninth, and after the earth the counter-earth. Since the number 7 neither generates nor is generated by any of the numbers in the decad, for this reason they also said that it [5] was Athene. For the number 2 generates 4, 3 generates 9 and 6, 4 generates 8, and 5 generates 10, and 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 are generated, but 7 neither generates any number nor is generated from any; and so too Athene was motherless and ever virgin. Marriage, they said, was the number 5, because it is the union of male and [10] female, and according to them the odd is male and the even female, and 5 is the first number generated from the first even number, 2, and the first odd number, 3; for the odd is for them (as I said) male, and the even female. Mind (which was the name they1 gave to soul) and substance they identified with the One. Because it was unchanging, alike everywhere, and a ruling principle they called mind both a unit [15] and one; but they also applied these names to substance, because it is primary. Opinion they identified with the number 2 because it can move in both directions; they also called it movement and addition. Picking out such likenesses between things and numbers, they assumed numbers to be the first principles of things, saying that all things are composed of numbers.
[20] But they also saw the harmonies to be constituted according to particular numbers, and said that numbers were the first principles of these also; the octave depends on the ratio 2:1, the fifth on the ratio 3:2, the fourth on the ratio 4:3. They said, too, that the whole universe is constructed in accordance with a certain harmony . . . because it consists of numbers and is constructed in accordance with [25] number and harmony. For the bodies that move round the centre have their distances in a certain ratio, and some move faster and others slower, and in their movement the slower strike a deep note and the faster a high one, and these notes, [40.1] being proportionate to the distances, make the resultant sound harmonious; and since they said that number was the first principle of this harmony, they naturally made number the first principle of the heavens and of the universe. For they thought the sun to be, say, twice as far from the earth as the moon, Venus to be [5] three times as far, Mercury four times, and each of the others to be in a certain ratio, and the movement of the heavens to be harmonious, and the bodies that move the greatest distance to move the fastest, those that move the least distance the slowest, and the intermediate bodies to move in proportion to the size of their orbit. [10] On the basis of these likenesses between things and numbers, they supposed existing things both to be composed of numbers and to be particular numbers.
Thinking numbers to be prior to nature as a whole as to natural things (for nothing could either exist or be known at all without number, while numbers could be known even apart from other things), they laid it down that the elements and [15] first principles of numbers are the first principles of all things. These elements were, as has been said, the even and the odd, of which they thought the odd to be limited and the even unlimited; of numbers they thought the unit was the first principle, composed of both the even and the odd; for the unit was at the same time even-odd, which he used to prove from its power of generating both odd and even number: added to an even it generates an odd, added to an odd it generates an even. [20]
As regards the agreements which they found between numbers and harmonious combinations on the one hand, and the attributes and parts of the heavens on the other, they took these for granted straight off, as being obvious, and showed that the heavens are composed of numbers and arranged in harmony. If any of the celestial phenomena seemed to fail to conform with the numerical principles, they made the [25] necessary additions themselves and tried to fill the gap so as to make their whole treatment of the matter consistent. At least, treating the decad straight off as the perfect number, and seeing that in the visible world the moving spheres are nine in number—seven spheres of the planets, the eighth that of the fixed stars, the ninth the earth (for this, too, they thought, moves in a circle about the resting hearth of [30] the universe, which according to them is fire)—they added, in their system, a counter-earth, which they supposed to move in an opposite direction to the earth, and to be for that reason invisible to those on earth.
Aristotle speaks of these matters both in the De Caelo and, with greater [41.1] precision, in his Beliefs of the Pythagoreans.
F 204 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo 511.26–31):
The Pythagoreans . . . do not say that the earth is about the centre, but that the centre of the universe is a fire, and that about the centre the counter-earth moves, being itself an earth but called a counter-earth because it is on the opposite side to our earth. ‘After the counter-earth came our earth, itself also moving about the centre, and after the earth the moon’: so he himself [sc. Aristotle] relates in his work On the Pythagorean Doctrines.
F 204 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo 512.12–13):
For this reason, some call it [sc. fire] the tower of Zeus, as Aristotle himself related in his work On the Pythagorean Doctrines . . .
F 205 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo 392.16–32):
How can he [sc. Aristotle] say that the Pythagoreans place us in the upper part and on the right side of the universe, and those opposite to us in the lower part and on the left side if, as he himself relates in the second book of his collection of Pythagorean doctrines, they say that one part of the whole universe is up and the other down, and that the lower part is right and the upper left, and that we are in the lower part? Is it that he has used the words ‘upper’ and ‘on the right’ here [sc. in the de Caelo] in accordance not with his own view but with that of the Pythagoreans? They coupled up and before with right, down and behind with left. But Alexander thinks that the statement in Aristotle’s collection of Pythagorean doctrines has been altered by someone and should run thus—‘the upper part of the universe is on the right, the lower part on the left, and we are in the upper part,’ not in the lower as the text now runs. In this way it will agree with what he says here, that we, who say we live in the lower part and therefore on the left side (since the lower part is coupled with the left side) are in opposition to the Pythagorean statement that we live in the upper part and on the right side. That the text has been altered is perhaps likely, since Aristotle knows that the Pythagoreans coupled the higher position with the right side and the lower with the left.
F 206 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo 296.16–18):
In his epitome of Plato’s Timaeus he [sc. Aristotle] writes: ‘He says it [sc. the universe] is generated; for it is perceptible, and he is assuming that what is perceptible is generated and that what is intelligible is not generated.’
F 207 R3 (Damascius, dubitationes et solutiones 306):
Aristotle in his work on Archytas relates that Pythagoras too called matter ‘other’, as being in flux and always becoming other.
F 208 R3 (Simplicius, Commentaria in de Caelo 294.33–295.22):
A few words quoted from Aristotle’s On Democritus will reveal the line of thought of those men [sc. the Atomists]:—Democritus thinks the nature of the eternal entities consists of small substances infinite in number; he supposes a place for them, different from them and infinite in extent, and to this he applies the names ‘void’, ‘nothing’, and ‘the infinite’, while to each of the substances he applies the names ‘thing’, ‘solid’, and ‘existent’. He thinks the substances are so small as to escape our senses, but have all sorts of shapes and figures, and differences of size. From these, then,1 as from elements, are generated and compounded visible and perceptible masses. The substances are at variance and move in the void because of their dissimilarity as well as the other aforesaid differences, and as they move they collide with each other and interlock in such a way that, while they touch and get close to each other, yet a single substance is never in reality produced from them; for it would be very simple-minded to suppose that two or more things could ever become one. The cause of these substances remaining with one another for some time he ascribes to the bodies fitting into one another and catching hold of one another; for some of them are scalene, others hook-shaped, others concave, others convex, and others have countless other differences. He thinks that they cling to one another and remain together until some stronger necessity arriving from the environment scatters them apart and separates them. He ascribes the genesis and the separation opposed to it not only to animals but also to plants, and to worlds, and generally to all perceptible bodies.
F 209 R3 (Aulus Gellius, XX iv 3–4):
. . .I sent him words excerpted from a book of Aristotle’s entitled Standard Problems: ‘Why are the Dionysian artists for the most part bad? Because they have hardly any share in reason and philosophy, since the great part of their life is involved in necessary skills, and because for a large part of the time they are in a state of incontinence, and sometimes in a state of poverty—and both of these conditions incline to produce badness’.
F 211 R3 (Simplicius, Commentarius in de Caelo 505.23–25):
Aristotle too makes this clear in his Scientific Problems, where he raises puzzles for the assumptions of the astronomers from the fact that the sizes of the planets do not appear equal.
F 214 R3 (Aulus Gellius, XIX v 9):
I have extracted from the book a few of Aristotle’s own words and written them down: ‘Why is water from snow and ice bad? Because whenever water is frozen the finest and lightest part turns to vapour. A sign of this is that when it freezes and then thaws it becomes less than before; therefore, once the healthiest part has gone, of necessity in every case what is left behind is worse’.
F 215 R3 (Plutarch, quaestiones naturales 912A):
Why are trees and seeds naturally nourished more by rain water than by running water? . . . Or is what Aristotle says true?—that it is because rain water is recent and fresh while pool water is stale and old.
F 225 R3 (Galen, de simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis XII 164 K):
Now astringent things once they have been burnt lose much of their heat, while things that are not of that sort gain in heat. But nothing which has been burnt is completely cold. For there is left behind in it as it were a kind of ember (that is how Aristotle names it); and this is what is cleaned away in washing. It is the lightest part of the substance of burnt things, and when it departs along with the water, what is left of the burnt thing is an earthy substance; for the burning exhausts all the moisture, and what is left behind is earthy together with what Aristotle calls the ember.
F 232 R3 (Apollonius, historiae mirabiles 51):
Aristotle talks of something worthy of note in his Scientific Problems: he says that a man who has fed and drunk weighs the same as when he is fasting; and he also attempts to give an account of the cause of this.
F 234 R3 (Apollonius, historiae mirabiles 9):
Aristotle in his Scientific Problems says: ‘Those who eat only one meal a day are likely to have more irritable characters than those who eat two’.
F 235 R3 (Athenaeus, 692BC):
Aristotle, the most learned of men, asks in his Scientific Problems: ‘Why is it that those who use hair-oil are greyer? Is it because the oil is a drying agent because of the herbs in it (hence those who use hair-oil are dry), and dryness makes men greyer? For either greyness is a drying up of the hair or it is a lack of heat—and dryness puts out fire. That is why felt caps also make men go grey more quickly; for the natural moisture of the hair is drawn out’.
F 237 R3 (Apollonius, historiae mirabiles 28):
Aristotle in Pertaining to Animals: ‘Wax in the ears, being bitter, becomes sweet in long illnesses’. And this, he says, has been observed to occur in many cases. And in the Scientific Problems he also gives the cause of this occurrence.
F 242 R3 (Plutarch, quaestiones convivales 734DF):
. . . what they say about dreams—that they are particularly uncertain and false during the months when the leaves fall—somehow came up after dinner. . . . Your friends—my sons—thought that Aristotle had solved the puzzle, and they believed that there was no need to argue or search any further, except to say as he does that the harvest is the cause. For fruit, when it is fresh and juicy, generates a quantity of disorderly wind in the body; for it is not likely that wine alone boils and protests or that oil alone when newly pressed causes the lamps to sputter as the heat makes the wind rise in waves–rather, we see that new grain and all fruits stretch and swell until they exhale gaseous and unconcocted matter. To show that some foods bring bad dreams and disturb our sleeping visions, they adduce beans and the head of the octopus, from which those who resort to divination through dreams are ordered to abstain.
F 243 R3 (Aulus Gellius, XIX vi 1):
In the Problems of the philosopher Aristotle, this is written: ‘Why is it that those who are ashamed turn red and those who are afraid turn pale, although those emotions are very similar? Because the blood of those who are ashamed runs from the heart to all the parts of the body and thus rises to the surface, while the blood of those who are afraid rushes together to the heart and thus leaves the other parts’.
F 244 R3 (Aulus Gellius, I xi 17–19):
However, Aristotle in the books of Problems, wrote that the custom of marching into battle to the tunes of flute-players was begun by the Spartans in order that the confidence and keenness of the soldiers might become more evident and more certain. For, he says, marching in this manner is least compatible with lack of confidence and fear, and men depressed and fearful are incapable of such an intrepid and seemly mode of advance. I have added a few words of Aristotle’s on the matter: ‘Why is it that whenever men are about to run into danger, they advance to the flute? In order that they may recognise the cowards by their failure to keep time. . . .’1
F 246 R3 (Photius, Bibliotheca 249. 441b6–15):
Aristotle dealt with this topic [sc. the flooding of the Nile]. For he himself actually thought the matter out on the basis of nature, determining to send Alexander of Macedonia to those parts and to discover by inspection the causes of the Nile’s increase. That is why he says that this is no longer a problem; for it has been plainly observed that it increases from the rains, and—what is paradoxical—that in the driest parts of Ethiopia where there is neither winter nor water there occur rainstorms in the summer.
F 252 R3 (Scholiast to Aratus, 1095. p. 547 Maass):
Aristotle says: ‘Whenever the air is cold and wet, then at that time the islands, being moistened, produce vegetation and supply food for the birds there; but whenever the air is arid and dry, then since the islands produce no vegetation at all, the island birds flee to the mainland where they can find at least a little nourishment. And when the jackdaws fly from the islands it is a sign to farmers of drought and poor harvests; but if they migrate in season they indicate a good harvest’.
F 267 R3 (Athenaeus. 652A):
Aristotle in On Plants: ‘Of seedless dates, which some call “eunuchs” and others “stoneless”. . . .’
F 284 R3 (Strabo, XV xxii 695):
Aristotle relates that there have been cases of septuplets [sc. in Egypt], and himself calls the Nile very fertile and nourishing, because of the moderate concoction from the periods of the sun which leave behind the nourishing factor while evaporating the superfluous.
F 286 R3 (Pliny, naturalis historia XI cliv 273):
I am surprised that Aristotle not only believed but actually stated that there are certain signs of longevity in the body itself. And although I think that his view is baseless and should not be published without hesitation (lest everyone anxiously hunts for such signs in himself), nevertheless I shall touch on it because so learned a man did not despise it. Thus he lays down that signs of a short life are few teeth, long fingers, leaden complexion, and a large number of broken lines on the palm; on the other hand, long life is given to those who have sloping shoulders, one or two long lines on their palms, more than thirty two teeth, and big ears.
F 288 R3 (Apollonius, historiae mirabiles 27):
Aristotle in Pertaining to Animals (for there are two works by him, On Animals and Pertaining to Animals) says: ‘Lice on the head do not perish during long illnesses; but when the patient is on the point of death the lice are found on the pillows, having abandoned the head’.
F 294 R3 (Athenaeus, 305D):
Aristotle in On Animals: ‘Others are toothless and smooth, like the needlefish; some are stoneheaded, like the cremys; some are very hard and rough-skinned, like the boar-fish; some have two stripes, like the seserinus; some have many stripes and red lines, like the saupe’.
F 297 R3 (Athenaeus, 286F):
Aristotle, in the work entitled Pertaining to Animals or On Fish, says: ‘Those with dorsal markings are called bogues, those with oblique markings mackerel’.
F 298 R3 (Athenaeus, 313D):
Aristotle in his Pertaining to Animals writes thus: ‘Fish with speckled tails include the blacktail and the sarg—they have many black markings’.
Aristotle in his Pertaining to Animals: ‘Some have black speckles, like the blackbird; others variegated speckles, like the thrush’.
F 308 R3 (Athenaeus, 277E):
Now when some bonito had been served, someone said: ‘Aristotle records that these have covered gills, that they are saw-toothed, belong to the gregarious and carnivorous groups, and have a gall-bladder and a spleen as long as their gut. And it is said that when they are caught they jump up and bite off the hook, thus escaping’.
F 311 R3 (Athenaeus, 298B):
Aristotle says that eels like very clean water. So eel-breeders pour clean water on them—for they are stifled in turbid water. That is why those who hunt them stir up the water in order to stifle them. For they have small gills and the ducts are immediately blocked by the mud. Thus during storms too, when the water is disturbed by the winds, they stifle. They copulate by twining together, and they then release a glue-like substance from themselves which, left in the mud, becomes a living creature. Eel-breeders say that they feed at night and lie still in the mud during the day; and they live, for the most part, for eight years.
F 346 R3 (Athenaeus, 389AB):
Aristotle says this about the creature: ‘The partridge is a land animal, with divided feet; it lives for fifteen years, though the female lives for even longer (for among birds the female are longer-lived than the males). It broods over its eggs and hatches them like a domestic hen. When it realizes that it is being hunted, it runs out in front of its nest and limps along by the hunter’s legs, giving him the hope of catching it; and it deceives him until the nestlings have flown away—whereupon it flies away itself. The creature is bad-natured and mischievous; it is also salacious. That is why it breaks the female’s eggs—so that it may tread her again. Thus the female, recognising this, runs away to lay’.
F 363 R3 (Aelian, de natura animalium XVI 33):
Aristotle says that the horns and ears of the cattle among the Neuri grow out of the same spot and are knitted together. The same author says that a certain place in Libya has goats with their udders suspended from their breasts. The following too is from the son of Nicomachus: he says that among the Boudini who live by the Cariscus white sheep are not to be found—they are all black.
F 366 R3 (Aelian, de natura animalium V 8):
Aristotle says that the land of the Astypalaeans is hostile to snakes, just as—so the same author tells us—Rhenea is to weasels.
F 368 R3 (Aelian, de natura animalium IV 57):
Aristotle says that a man who has been bitten by a water-snake immediately gives off a very heavy smell, so that no-one is able to approach him. According to the same author, anyone who has been bitten is overcome by drowsiness—and in fact a great mist comes over his eyes, and madness and very violent trembling ensue, and he dies two days later.
F 373 R3 (Galen, Commentarius in Hippocratis de natura hominis XV 25–26 K):
And if you want to investigate the opinions of the old doctors, you can read the volumes of the medical collection which are ascribed to Aristotle but are agreed to have been written by his pupil Menon—which is why some call them the Menonia. It is clear that Menon carefully sought out those books of the old doctors which were still extant in his time, and thence collected their opinions.
F 380 R3 (Vita Aristotelis Marciana 170–5 Gigon):
And in mathematics he showed that the cone of the lines of sight is acute-angled because the line of sight extends further than the magnitude which it sees. And for this reason none of the things seen is seen as a whole at one and the same time, and hence the axis is larger than the base and the cone is acute-angled.
F 472 R3 (Athenaeus, 272D):
In the Constitution of the Aeginetans Aristotle says that they had 470,000 slaves.
F 473 R3 (Strabo, VII vii 2):
Aristotle’s Constitutions show that from of old they [sc. the Leleges] were nomads, both in association with them [sc. the Carians] and by themselves. For in the Constitution of the Acarnanians he says that while the Curetes held part of it [sc. of Acarnania], the Leleges, and then the Teleboae, held the western part. And in that of the Aetolians he calls Leleges those who are now Locrians, and he says that they also held Boeotia. Similarly in those of the Opuntians and of the Megarians. In that of the Leucadians he also names an autochthonous Lelex, his grandson Teleboa, and the latter’s twenty-two children, the Teleboae, some of whom settled in Leucas.
F 476 R3. F 510 R3 (Pollux, IV 174):
Aristotle, in the Constitution of the Acragantines, having said that they used to levy a fine of fifty litres, adds that ‘the litre is worth an Aeginetan obol.’ And in the Constitution of the Himerans he says that the Siceliots call two bronze pieces a dizas, one an ounce, three a trias, six a half-litre, an obol a litre, a Corinthian stater a decalitre (which is worth ten obols).
F 486 R3 (Scholiast to Pindar, Pythian I 89):
Aristotle says in the Constitution of the Geloans that Hieron’s brother died of dropsy, and, in the Constitution of the Syracusans, that Hieron himself suffered from cystitis.
F 491 R3 (Strabo. VIII vi 15):
Epidaurus used to be called Epicarus. For Aristotle says that the Carians held it, as they also held Hermione; but that when the Heraclidae returned, Ionians from the Attic Tetrapolis followed them to Argos and settled with the Carians.
F 492 R3 (Harpocration, s.v. ‘Eλλανoδἱκαι):
. . . Aristotle in the Constitution of the Eleans says that to begin with the Eleans appointed one Hellanodikes, but after a time two, and finally eight.
F 496 R3 (Eustathius, 1747, on Odyssey XIII 408):
The same author [sc. Pausanias] says that Aristotle relates that when a plague struck them [sc. the Boeotians] and a large flock of crows appeared, the men hunted down the crows, purified them with incantations, and let them go free; and they said to the plague: ‘Go to the crows’.
F 497 R3 (Harpocration, s.v. τετραρχία):
Aristotle in the Constitution of the Thessalians says that in the time of Aleuas the Red Thessaly was divided into four portions.
F 498 R3 (Scholiast to Euripides, Rhesus 311
Aristotle in the Constitution of the Thessalians writes as follows: ‘Dividing up the government. . .1 Aleuas ordered that each group according to lot should provide fifty cavalrymen and eighty peltasts. A peltê is a shield without a rim, not bronze-covered but made of stretched sheep- or goat-skin (not of cow-hide). And they all carried three javelins and a short spear called a schedion’.
F 501 R3 (Scholiast to Dionysius Thrax, p. 183.1–5 Hilgard):
Others, including Ephorus in his second book, say that Cadmus was the inventor of the alphabet. But some say that he conveyed to us the invention of the Phoenicians—as Herodotus says in his Histories and as Aristotle relates. For they say that while the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, Cadmus introduced it to Greece.
F 501 R3 (Scholiast to Dionysius Thrax, p. 190.19–21 Hilgard):
Cadmus is the inventor of the alphabet, as Ephorus and Aristotle say; but others say that it was the invention of the Phoenicians and that Cadmus imported it to Greece.
F 501 R3 (Pliny, naturalis historia VII lvi 192):
Aristotle holds that 18 [sc. of the letters of the Greek alphabet] are original, and that two—psi and zeta—were added by Epicharmus rather than by Palamedes.
F 504 R3 (Etymologicon Magnum, s. v. ’Aρκεἱσιoς):
Aristotle, in the Constitution of the lthacans, says that Cephalus, while living in the Cephallenian islands which got their name from him, had been childless for a long time, and on inquiring of the god was ordered to copulate with anything female he should happen to meet. Now arriving back in his own country he fell in with a she-bear, and in obedience to the oracle copulated away: the bear, becoming pregnant, turned into a woman and gave birth to a child, Arceisios (from ἄρκτoς [‘bear’]).
F 512 R3 (Scholiast to Apollonius Rhodius, IV 982–92):
The island is Corcyra. This previously used to be called Scheria. Aristotle gives the reason in his Constitution of the Corcyreans. For he says that Demeter was afraid that the rivers flowing from the mainland would make it part of the mainland, and so she begged Poseidon to divert the courses of the rivers. Thus, since the rivers had been held back, it was called Scheria instead of Drepane.
F 515 R3 (Athenaeus, 618EF):
Aristotle at any rate says in the Constitution of the Colophonians: ‘And Theodorus himself also died later by a violent death. And he is said to have become rather soft-living, as is clear from his poetry; for even today the women sing his songs at the time of the festivals’.
F 519 R3 (Scholiast to Pindar, Pythian II 127):
Aristotle says that Achilles was the first to have used the war-dance (πνρρίχη) at the pyre (πνρά) of Patroclus (this is the dance, he says, that is called the prulis among the Cyprians); so he takes the word πνρρίχη to derive from pyre.
F 532 R3 (Scholiast to Pindar, Isthmian VII 18):
The Aegeidae are a phratry of the Thebans, from whose number some came to help the Spartans in their war against the Amycleans; their leader was Timomachus, who was the first man to instruct the Spartans in all military matters, and who received great honours from them. And his bronze breastplate is put on display at the Hyacinthia—the Thebans used to call this a ‘weapon’. Aristotle relates this in the Constitution of the Spartans.. . .Aristotle says that when the Spartans were engaged in their war with the Amycleans, having ascertained from the god that they should take the Aegeidae as allies, they set out for Athens. But while lodging in Thebes they were invited to the banquet of the Aegeidae phratry. On hearing the priest praying after dinner that the gods would give good things to the Aegeidae, they interpreted the oracle and concluded their alliance in Thebes.
F 533 R3 (Plutarch, Lycurgus 39E):
Least of all is there agreement about the date at which he [sc. Lycurgus] lived. Some say that he flourished at the same time as Iphitus and joined with him in establishing the Olympic truce—among them, Aristotle the philosopher, who cites as evidence the discus at Olympia on which is preserved an inscription of Lycurgus’ name.
F 540 R3 (Harpocration, s.v. μóρων):
Aristotle has discussed this in the Constitution of the Spartans. He says that there are six named morae and that all the Spartans are divided among the morae.
F 544 R3 (Scholiast to Euripides, Andromache 445):
In the next lines he [sc. Euripides] berates them [sc. the Spartans] in particular for their love of money. Aristotle too relates this in his Constitution of the Spartans, and he adds the verse pronounced by the god: ‘Love of money, nothing else, will ruin Sparta’.
F 547 R3 (Polybius, XII ν 4–5):
Nevertheless, I have no compunction in saying and writing that the account we have received from Aristotle about the colonisation [of Locri] is truer than that given by Timaeus. For I am aware that the Locrians agree that the tradition about the colonisation handed down to them from their fathers is the one Aristotle, not the one Timaeus, told. And they would offer the following proofs of it. . .
F 549 R3 (Athenaeus, 576AB):
Aristotle too relates that something similar happened when he writes in the Constitution of the Massaliots as follows: ‘Phocaean merchants from Ionia founded Massilia. Euxenus the Phocaean was the guest of Nanos the king (that was his name). Now this Nanos was celebrating the marriage of his daughter and he invited Euxenus, who happened to be there, to the feast. The marriage took place in the following way: the girl had to come in after dinner with a cup of mixed wine and give it to any of the suitors present she wished—the man she gave it to would be the bridegroom. Now the girl came in and, either by chance or for some other reason, gave it to Euxenus. (The girl’s name was Petta.) When this occurred, and her father asked him to take her since the gift was sanctioned by the gods, Euxenus took her for his wife and lived with her, changing her name to Aristoxene. And there is a family in Massilia that traces its origins back to her and is still called the Protiadae—for Protis was the son of Euxenus and Aristoxene’.
F 551 R3 (Athenaeus, 235E):
Aristotle in the Constitution of the Methonians says: ‘There were two parasites for each magistrate, and one for each military official; and they received fixed contributions from various sources and, in particular, fish from the fishermen’.
F 554 R3 (Photius, Lexicon s.v. τὀ Mηλιακὀν πλoῖoν):
Aristotle says that when Hippotes was setting out to found a colony he laid a curse on those who were unwilling to sail with him. For those who stayed behind excused themselves by saying that their wives were sickly or that their ships were leaky; so he laid a curse that their ships might never be watertight and that they might always be ruled by their wives.
F 558 R3 (Athenaeus, 348AC):
Aristotle in the Constitution of the Naxians writes about this proverb as follows: ‘Most of the rich men in Naxos lived in the town, while the rest were scattered among the villages. Now in one of the villages, called Leistadae, there lived Telesagoras, a very rich man with a good reputation who was honoured by the people in various ways including the daily sending of gifts. And when they came down from the town and haggled over anything being sold, the sellers used to say that they would rather give it to Telesagoras than sell it at such a price. Now some young men were buying a large fish, and when the fisherman made the usual remark they were annoyed at hearing it so often; so, being tipsy, they roistered round to his house. Telesagoras received them civilly; but the young men assaulted him and his two daughters, who were of marriagable age. The Naxians were enraged at that, took up arms, and attacked the young men. And there was then serious unrest, the Naxians being led by Lygdamis who from this generalship became tyrant of his country’.
F 562 R3 (Harpocration, s.v. ’‘Aμφισσα):
Aristotle in the Constitution of the Opuntians says this: ‘Andraimon was the founder, and he called it Amphissa because the place was surrounded by mountains’.
F 577 R3 (Plutarch, Pericles 166D):
Aristotle says that Pericles himself was earlier defeated in a sea-battle by Melissus.
F 583 R3 (Athenaeus, 520CD):
So far gone in luxury were they [sc. the Sybarites] that they actually trained their horses to dance to the pipe at their feasts. Now the Crotoniates knew this, and when they made war against them, as Aristotle says in his account of their constitution, they struck up the dance music for the horses—for they had pipers among their soldiery. And when the horses heard the pipers they not only danced but actually deserted, carrying their riders, to the Crotoniates.
F 588 R3 (Athenaeus, 435DE):
Aristotle in his Constitution of the Syracusans says that he [sc. Dionysius the younger] was sometimes drunk for ninety days on end, and that that is why his sight became somewhat dim.
F 593 R3 (Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Tένεδoς):
[On the proverb, ‘an axe of Tenedos.’] Or rather, as Aristotle says in the Constitution of the Tenedians, because a certain king in Tenedos laid down a law that anyone who caught an adulterous pair should kill both with an axe. Now it happened that his son was caught committing adultery, and he confirmed that the law should be observed even in the case of his own son; after his son had been killed, the matter gave rise to a proverb for cruel treatment.
F 609 R3 (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae I lxxii 3–4):
Aristotle the philosopher relates that certain of the Achaeans who were returning from Troy sailed round Cape Malea and were caught in a violent storm; for a time they were carried by the winds and wandered all over the sea, but at last they came to that part of Opice which is called Latinium and lies on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Overjoyed at the sight of land, they beached their ships there and spent the winter months preparing to sail at the beginning of spring. But their ships burned one night, and having no way to leave they were compelled willy-nilly to settle in the spot where they had landed. This happened because of certain female prisoners whom they had brought from Troy: they burned the ships because they feared that if the Achaeans sailed home they would be made into slaves.
F 614 R3 (Ammonius, de adfinium vocabulorum differentia 334):
Aristotle, in his Claims of the Cities, records the following: ‘At the same time, Alexander the Molossian, when the Tarentines summoned him to make war against the barbarians, sailed with fifty ships and numerous vessels for horse- and troop-transport’.
F 615 R3 (Plutarch, Solon 83F):
For the Amphictyons were persuaded by him [sc. Solon] to go to war, as several authors testify, including Aristotle who, in his List of Pythian Victors, ascribes the decision to Solon.
F 637 R3 (Scholiast to Aristides, Panathenaicus 189.4):
The order of the festivals according to Aristotle is this: first, the Eleusinia, because of the harvest of Demeter; second, the Panathenaea, for Aster the giant who was killed by Athena;1 third, the festival founded in Argos by Danaus because of the marriage of his daughters; fourth, the one founded in Arcadia by Lycaon and called the Lycaea; fifth, the one at Iolcus, begun by Acastus2 for his father Pelias; sixth, the one at the Isthmus, introduced by Sisyphus for Melicertes; seventh, the Olympic festival, introduced by Hercules for Pelops; eighth, the one at Nemea, which the Seven against Thebes founded for Archemorus;3 ninth, the one at Troy which Achilles instituted for Patroclus; tenth, the Pythian festival which the Amphictyons founded for the death of Pytho. This is the order of the old and ancient festivals set out by Aristotle who composed the Peploi.
F 645 R3 (Athenaeus, 697A):
And Aristotle himself, in his defence against the charge of impiety (if the speech is not a forgery) says: ‘If I had decided to sacrifice to Hermeias as an immortal I would not have prepared a memorial to him as a mortal, and if I had wished to immortalise his nature I would not have adorned his body with burial honours’.
F 646 R3 (Vita Aristotelis Marciana 94–96 Gigon):
In order to confer a benefit on all mankind, he [sc. Aristotle] wrote a book to Alexander on kingship, instructing him on how to rule.
F 647 R3 (Themistius, orationes 107CD):
We should do honour to Aristotle, who slightly altered Plato’s words and made his thesis truer. He said that it was not merely unnecessary for a king to be a philosopher, but actually a disadvantage; rather, a king should be attentive and obedient to true philosophers, since then he would fill his reign with good deeds not with words.
F 651 R3 (Harpocration, s.v. ὅτι ξένoυς):
. . . Aristotle, in one of his letters to Philip, says that he [sc. Philip] released the daughters of Apollophanes to Satyrus the actor.
F 652 R3 (Vita Aristotelis Marciana 34–40 Gigon):
When he [sc. Aristotle] was seventeen, he received an oracle from the Pythian god to become a philosopher in Athens. There he attended on Socrates, and stayed with him for the short time that remained before the latter’s death; after him, he attended on Plato and stayed with him too until death, a period of some twenty years as he himself says in a letter to Philip.
F 654 R3 (Vita Aristotelis Marciana 121–27 Gigon):
. . . and he can be seen in his letters expressing his admiration for Plato and recommending to the kings those connected to Plato by birth.
F 655 R3 (Vita Aristotelis Marciana 73–80 Gigon):
He [sc. Aristotle] was so valued by Philip and Olympias that they set up a statue of him with themselves; and the philosopher, being such a considerable part of the kingdom,1 through his philosophy used his power as an instrument for benefaction, doing good both to individuals and to entire cities and to all men at one and the same time. For the benefits he bestowed on individuals are revealed in the letters which he wrote on various subjects to the royal couple.. . .
F 656 R3 (Demetrius, de elocutione 233):
Aristotle, however, actually uses demonstrations in his letters; for example, wishing to get it across that one should benefit large and small states alike, he says: ‘For the gods in both are equal; hence, since the Graces are goddesses, equal grace will accrue to you from both’.
F 657 R3 (Dio Chrysostom, XLVII 9–11):
I used sometimes to congratulate Aristotle, who, coming from Stagira (a small town in Olynthia), after the fall of Olynthus managed through his intimacy with Alexander and Philip to secure the refounding of the site; and I used to say that he was the only man to have had the good fortune to be the founder of his own country. Now the other day I chanced on a letter in which Aristotle is repenting and lamenting and saying that some of the people in question were trying to destroy the king and the governors he had sent, so that no good had come of it nor had the city been established at all. But if it pained some men that, having been stateless fugitives, they should acquire a country and live in freedom according to the laws, and if they preferred to live in villages like barbarians rather than have the form and name of a state, why should we be amazed if anything else pains men? Aristotle writes in his letter that he has given up the business—for he says that he is putting his hands up.
F 658 R3 (Plutarch, de Alexandri fortuna 329B):
He [sc. Alexander] did not do as Aristotle advised—act towards Greeks as their leader, towards foreigners as their master, treating the former as friends and kinsmen and the latter as animals or plants—and so fill his reign with many wars and banishments and festering factions.
F 659 R3 (Aelian, Varia Historia xii 54):
Aristotle, wishing to pacify Alexander’s rage and to put a stop to his anger with so many people, wrote to him as follows: ‘Anger and rage are directed not against lesser men but against greater; and you have no equal’.
F 660 R3 (Stobaeus, Anthologium III xx 55):
Just as smoke stings our eyes and prevents us from seeing what is under our feet, so anger, once aroused, clouds our reason and does not allow our mind to anticipate the absurdity which will result from it.
F 661 R3 (Stobaeus, Anthologium III xx 46):
Or do you not see that when anything is done in rage our reason goes abroad, fleeing anger as a harsh tyrant?
F 663 R3 (Aristocles, frag. 2 Heiland = Eusebius. Praeparatio Evangelica XV ii 14):
. . . as for his [sc. Aristotle’s] marriage to Pythias, he himself has given a full enough defence in his letters to Antipater. For he married her on Hermeias’ death because of his regard for Hermeias: she was a modest and good woman, and in unfortunate circumstances because of the disasters that had overtaken her brother.
F 664 R3 (Plutarch, de tranquilizate animi 472E):
Aristotle in writing to Antipater said: ‘It is not just Alexander who has good reason to be proud because he has power over many men: pride is no less appropriate on the part of those who possess correct beliefs about the gods’.
F 665 R3 (Demetrius, de elocutione 225):
Who would speak to a friend as Aristotle does to Antipater in a letter on behalf of some exile who was an old man? He says: ‘If this man has journeyed as an exile in every land without ever returning home, clearly no reproach attaches to men who wish to return home to Hades’.
F 666 R3 (Aelian, Varia Historia xiv 1):
Aristotle . . . wrote to Antipater when someone deprived him of the honours voted him at Delphi, commenting thus: ‘As to what was voted me at Delphi and of which I have been deprived, my present attitude is neither one of great concern nor yet one of complete indifference’.
F 667 R3 (Vita Aristotelis Marciana 184–91 Gigon):
When the Athenians rose against him, he withdrew to Chalcis, hinting at his reasons: ‘I will not allow the Athenians to wrong philosophy twice.’ And, since citizens and foreigners did not have the same duties to the state of Athens, he writes in a letter to Antipater: ‘Life at Athens is difficult—for pear grows old on pear and fig on fig,’ punning on the succession of informers.1
F 668 R3 (Demetrius, de elocutione 144):
Elegance comes both from colloquial words, as when Aristotle says ‘For the more I am a loner the more fond of stories have I become,’ and also from coined words, as for example the same author in the same passage: ‘For the more I am a selfer and a loner, the more fond of stories have I become’ (the word ‘loner’ is of somewhat colloquial usage, while ‘selfer’ is coined from ‘self’).
F 669 R3 (Demetrius, de elocutione 29):
However, they [sc. homoeoteleuta] are sometimes useful, as when Aristotle says: ‘I came to Athens from Stagira because of the great king, from Stagira to Athens because of the great winter’.
F 670 R3 (Demetrius, de elocutione 230):
Aristotle, who has a high reputation as a letter-writer, says: ‘I am not writing to you on this matter; for it is not suitable for a letter’.
(Ptolemy, Life of Aristotle p. 214 Düring):
Thereupon, one of the priests which are called hierophants, by name Eurymedon, came forward with the purpose of denouncing him. He indicted him for impiety, claiming that Aristotle did not hold the gods in honour. He was prompted by a grudge which he bore to him in his heart, and Aristotle speaks of this in a letter to Antipater.
(Ptolemy, Life of Aristotle p. 215 Düring):
With what zest he practised goodness and strove to do good services to his fellow men is apparent from his open letters and his books and from what the reader can gather in these writings concerning the numerous interviews he had with contemporary kings and individuals, by which negotiations he promoted their affairs and proved useful to them.
F 650 R3. F 673 R3 (Olympiodorus, Commentarius in Gorgiam 41.9):
That Aristotle actually honours him [sc. Plato] as his teacher is clear from the fact that he wrote a whole speech in praise of him; for he narrates his biography and lavishes praise upon him. And it is not just in the encomium that he praises him: in the elegy addressed to Eudemus he praises Plato himself in the following lines:
Coming to the fair land of Cecropia
he piously founded an altar of holy friendship
for a man whom the wicked may not properly even praise;
he, alone or the first of mortals, showed clearly
by his own life and by the courses of his arguments
that a man becomes good and happy at the same time:
but now none can grasp this any more.1
F 675 R3 (Diogenes Laertius, V 7; Athenaeus, 696BE; Didymus, in Demosthenem col. 6):
Excellence, greatly striven for by mankind,
noblest quarry in life,
for your form, maiden,
to die is an enviable fate in Greece
and to endure violent untiring labours.
Such is the fruit you cast into the mind,
immortal, better than gold
and parents and the soft rays of sleep.
For your sake Hercules, son of Zeus, and the children of Leda underwent much, with their deeds
hunting your power.
From desire for you Achilles and Ajax went to the house of Hades.
For the sake of your dear form the nursling of Atarneus forsook the rays of the sun.
Therefore, celebrated for his deeds and immortal, the Muses will magnify him,
daughters of Memory, magnifying the honour of Zeus, god of guests, and the reward of steadfast friendship.1
(Diogenes Laertius, V 11–16):
It will be well; but if anything should happen, Aristotle has made the following provisions:
Antipater is to be executor in all matters and in perpetuity; but until Nicanor arrives, Aristomenes, Timarchus, Hipparchus, Dioteles, and Theophrastus (if he is willing and able) are to take care of the children and of Herpyllis and of the estate.
And when my daughter comes of age, they are to marry her to Nicanor; and should anything happen to her—may it not, nor will it—before her marriage or after she has married but before there are children, Nicanor is to be responsible for administering the affairs of my son and the others in a fashion worthy both of himself and of us. Let Nicanor take care of both my daughter and my son Nicomachus in whatever way he judges appropriate to their affairs, as though he were both father and brother to them.
If anything should previously happen to Nicanor—may it not—either before he has taken my daughter or after he has taken her but before there are children, then if he has made arrangements let these take effect. If Theophrastus wishes to live with my daughter, let the same provisions stand as with Nicanor; if he does not, the executors, after consultation with Antipater, are to administer the affairs both of my daughter and of my son in whatever way they think best.
The executors and Nicanor are to remember me in taking care also of Herpyllis (for she was good to me) in all respects, and in particular, if she wants to take a husband, they are to see to it that she is given away in a fashion not unworthy of us. And in addition to what she has previously been given, they are to give her also a talent of silver from the estate and three woman servants, if she wishes, and the maidservant which she has, and the slave from Pyrrha. And if she wants to live in Chalcis, she is to have the guest-house by the garden, if in Stagira the family house; and whichever of these she wants, the executors are to furnish with whatever seems both proper to them and satisfactory to Herpyllis.
Nicanor is also to take care of the slave Murmex, so that he is conveyed in a fashion worthy of us to his own people, together with those of his belongings which we received. They are to free Ambracis and to give her on the marriage of my daughter five hundred drachmae and the maidservant which she has. They are also to give to Thale, in addition to the maidservant which she has (the one who was purchased), a thousand drachmae and a maidservant. As for Simo, apart from the money which has earlier been given him for another slave, they are either to buy him a slave or to give him money. Tacho is to be freed on the marriage of my daughter, as are Philo and Olympius and his child. Do not sell any of the slaves who served me, but employ them; and when they come of age, send them away free men as they deserve.
They are to take care too that the statues which I commissioned from Gryllio are completed and set up—both the one of Nicanor and the one of Proxenus (which I intended to commission), and the one of Nicanor’s mother; as for the one of Arimnestus which is already completed, set it up as a memorial to him since he died childless. They are to dedicate the statue of my mother to Demeter in Nemea or wherever seems best. Wherever they make my grave they are to take and deposit there Pythias’ bones too, just as she instructed. And Nicanor, if he is preserved (which is a prayer I have offered on his behalf) is to set up statues in stone four cubits in height to Zeus Saviour and Athena Saviouress at Stagira.