Aspasius: The Earliest Extant Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics [Reprint 2013 ed.] 9783110810196, 9783110160819

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ASPASIUS

}ί 1749

I

1999

I

PERIPATOI PHILOLOGISCH-HISTORISCHE STUDIEN ZUM ARISTOTELISMI^ IN VERBINDUNG MIT H. J. DROSSAART LULOLFS, L. MINIO-PALUELLO, R. WEIL HERAUSGEGEBEN VON

WOLFGANG KULLMANN, ROBERT W SHARPLES, JÜRGEN WIESNER BAND 17

w DE

G_ 1999 W A L T E R DE G R U Y T E R · B E R L I N · N E W Y O R K

ASPASIUS: THE EARLIEST EXTANT COMMENTARY ON ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS

ESSAYS EDITED BY

ANTONINA ALBERTI AND ROBERT W. SHARPLES

w DE

G. 1999 WALTER DE GRUYTER · BERLIN · NEW YORK

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

IJbraty of Congress Catalogmg-in-Publication Data

Aspasius: the earliest extant commentary on Aristotles's Ethics / essays edited by Antonina Alberti and R. W. Sharpies, p. cm. — (Peripatoi : Bd. 17) Based on papers presented at a summer school held at the Certosa di Pontignano, Siena by teachers and students. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-016081-1 (alk. paper) 1. Aspasius. 2. Aristotle. Nicomachean ethics. I. Alberti, Antonina M. II. Sharpies, R. W III. Series. B536.A74A87 1998 171'.3-dc21 98-46649 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging in Publication Data

Aspasius: the earliest extant commentary on Aristotle's ethics : essays / ed. by Antonina Alberti and Robert VK Sharpies. — Berlin ; New York : de Gruyter, 1999 (Peripatoi ; Bd. 17) ISBN 3-11-016081-1

© Copyright 1999 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Typesetting and Printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin

PREFACE In August 1996 the Erasmus Ancient Philosophy Programme, co-ordinated by Antonina Alberti, organised a summer school at the Certosa di Pontignano (Siena). Teachers and students from many of the European universities belonging to the Programme were involved: as teachers, Antonina Alberti, Jonathan Barnes, Enrico Berti, Michael Frede, David Furley, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Walter Leszl, Brian McGuinness, Paul Mercken, Carlo Natali, David Sedley, Gerhard Seel, Bob Sharpies and Richard Sorabji, and as students, Francesco Ademollo, Luca Bauckneht, Maddalena Bonelli, Michael Bordt, Barbara Botter, Claudio Corradetti, Irma Croese, Elisabetta Dagostino, Hugh Johnstone, Marco Laghi, Rosario La Sala, Giulia Lombardi, Létitia Mouze, Francesca Orlandi, Laura Seminara, Gudrun Tausch-Pebody, Eleni Vambouli and Roland Wittwer. The theme of the school was the commentary of Aspasius on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. At the end of a week of intensive study in the splendid setting of the Sienese countryside, the participants thought that it would be appropriate to revise the papers given at the summer school and to publish them in book form. This was the origin of the present volume, which is linked with another project similarly deriving from the summer school, the English translation by Paul Mercken of Aspasius' commentary, which is soon to appear in the Duckworth/Cornell University Press Aristotelian Commentators series of which Richard Sorabji is General Editor. This collection is intended to be, in a sense, a commentary on Aspasius' Commentary; it draws attention to the most significant and original aspects of that Commentary, and has the aim of making better known an unjusdy forgotten Aristotelian commentator who contributed interesting philosophical insights and who influenced the thought both of Alexander of Aphrodisias and of other philosophers of late antiquity. We are grateful to all those who have made this project possible: to the teachers and students who participated in the summer school; to the University of Siena which made it possible for the school to be held in the Certosa di Pontignano; to the University of Florence, for administering the Erasmus funds; and to the Commission of the European Community, for financing the summer school and for contributing to the publication costs of this volume. Antonina Alberti and Robert W. Sharpies

REFERENCES Bibliographical references given thus: "Zeller[2]" are to the numbered items in the Bibliography (pp. 191-194). This is a bibliography on Aspasius specifically, and does not cover all items referred to in this volume: therefore other bibliographical references are given in full in the notes to each chapter.

CONTENTS Preface References List of Contributors

1. An Introduction to Aspasius Jonathan Barnes, Geneva 2. Aspasian Lemmatology Roland Wittwer, Geneva

V VII XI

1

51

3. Aspasius on Eudaimonia Bob Sharpies, University College London

85

4. Aspasius on Emotion Richard Sorabji, Wolf son College Oxford/King's College London 5. Il volontario e la scelta in Aspasio Antonina Alberti, Siena

96

107

6. Aspasius on Perfect and Imperfect Virtues Katerina Ierodiakonou, Athens

142

7. Aspasius on Akrasia David Sedley, Christ's College Cambridge

162

8. Amicizia e «focal meaning» Enrico Berti, Padua Bibliography on Aspasius Gudrun Tausch-Pebodj and Jonathan Barnes, Geneva

176

191

Index of passages cited

195

General index

204

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Prof. Antonia Alberti, Via Emilia 7/2,1-50145 Firenze Prof. Jonathan Barnes, Les Charmilles, F-36200 Ceaulmont Prof. Enrico Berti, Dipartimento de Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Padova, Piazza Capitaniate, 7, 1-35139 Padova Dr. Katerina Ierodiakonou, 13 Wellington Square, Oxford ΟΧΙ 2HY, England Prof. David Sedley, Christ's College, Cambridge CB2 3BU, England Prof. Bob Sharpies, Dept. of Greek and Latin, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, England Prof. Richard Sorabji, Dept. of Philosophy, Kings College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England Roland Wittwer, Philosophisches Seminar, Nadelberg 6 - 8 , CH-4051 Basel

JONATHAN BARNES1 1. A N I N T R O D U C T I O N T O

ASPASIUS

1. Life and Works In Chapter VIII of his essay On the Affections of the Soul, Galen gives a sketch of his early education. When he turned fifteen, he attended the lectures of the local philosophers at Pergamum: he spent much dme at the feet of a pupil of the Stoic Philopator; he also attended the lectures of a pupil of Gaius the Platonist. A f t e r that, another fellow citizen o f ours came home from a long stay abroad — a pupil of Aspasius the Peripatetic.

And to complete the package there was an Epicurean {an morb VI 4 1 - 4 2 Kühn). It is generally assumed that the Peripatetic Aspasius whose pupil taught Galen was the same as the Aspasius whose Peripatetic commentaries were read by Plotinus (Porphyry, vit Plot 14), and the same as the Aspasius whom the later commentators on Aristotle not infrequendy cite,2 and the same as the Aspasius to whom the manuscripts attribute a surviving commentary on Aristode's Nicomachean Ethics. The name "Aspasius" was not uncommon; but the identifications which are generally taken for granted are, I suppose, plausible enough — at any rate, no ancient text ever hints that there had been more than one Peripatetic scholar named "Aspasius". 1

2

The following pages are based on some remarks which I was to have made at the Pontignano symposium on Aspasius. The remarks were intended as an introduction to the study of Aspasius' commentary on Aristode's Ethicy. they had no novelties to unveil, and they had no thesis to advance. — I have relied heavily on several of the works listed in the Bibliography at the end of this volume; but it did not seem appropriate, in a paper which has no pretensions, to document my numerous debts (or my equally numerous disagreements). In addition, I have appropriated several ideas and suggestions which were put forward by my fellow symposiasts - who will, I hope, be content with a collective expression of gratitude; and I thank Bob Sharpies and Roland Wittwer for their helpful comments on a penultimate draft. References below, pp. 9 — 12.

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Galen was born in 129 AD. He will therefore have heard the pupil of Aspasius in 144. The pupil returned to Pergamum after a long absence — perhaps (though Galen does not say so) a period of study with Aspasius. Imagine that he was a man of about 35 when he came home and set up his Peripatetic school. Imagine that Aspasius was some thirty years his senior. Then Aspasius will have been born in about 80, and we shall conclude that he was philosophically active in the first third or so of the second century AD. But all this is phantasy; and the passage from Galen proves only that by 144 Aspasius had already produced at least one pupil. 3 As far as I am aware, there is no other external evidence from which a more precise chronology might be squeezed. Internal evidence — that is to say, evidence provided by the surviving commentary on the Ethics — is equally sparse. Aspasius refers to Andronicus and to Boethus as being among the "later" Peripatetics.4 Boethus, a pupil of Andronicus, was a contemporary of Strabo and therefore flourished at the turn of the millennium. This gives us an unsurprising terminus post quern for Aspasius. The fact that Aspasius refers to no other "later" Peripatetic — the fact that he does not mention, say, Alexander of Aegae (who flourished under Nero) — has no chronological significance: the commentary does not go in for scholarly references, and we should not infer from his silence that Aspasius did not know the work of Alexander of Aegae, let alone that he lived before him. One other passage in the commentary encourages a contorted guess. Aspasius is discussing Aristotle's account of 'magnificence'. The pertinent sentence is this: A magnificent man will want to produce a work of some magnitude — like Pericles and the temple of Olympian Zeus, 5 or something else of that sort.

There is a puzzle. The temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens was planned and begun by Pisistratus (or his sons) in the sixth century — as Aristotle, 3

4

5

Galen also refers to Aspasius' commentary on the Categories (below, p. 8); but the reference adds no new chronological information. των δέ εκ του Περιπάτου, των μέν παλαιών ..., των δέ ύστερον 'Ανδρόνικος μέν ..., Βόηθος δέ ...:;» ΕΝ44,20-24. Aspasius, in EN 106,5 — 6 — hereafter all references are to this work unless otherwise specified. — The MSS reportedly read "το 'Ολύμπιον". Heylbut prints "τόν 'Ολύμπιον", which I suppose he takes to mean "the Olympian (Zeus)", i. e. the celebrated statue of Zeus at Olympia. (In his apparatus criticus he refers to anon in EN 185,17 - 1 9 : ήδύνατο γαρ Περικλής τον 'Ολύμπιον Δία άπό των αύτών άναλωμάτων μικρότερον κατασκευάσαι ...) But "τό Όλυμπίον" is simply a standard (mis)spelling of "τό Όλυμπεΐον".

An Introduction to Aspasius

3

among others, assures us. The project was grandiose, and Pisistratus did not complete it. Some three and a half centuries later Antiochus Epiphanes took the thing up, but he too died before he could finish it. As for Pericles, although he suffered from all the architectural folie de grandeur of a French President, no source — so far as I am aware — associates him with the temple to Olympian Zeus, nor does the archaeological evidence indicate any work on the site in his day.6 What Aspasius reports presumably derives from his imagination.7 But why, of all the magnificent structures of the ancient world, did Aspasius pick on the temple of Olympian Zeus? In 124/5 AD the Emperor Hadrian, philhellene and amateur of the grandiose, visited Athens. It took his fancy to embellish the city, to create 'New Athens' — and his plans included the completion of the temple of Olympian Zeus. This time the project was carried through, and Hadrian himself returned to dedicate the temple a few years later.8 Surely Aspasius referred to the temple of Olympian Zeus because the temple was in the news. Indeed, it is tempting to imagine that the reference was meant as subde praise of the Emperor. Hadrian (so Aspasius implies) had undertaken a magnificent project. Moreover, he had outdone even Pericles, the greatest of Athenian statesmen; for Pericles had not completed the project.9 Hence we can date the commentary on the Ethics: it will have been written in or a little after 131; and we shall have one precise date in Aspasius' career. We might also think to locate him geographically; for surely it was in Athens that Aspasius made his subde reference to the visiting Hadrian?

6

7

8

9

See e. g. Aristotle, Pol 1313b23; Vitruvius, VII praef 15, 17; other texts in R. TölleKastenbein, Das Olympieion in Athen (Cologne, 1994), pp. 1 1 7 - 1 2 0 . - N o t e that Aspasius does not actually say that Pericles built or even worked on the temple: "like Pericles and the temple of Olympian Zeus" means "as Pericles wanted to build the temple of Olympian Zeus". Or perhaps there is a scribal error? We might read "Pisistratus" for "Pericles"; or suppose a lacuna: "like Pericles (and the Propylaea or Pisistratus) and the temple to Olympian Zeus". (But see below, n.9.) - In any event, let me note that the problem is not eased by replacing the temple at Athens by the statue at Olympia (above, n.5); for Pericles had no more to do with the latter magnificence that with the former. The dedication by Hadrian is dated to the autumn of 131 AD: IG IV2 384; cf e.g. Pausanias, I xviii 6; Philostratus, vit soph I xxv 6. Then perhaps Aspasius deliberately wrote "Pericles" rather than "Pisistratus" — Hadrian would scarcely have welcomed an implicit comparison with the old Athenian tyrant, whereas a reference to Pericles would have flattered.

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I find nothing else in the commentary — or elsewhere — which tells against these suggestions. And nothing which supports them. I like the story. I am trying to believe it. So much for dates. As for intellectual liaisons, we do not know whom Aspasius taught nor who taught him. The pupil of Aspasius who taught Galen has often been identified with the Peripatetic philosopher Eudemus whom Galen later met in Rome (and cured of malaria); for Galen twice refers to Eudemus as his teacher {praecogn XIV 613, 624 Kühn). The identification is far from certain — and in any event, we know next to nothing about Eudemus. It is often said that Herminus, the teacher of Alexander of Aphrodisias, was a pupil of Aspasius — a more interesting conjecture inasmuch as Herminus' philosophical activities are not entirely unknown. But the only reason for setting Herminus at Aspasius' feet is the fact that, on a spiky text in Aristotle's de Cáelo, he agreed with an interpretation which Aspasius had given. Evidently, this does not imply that Herminus had been a pupil of Aspasius.10 Apart from a dubious Eudemus and a highly dubious Herminus, noone. And no hint of a teacher. For the later influence of Aspasius' work there is rather more evidence. Galen back-handedly recommends one of his commentaries.11 Alexander plainly made much use of his work. 12 A hundred years later Plotinus referred to him when he was reading Aristotelian texts. And he was still referred to in the sixth century by Boethius and by Simplicius.13 It is a plausible thought that the later commentators not only referred to him but also silently borrowed from him; for commentaries were always tralaticious things, and a commentator would often silently take over — in close paraphrase — longish passages from his predecessors. I guess that we can now read some paragraphs of Aspasius in paraphrastic form; but there is no paragraph of which I would care to guess that it is a paraphrase of Aspasius. 10

11 12 13

Alexander, apud Simplicius, in Cael430,28 - 4 3 1 , 1 1 (on Cael288b22): Alexander rehearses the interpretation which (he says) had been offered by Aspasius and by Herminus; he probably implies (431,11) that Herminus himself ascribed the interpretation to Aspasius; but he does not say that Herminus (said that he had) heard Aspasius, and 430,33 seems to suggest that Herminus knew Aspasius' interpretation from a written source. See below, p. 8. See below, pp. 9 - 1 1 . But it is not certain that they had direct knowledge of Aspasius' writings: below, pp. 9 - 1 1 .

A n Introduction to Aspasius

5

Next, Aspasius' philosophical position. Galen calls him a Peripatetic, and it is plain that his pupil taught Galen Peripatetic philosophy. Porphyry strongly implies that he was a Peripatetic. The commentary on the Ethics regularly presents Aristotle's views as though they were true — that is to say, it gives the impression of having been written by a Peripatetic.14 Nor is this in the least surprising: if you wrote commentaries on Aristotle's works in the second century AD, then the chances are that you were of the Peripatetic persuasion. Two facts appear to tell against this tediously orthodox opinion. First, the surviving commentary not infrequently shows fairly close parallels with certain Middle Platonist texts. Secondly, on several occasions Aspasius apparendy refers to the Peripatetics in the third person. Each of these facts merits a brief airing. The Platonist parallels have been alleged to indicate that, although Aspasius taught Peripatetic philosophy, he was himself a Platonist — or at least, a Peripatetic whose views were strongly coloured by Platonism. The parallels are, I think, genuine enough; and a full treatment of the issue would require a detailed scrutiny of them. But three general considerations suffice to show that they can hardly have the significance which has been attached to them. First, in many of the passages it is a matter of terminology rather than of substance: Aspasius uses a Platonist word or phrase, he does not espouse a Platonist thesis or doctrine. And such parallels, however interesting they may be, are of no significance in terms of philosophical allegiance. To be sure, modern scholars speak often enough of 'Stoic terminology' or 'Platonic terminology' or the like. But - a few celebrated cases apart — it may be doubted whether a philosophical word was ever regarded as the property of a philosophical school; and in any event, by the first century AD there had developed a common philosophical idiom or jargon, so that even if some term had originally been associated with one particular school the association had receded into the past. Aspasius occasionally uses 'Stoic' terms: it would be absurd to infer a Stoic tendency in his thought, and it would be an error to speak of Stoic influence on his ideas. So too with Platonic terminology. Secondly, by Aspasius' day there had developed not only a common philosophical vocabulary but also — in some areas and to a certain degree — a set of common philosophical ideas: notions which we now tend to 14

See further below, pp. 2 2 - 2 3 .

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connect with Plato or with Aristotle had come to be part of the intellectual baggage of both schools of thought — and of the Stoics too. This 'syncretising' tendency was nowhere more evident than in ethics. Thus the work entitied On the doctrine of Plato and traditionally ascribed to the Platonist Apuleius 15 appears to carry as much Aristotelian ballast as it contains Platonic cargo. It would be right to characterize this or that thesis in Apuleius' essay as Aristotelian — in the sense that its origins are to be found in the works of Aristode. But it would be wrong to imagine that Apuleius' essay was therefore crypto-Peripatetic. Rather, Platonists were at liberty to adopt Peripatetic ideas — just as Peripatetics were at liberty to develop Platonic notions. Syncretism of this sort goes back at least to Antiochus in the first century BC. 16 By the time of Aspasius it was taken for granted. If we find Platonic notions — notions, and not merely modes of expression — in Aspasius' commentary, we should not infer that Aspasius had Platonic leanings. Thirdly, there remained certain notions which, in the pertinent period, were regarded as essentially or peculiarly Platonic: to none of these notions does Aspasius subscribe. In particular, he does not accept Platonic Forms or Ideas. In a celebrated passage in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle dismisses - not kindly - Plato's Form of the Good (1096all -1097al4). Aspasius' commentary on this chapter is not fully preserved (11,10—14,32); but there is no reason to suspect that the tone of the lost paragraphs differed from the tone of what has remained. And that tone is wholly uncritical: Aspasius betrays not the slightest embarrassment over Aristode's attack on the citadel of Platonism; he does not intimate that Aristotle might perhaps be wrong. Such general considerations make it plain that, whatever nuances and shadows might be added by a detailed scrutiny, the 'Platonist' passages provide no reason to think that Aspasius was anything other than an orthodox Peripatetic —orthodox, that is to say, for his time and in the eyes of his contemporaries. Secondly, then, the second fact: Aspasius' way of referring to the Peripatetics. He never says "we Peripatetics think that so-and-so". He uses the third person to report the ideas which he finds in Aristode's Ethics·. 15 16

The ascription has been doubted, and I take no stand on the matter. Syncretism, not eclecticism: Antiochus and his chums were not buying different ingredients from different pâtissiers and then concocting a gâteau of their own; rather, they bought en vrac - all Plato and all Aristode and all Zeno ... — and claimed to produce, give or take a few crumbs, a homogeneous and wholesome pudding.

An Introduction to Aspasius

7

usually the third person singular ("he thinks ..." — that is to say, "Aristotle thinks ..."); sometimes the plural. The commentary contains only one explicit reference to the Peripatetics: at 44,20 Aspasius remarks that "of those from the Peripatos", some say this and others say that. 17 And in three passages near the beginning of the work he refers to the Peripatetics — or appears to refer to them — by the third person pronoun, "they [αύτοί]". Thus "the term 'art [τέχνη]' is used by them [παρ' αύτοΐς] in three ways" (2,16) — and the third person plural continues for some eight lines. "The term 'power [δύναμις]' is used by them [παρ' αύτοΐς] in several ways" (5,23) — and again the third person trickles on for a few lines. "For them [αύτοΐς] there are 'cyclical' problems of all sorts" (10,30). In each case, 'they' have been taken to be the Peripatetics — and, generally speaking, if you refer to the members of a certain group as 'they', you imply that you are not yourself a member of the group. Now the absence of such expressions as "we Peripatetics" is unremarkable: in a commentary you do not expect many remarks in the first person, and you do expect a succession of third person singulars. So it is, say, in the commentaries of the impeccably Peripatetic Alexander of Aphrodisias. Nor is 44,20 upsetting; for there the Peripatetics are contrasted with the Stoics and divided into groups, and Aspasius' mode of reference seems natural enough. The three texts which contain the word "αύτοί" I find more difficult. But the difficulty is not that the word "αύτοί" dissociates Aspasius from the Peripatetics: rather, it is that the reference of the word goes unexplained. Usually, if I say, indeterminately, "they [αύτοί] do soand-so", the immediate context will supply a name or a description which specifies the reference ("the Stoics", "your Mum and Dad") . In the three Aspasian passages there is nothing of the sort — the indefinite pronoun hangs in the air. Stricdy speaking, then, the three occurrences of "αύτοί" do not distance Aspasius from the Peripatetics: perhaps they distance him from some group or other; but they do not reveal which. Scholars have sometimes supposed that "αύτοί" refers to the 'old' Peripatetics, whom Aspasius distinguishes from the more recent members of the school at 44,20 — 21. And it is inferred that the passages do not dissociate Aspasius from the Peripatetic school as such; for if I remark that the older Peripatetics say so-and-so, I do not insinuate that I am not myself a Peripatetic of a later vintage. This supposition may be correct — at any rate, it is not 17

See above, p. 2.

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evidently inferior to the supposition that "αύτοί" refers to the Peripatetics in general. But it is a guess; and the oddity of the three passages remains.18 I might add that the two facts which I have just rehearsed — the Platonist parallels and the third persons — could show at most that the surviving commentary on the Ethics was not written by a Peripatetic. They could not show that there never was a Peripatetic Aspasius who commented on Aristotle's works — they could not unseat the evidence of Galen and of Porphyry. Then do the two facts show, or suggest, that the author of the commentary on the Ethics was not the Peripatetic known to Galen and to Porphyry, so that the orthodox identifications which I earlier endorsed should be doubted? Surely not. The first fact shows nothing at all. The second fact perplexes, but does not demonstrate. And the commentary itself, on every page, shows a dutiful and orthodox Peripatetic. We should continue to believe that the commentary on the Ethics was written by a Peripatetic - by the Peripatetic Aspasius who taught Galen's teacher. What did Aspasius write? Apart from the commentary on the Ethics, we know of some six or eight works. (1) Galen affirms that, late in life and at the request of some friends, he himself wrote a commentary on Aristotle's Categories. O f it he remarks: I urged that the commentary be put in the hands only o f those who had read the book with a teacher or had at any rate already been introduced to it by other exegetical works such as those of Adrastus 19 or o f Aspasius. (lib prop X I X 42 Kühn)

Hence there was pretty certainly a commentary by Aspasius on the Categories. And it was pretty certainly an elementary work — the sort of thing which you could give to a student who was starting on his Aristotle and who had to work at the text without the benefit of a teacher. "Pretty certainly" — for two reasons. First, the text of Galen's work On my own Books is in a desperate condition; and it is not absolutely clear that, in the lines I have cited, Galen is referring to his own commentary on the Categories, nor (in consequence) that the work of Aspasius to which he refers was itself a commentary on the Categories. Secondly, we are not

18

What might explain the oddity? Suppose that what we read was not written by Aspasius himself, but represents notes taken down by a pupil. T h e n when the lecturer said "we hold . . . " the pupil might reasonably write "they hold . . . " . See further below, p. 24.

19

O n whom see below, pp. 14 — 15.

A n Introduction to Aspasius

9

in a position to assess Galen's assessment of Aspasius' work; nor do we know whether the assessment was shared by Aspasius himself. Galen does not explicitly say that Aspasius intended his work to be an elementary introduction; and what Galen — not renowned for objectivity in his judgements of other men's writings — found to be elementary others may have esteemed profound. 20 There is no other allusion to a commentary by Aspasius on the Categories — even though, thanks to Simplicius, we have an unusually rich documentation on such things. The silence is mildly surprising; and it has suggested a sceptical explanation: perhaps Simplicius did not mention Aspasius' commentary because he did not know of it, and perhaps he did not know of it because it did not exist? But other explanations are easily conjectured. Porphyry wrote two commentaries on the Categories, the surviving one of which is elementary. Once Porphyry had spoken, who would use the old work by Aspasius and why should Simplicius refer to it? And in any event, Simplicius' bibliography of scholarship on the Categories makes no claim to completeness. (2) There was a commentary on Aristotle's de Interpretationen It is known only from Boethius, who alludes to it a dozen times in his own commentary on Int. The breadth of Boethius' reading is, in general, a controversial topic; and the particular case of Aspasius has split scholars. Certainly, some of his references give the impression that he knew Aspasius' commentary at first-hand;22 but others strongly suggest that his knowledge came by way of Alexander 23 — and it might be wondered if his knowledge of Alexander did not itself derive from Porphyry.24 At any rate, Boethius gives us some information about the Nachleben of Aspasius' commentary on Int, for it is plain that Alexander referred to it, not infrequently and not always in a critical spirit, in his own lost commentary on Int. It is clear, too, that Porphyry used Aspasius — something which vit Plot 14 would in any case encourage us to conjecture. And Boethius thought it worthwhile to transcribe and preserve some of Aspasius' interpretations — and not only those which he thought were erroneous. 20

21 22 23 24

And let me note that it would be silly to infer from Galen's remark that all of Aspasius' works were and were written as introductory aids. Boethius refers to the work explicidy as a commentanus·. in Int2 1 0 , 4 - 6 ; 183,20-22. E.g. in Inf- 4 1 , 1 3 - 1 6 ; 74,31 - 3 3 . E.g. in Inf- 1 0 , 4 - 7 ; 3 7 , 1 7 - 1 9 ; 1 2 1 , 2 7 - 1 2 2 , 3 ; 1 5 9 , 2 5 - 2 6 . See in Inf- 1 8 3 , 2 0 - 2 2 ; 293,29. - Note that 1 5 9 , 2 5 - 2 6 appears to indicate that Boethius took Aspasius to have written after Alexander. If that is so, then Boethius can hardly himself have read Alexander.

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Taken together, the Boethian references 25 suggest a few vague guesses about the general nature of Aspasius' commentary. It seems to have been continuous rather than selective. It seems to have offered close and detailed analysis of Aristode's statements and arguments. It did not flinch from tough texts 26 — and it is reasonable to judge that it was not a work of elementary exegesis. It raised objections to various of Aristode's contentions; and in some cases at least it answered them. 27 More surprising — and more interesting - is the fact that, at least once, Aspasius appears to have thought that Aristotle erred: 'How, he asked, can Aristode maintain that thoughts or conceptions [τα της ψυχής παθήματα] are the same for all men when we evidendy possess very different ideas of, say, goodness and justice?'28 The objection is hardly fatal — but it is not foolish. (3) In his vast and learned commentary on the Physics Simplicius refers to Aspasius more than twenty times. It is clear that several of these allusions are at second hand, Simplicius having taken them from Alexander's commentary.29 In many other passages the context and mode of citation make it likely that Simplicius knew Aspasius from Alexander. It is at least a plausible guess that his knowledge of Aspasius was entirely derivative. In any even, it is plain that Alexander had thoroughly exploited the work of his predecessor. Aspasius' work was a commentary.30 As far as I can tell, it covered the whole of the Physics·, and although Aspasius did not comment on literally every line,31 his comments were detailed and subde and sometimes (in Simplicius' opinion) perceptively correct. 32 Simplicius reports that Aspasius' text of Aristode was sometimes different from his own, 33 and he shows that Aspasius himself had been aware of variant readings and had discussed their rival merits.34 In addition, Aspasius' commentary con25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

34

In addition to the passages already referred to, see: in lntx 1 3 2 , 3 - 5 ; in Int2 87,17-21. See esp. in Int2 1 8 3 , 2 0 - 2 2 . See esp. in Int2 74,31 — 33. in Int2 4 1 , 1 3 - 1 6 : Boethius does not explicitly say that Aspasius took himself to have refuted Aristode's contention; but the text strongly suggests that he knew of no reply to the criticism from Aspasius' hand. E.g. in Phys 546,20-547,11; 7 2 7 , 3 5 - 7 2 8 , 1 0 ; 7 5 2 , 1 5 - 3 0 . See esp. Simplicius, in Phys 1 3 1 , 1 4 - 1 5 . See in Phys 5 7 1 , 9 - 1 0 - below, n. 65. E.g. in Phys 5 4 9 , 1 1 - 1 6 ; 5 7 8 , 2 6 - 3 2 ; 6 4 6 , 3 - 4 ; 8 1 4 , 2 8 - 8 1 5 , 2 ; 9 3 6 , 2 9 - 9 3 7 , 5 ; 958,7-12. in Phys 4 2 2 , 1 9 - 2 6 (with 4 2 3 , 1 3 - 1 4 ) ; 4 3 6 , 1 3 - 1 8 ; 7 2 7 , 3 5 - 7 2 8 , 1 0 ; 8 1 8 , 2 7 - 8 1 9 , 3 ; 950,3 — 6 — see below, p. 35. in Phys 7 1 4 , 3 1 - 7 1 5 , 7 (but perhaps Aspasius here referred to emendations rather than to variants); 845,19-846,2.

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tained some discussion of the history of the exegesis of the Physics35 and also — a controversial matter — of its division into books. 36 A detailed examination of the pertinent passages in Simplicius will shed light on Aspasius' methods and talents as an interpreter of Aristotle: the crude summary which I have just given is enough to suggest that the commentary was a serious piece of scholarly work. 37 (4) In his commentary on the de Cáelo Simplicius twice refers to Aspasius. 38 He does not state that Aspasius' work was a commentary, and some scholars have thought rather of a monograph. But the two references are to detailed interpretations of disparate texts in Aristotle's treatise, and the natural guess ascribes a commentary to Aspasius. The references do not allow any interesting inferences about the general nature of the thing. (5) Alexander once alludes to Aspasius in his own commentary on the de Sensu. The allusion implies that, once again, Aspasius' work was a commentary. 39 (6) There was also a commentary on the Metaphysics — or at least on parts of the Metaphysics — to judge from two of the three references to Aspasius in this connexion: at in Met 41,26 — 28, and again at 379,3 — 12, Alexander reports, in some detail, the interpretations which Aspasius had offered on two knotty texts. The third reference, also in Alexander's commentary on the Metaphysics, is more celebrated: at 58,31—59,8 Alexander reports and discusses a variant reading of Aristotle's text at 998al0—11 which he found in certain manuscripts; he prefers the reading he started from and comments that "Aspasius reports that this reading is older and that the other was later accepted [μεταγραφείσης ... ύστερον] by Eudorus and Euharmostus". 40 Aspasius' commentary was at least sophisticated

35

36 37

38

39 40

in Ply s 1022,14—15 - if we may infer that the reference to Eudemus comes from Aspasius. in Ptys 916,30-31: Aspasius ended Book E at 231a4. To the references already given add: in Phys 558,28-34; 5 7 0 , 9 - 1 3 . 2 2 - 2 5 ; 580,16-18; 1024,27-1025,2. in Cael 430,28-431,11, citing Alexander (above, p. 4); 6 0 7 , 4 - 7 (probably from Alexander). in Sens 10,1 - 2 : ώς φησι δεϊν άκούειν της λέξεως Άσπάσιος. It is often supposed that Eudorus emended the text - and that he did so in order the better to accommodate it to Plato's thought. Alexander does not hint at this - o r at any other — motive. Nor is it clear that "μεταγράφειν" means "emend"; perhaps Eudorus and Euharmostus simply adopted a different reading from the one which Aspasius claimed (on what grounds?) to be the older. - I add that the text of 5 9 , 6 - 8 is not above suspicion.

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enough to refer to textual problems in the Metaphysics — and to document relatively obscure episodes in the history of Aristode's text. It is to be observed that much of our information about Aspasius' Aristotelian commentaries comes from Alexander. Indeed, I suspect that most of it derives, direcdy or indirecdy, from Alexander — and it is tempting to guess that all of it comes from that source. Plainly, Alexander made extensive use of Aspasius in his own commentaries. As I have already said, it seems likely that we can still read, unknowingly, paraphrases of Aspasius' work which were adapted without any explicit acknowledgement. (7) Albert the Great, in his commentary on Aristode's Politics, refers to a libellus de naturalibus passionibus, a monograph on natural affections, by Aspasius.41 Albert cites Aspasius on several other occasions, so that the remark need not be put down to fantasy; but he generally cites Aspasius with nonchalant inaccuracy — and the views which he finds in the libellus do not inspire any great confidence in his reports. Experts on Albert will doubdess be able to say more. For the nonce I remain non-committal. (8) Finally, there is a passage in Aspasius himself. He concludes thus his discussion of the word "μέθοδος" in the first sentence of the Ethics·. So Aristotle said that a method is a disposition [εξις] which considers the items which fall under it with the help of inductive or syllogistic reason. Let me call enthymemes too syllogisms, using the term broadly, and examples inductions. It is reasonable to call a method any capacity of this sort which proves things by way of syllogisms and inductions, as has been said elsewhere. (3,13-18)

The text of the passage is difficult; 42 and the initial remark about Aristotle is odd. But here it is only the last phrase which matters: "as has been said elsewhere [ώς άλλάχου ειρηται]". 43 Said where and by whom? The text answers neither question; but the answer to the second is presumably either "Aristotle" or "Aspasius". Two facts tell in favour of the latter answer: first, Aristotle does not elsewhere say anything of this sort about method; secondly, the introductory phrase in the previous sentence ("let me call [καλεϊσθώ μοι]") suggests that Aspasius is introducing a modest suggestion of his own rather than reporting an idea of Aristode's. Hence I incline to think that "elsewhere" refers to another of Aspasius' writings. 41 42 43

I know the text only from the Preface to Heylbut [1], At 3,17 I read, with Rose, "δεικτική" rather than "δείξις και μέθοδος ώς αληθώς". Note that one manuscript omits the phrase.

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Perhaps a passage in one of the works I have already listed; perhaps an otherwise unknown item — a commentary on the Topics, say? If 3,18 does refer to a work by Aspasius himself, then it shows that the commentary on the Ethics was not his earliest writing. No other text allows any inference about the order of Aspasius' works.

2. The Commentary on the Ethics Aspasius' commentary on the Ethics is the earliest surviving commentary on an Aristotelian text. It was not the earliest Aristotelian commentary to have been written. 'Scientific' commentaries had been compiled since at least the third century BC, and philosophical commentaries perhaps date from the same century. Aristotelian commentaries were comparative latecomers; and although Aristotle's works excited scholarly activity from the beginning, there is no sure evidence for a commentary before the first century BC. From this century, however, we have a few 'fragments' from commentaries by Andronicus and Boethus and Aristón; and there is more evidence — including a papyrus snippet on the Topics — for the first century AD. Nonetheless Aspasius is the first commentator on Aristotle — indeed, the first commentator on any philosophical text — one of whose works we can still read in its entirety.44 Several dozen later commentaries on Aristotle have survived; but they serve the Ethics surprisingly ill. In addition to Aspasius the CIAG — the Berlin corpus of Greek commentaries on Aristode — contains three ethical items: a composite Byzantine commentary (partly reproduced in CIAG XX); a commentary on EN V by Michael of Ephesus ( C I A G XXII 3); and a fourteenth century paraphrase by Constantine Paleokappa, sometimes ascribed to Heliodorus (XIX 2). 45 The composite commentary requires a paragraph or two. The work was probably compiled in the twelfth century; and it survives in two different versions. In the first version, EN I is covered by a commentary from Eustratius' hand; II-V make do with various scholia; V has in addition a commentary by Michael of Ephesus; for VI we are back to Eustratius; VII is done by an anonymous Byzantine scholar; for VIII there is the commentary by Aspasius; and for IX-X Michael of Ephesus is again 44 45

Well, the commentary is not in fact complete ...: below, pp. 19 — 21. There is also an unpublished commentary by the Emperor John Cantakuzenos (c. 1360) which apparendy derives from Olympiodorus.

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used. The second version makes two changes, each in favour of Aspasius: first, the scholia on II-V are replaced by Aspasius' commentary on I-IV (thus in the second edition there are two commentaries on I, whereas in the first there are two on V); secondly, Aspasius' commentary on VII is added after the anonymous commentary on VII. 4 6 The twelfth century compiler presumably wanted to produce a complete commentary on the Ethics — and a commentary with a decent pedigree. At any rate, it seems plausible to suppose that the second version differed from the first because the compiler had come across some additional antique stuff which he wanted to sew into his work. (He also added, after Michael on V, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ethical Questions 3, 30 and 10, in that order.) However that may be, it is striking that between Aspasius and the Byzantines he found nothing. An accident? was the compiler an idle drone? Well, we hear little enough of commentaries on the Ethics in the period between Aspasius and Eustratius; 47 and it is difficult to resist the modest conclusion that the Ethics was not much commented upon. At any rate, it is plain that other Aristotelian works — the Categories, say, or the Physics — were far more closely studied. And before Aspasius? One text — and, to my knowledge, only one — has been taken to refer to an earlier commentary on the Ethics. But in addition certain passages in Aspasius himself seem to acknowledge, implicidy, the existence of predecessors. First, the text. It is a passage from Athenaeus in which Democritus, one of the deipnosophists, accuses a certain Hephaestion of plagiarism: he had plagiarised a work by Democritus himself; and he was just the same in the case o f our g o o d Adrastus [ό καλός ημών "Αδραστος], Adrastus published five books On questions offact and of style in Theophrastus' On Characters and a sixth o n those in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristode, 4 8 and he set out at length some ideas about Plexippus in Antiphon the tragedian and said a great deal about Antiphon himself. Hephaestion appropriated all this and wrote a book under the tide On Antiphon in Xenophon's Memorabilia — although he had found out nothing o f his own. (673EF) 46

47

48

CIAGXX does not include Michael on Book V (= CIAC, XXII 3), nor the Aspasian elements in the composite. Several of Alexander's Ethical Questions are in effect commentaries on parts of the Ethicr, and in Top 187,8—10 perhaps implies that Alexander wrote a full-scale commentary on the work. An Arabic source reports a commentary on the Ethics in twelve books by Porphyry: 3e Τ Smith (see fragg 165-166). πέντε μέν βιβλία περί των παρά Θεοφράστφ έν τοις περί ήθών καθ' ίστορίαν και λέξιν ζητουμένων, έκτον δέ περί των έν τοις ήθικοϊς Νικομαχείοις 'Αριστοτέλους

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'Our good Adrastus' is surely Adrastus of Aphrodisias, the Peripatetic who wrote, inter alia, an elementary commentary on the Categories49 — and who now emerges as the author of a commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. And perhaps a substantial commentary, if we choose to emend the text of Athenaeus: read "εξ" for "έκτον", and the work on the Ethics has six books. Here, then is our pre-Aspasian commentator. And perhaps we possess some fragments. The anonymous scholia on EN II-V show a strong interest in 'realid or historical facts. This associates them — loosely enough — with Adrastus: note the titles of his two works. Moreover, the anonymous scholia twice refer to Theophrastus, On Characters,50 an obscure work known otherwise only from our passage in Athenaeus. 51 The inference is irresistible: the anonymous scholia depend on Adrastus — and in them we read, no doubt in diluted form, snippets of a pre-Aspasian commentary on the Ethics. An inebriating prospect — and therefore to be regarded with a sceptical eye. It seems to me highly probable that the anonymous scholia derive, in part, from the work to which Athenaeus alludes. But there is not the slightest reason to suppose that, in them, we possess fragments of a preAspasian commentary. First, it is not clear that the author of the work to which Aspasius refers was Adrastus of Aphrodisias. The manuscripts of Athenaeus in fact offer us a different name — "Adrantus" (or "Andrantus") — and Adrastus makes his appearance thanks to a genial conjecture by Casaubon. Even if the conjecture is correct, 52 it is not certain that we should identify Athenaeus' Adrastus — ό καλός ήμών "Αδραστος — with the obscure Peripatetic commentator. 53 49 50

51

52

53

Above, p. 8. anon in EN 180,15-17; 210,10-18. The passage in Aspasius corresponding to 210 is lost; the passage corresponding to 180 (viz 101,4-7, on EN 1121a4-7) does not say a word about the phrase which excites the scholiast's attention. That is to say, Aspasius is certainly not the source of the scholium. And also Michael, in EN 8,10—14 - but this depends on the anonymous scholia (or on the source of the scholia). — Perhaps I should note that On Characters is not to be confused with the more celebrated Characters of Theophrastus; the former is 436 no.l in Theophrastus of Eresus, Sources..., ed. W. W Fortenbaugh et al., Leiden: Brill, 1992, the latter 436 no.4. As far as I am aware, neither ""Αδραντος" nor ""Ανδραντος" is recorded as a Greek name. But if ""Αδραστος" is the neatest emendation, it is only one among several possibilities. Formulae of the type "ό καλός ήμών X" seem to be reserved by Athenaeus for two sorts of people: (i) his own friends — ό καλός ήμών Λαρήνσιος; (ii) the famous dead

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Secondly, even if the work was written by the Aphrodisian, I do not think that we can infer that it was pre-Aspasian. Adrastus' dates are even less determinate than those of Aspasius. It is reasonably clear that he was roughly contemporary with Aspasius; but as far as I can see, nothing helps us to decide whether he wrote before Aspasius or Aspasius before him, whether he might have read Aspasius or Aspasius him. Thirdly, Athenaeus' man did not write a commentary on the Ethics. Athenaeus gives the impression that he is referring to a single work — not to two works, one on Theophrastus and the other on Aristotle. I suppose that the work was called: On questions offact and of style in Theophrastus' On Characters and in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics·, it was in six books, the first five of which were occupied with On Characters — a richer source than the Ethics for factual questions. But even if there were two works, one of them exclusively on Aristode, Adrastus gave little space to the Ethics.54 As for the content of the work, all we know for sure is that it contained enough information to enable Hephaestion to cobble together a learned monograph on the figure of Antiphon in Xenophon. This suggests two things: first (and unamazingly) that Adrastus' work did not turn itself to philosophical exegesis; secondly, that it was fairly discursive in style, taking its start from a Theophrastan or an Aristotelian text and then strolling along the by-ways of antiquarianism. Whatever the passage in Athenaeus may tell us, it surely does not tell us anything about a commentary on Aristotle's Ethics. Fourthly, allow that the anonymous scholia used the work to which Athenaeus refers for their notes on realia. Nothing follows about the rest of their contents — and in particular, nothing follows about the more philosophical parts of their contents. There is no reason at all to derive these from Adrastus — let alone to ascribe them to him. And I wait to be persuaded that they derive from a source earlier than Aspasius. To be sure, they 'may perhaps' contain pre-Aspasian material — any anonymous scholia 'may perhaps' conserve early material. But "may perhaps" is a coward's phrase — and there is no reason to replace it by a doughty "do". Next, the passages in Aspasius himself which appear to imply the existence of earlier commentators. On a number of occasions he remarks,

54

- ό καλός ήμών Πλάτων. It is not clear that Adrastus of Aphrodisias fell into either of those categories. For I see no reason to change " έ κ τ ο ν " to " ε ξ " beyond the wish to invent a substantial work o n the Ethics.

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impersonally, that "it is worth inquiring [άξιον ζητήσαι] whether so-andso" (e. g. 42,27), or that "someone might wonder [άπορήσειεν άν τις] whether so-and-so" (e.g. 42,13), or that "there is a question [άπορίαν εχεν] whether so-and-so" (e. g. 48,27). Rather more often, he remarks, anonymously, that "some [ενιοι, τίνες] have suggested that so-and-so". 55 The difference between the impersonal and the anonymous remarks is not great; and it might be thought that the anonymous "some" are, sometimes or even always, an expositor's fiction. If I say "someone might wonder . . . " you do not ask me who; and if Aspasius says "someone has wondered . . . " might it not also be a misconception to ask him who? Yet I think it improbable that this is always the case; and I incline to take the majority at least of the anonymous remarks to refer to other scholars who had said something about the issues which Aspasius was discussing. It is a further question whether any of these other scholars had written commentaries on the Ethics. For the most part the anonymous scholars are cited because they raised objections against Aristotle; and in most cases the objection bears on a doctrine which might be found in the text rather than on the text itself and its interpretation. Thus at 24,1 Aspasius observes that "some people" have taken issue with Aristotle's claim that external goods contribute to happiness. Here we need not imagine an objection raised by an earlier commentator on the Ethics: Aristotle's view that external goods — money and good looks and fine sons — contribute to a man's happiness was well known, even notorious; and many had taken offence at it (many — unaccountably enough — still do). Indeed, when Aspasius here uses the impersonal "some", not only need we not presume a reference to a commentary on the Ethics — we need not presume any specific reference at all. ("Well, Aspasius, who advances this objection?" — "Oh, any number of different people.") But some of the anonymous references are of a different kind. Aspasius discusses at some length the first sentence of the Ethics·. "Every art [τέχνη] and every method [μέθοδος] ...". Having said something about arts, he turns to methods: As to methods, some have thought that the word is used in the same sense as "art" and as a synonym for it; others that . . . 5 6 55

56

E.g. 3,3.10.18; 24,1.24; 32,15; 42,28; 44,4; 50,3; 54,18; 59,14; 113,1.9; 138,18; 150,3; 175,13. 3,3-4: την δέ μέθοδον ενιοι μέν φήθησαν κατά ταύτόν τή τέχνη και έκ παραλλήλου είρήσθαι, ενιοι δέ ... - For "έκ παραλλήλου" see e. g. 65,30.

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It is clear that Aspasius is making a genuine reference and not indulging in an expositor's fiction; and it is certain that he is referring to rival interpretations of the first line of the Ethics. For when he says that some think that "the word is used [είρήσθαι]" in this or that way, he is reporting not a general thesis about the use of the word "μέθοδος" in ordinary Greek nor yet a specific thesis about Aristotle's use of the word, but rather a particular thesis about the use of the word in this Aristotelian sentence. That is to say, "the word is used" should be glossed as "Aristotle here uses the word". Suppose that this is right: are the anonymous scholars of 3,3 — 4 the authors of commentaries on the Ethics? It is a tempting inference; for where would you find a discussion of the meaning of "μέθοδος" in the first line of the Ethics if not in a commentary on the Ethics? Moreover, if the inference is just, then we shall know that there were at least two commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics before Aspasius — for "some have thought" this and "others" that. But the inference, however plausible, is not ineluctable. You might imagine, for example, that there had been some discussion, in a logical context, of the nature of arts and methods; that some had claimed that there was no difference between an art and a method — and had adduced the first sentence of the Ethics in support of their argument. Close perusal of the other anonymous references will not, I think, yield any more determinate results than this; and on the existence of commentaries on the Ethics before Aspasius prudence suggests a non liquet. But — commentaries or not — the anonymous references in Aspasius' text do at least show that certain passages in the Ethics had been subjected, in one context or another, to some close scholarly scrutiny before Aspasius set to work. I turn now to Aspasius' commentary itself. A word first on the text. The Greek manuscripts on which the modern edition is based are late and bad. They are frequently corrupt — sometimes savagely so; and they contain several lacunae. The first and last printed edition was published in 1889 by Gustav Heylbut as volume X I X 1 of the CIAG. Heylbut's edition is less than perfect: too often (once or twice on every page) he prints an impossible text; and far too often (four or five times a page) the text he prints is at best disputable. (I might note in particular that his punctuation is frequently misleading.) The critical apparatus is an aid; but it too is not ideal — sometimes it is evidently mistaken, sometimes it is vexingly incomplete.

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The CIAG was an astonishing piece of scholarship and an invaluable contribution to the study of ancient philosophy. But it was produced at the gallop, its several editors lashed on by the whip of Diels. N o surprise, then, that it frequendy cut a scholarly corner. Better, no doubt, three dozen imperfect publications than a century's delay — better the CIAG than the CMG. But the size, the elegance, and the pedigree of the CIAG volumes have conferred on them an authority which they rarely merit. However that may be, what we now possess — what is printed in the CIAG edition — is a commentary on Books I-IV of the Nicomachean Ethics, on the second half of Book VII and on Book VIII. It is generally supposed that Aspasius wrote a commentary on all the ten books of what is now printed as the Nicomachean Ethics, and that the middle part of his commentary has been lost. There is evidence against the easy supposition. It comes from two exceedingly controversial texts — and I shall here gloss over most of the problems which they raise. At 161,9 — 10 Aspasius comments on the phrase "This has been discussed earlier", which appears at 1155bl5 —16.57 He remarks: It seems that it was discussed in the missing parts of the Nicomacheans [εν τοις έκπεπτωκόσι των Νικομαχείων]. Evidendy, Aspasius thought that something was missing either in his own copy or else (and more probably) in all surviving copies of the Ethics·, and evidendy, he did not know for sure what the missing portions had contained. He does not indicate what — or how much — he thinks is missing. The adjectival participle, "έκπεπτωκόσι", carries no noun: "the missing items", "the items which have dropped out". (A standard paraphrase, "the missing books", has no warrant in the Greek.) On the other hand, the participle does carry a definite article: "the missing items" — so that Aspasius either was alluding to a familiar fact or else — and more probably — had said something about the matter earlier in his commentary. Perhaps he means to refer to a few short lacunae which he knew or suspected to have infected Aristode's text? Perhaps he thought that one or two columns of text had fallen out here and there? Perhaps he believed that much more — whole books, say — had been lost? 57

The phrase has foxed modern scholars, many of whom follow Grant in excising it. One reason for excision is founded on the phrase "ύπέρ αύτών"; for this use of "ύπέρ" in the sense of "περί" is dubiously Aristotelian. But Aspasius quotes the phrase with "περί" for "ύπέρ" (one MS has "ύπέρ"); so that the disturbing preposition in our MSS of Aristotle may be a scribal error rather than a sign of «authenticity.

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The second pertinent text occurs in the course of Aspasius' comments on 1153b9 —14, where Aristotle appears to identify happiness with pleasure: In the Nicomacheans, where Aristotle has also discussed pleasure, he clearly said that it is not the same as happiness ... A sign that this is not by Aristotle but by Eudemus is the fact that in the *** he speaks as though he had not yet discussed it. However, whether these things are from Eudemus or from Aristode, they are set down as reputable opinions. (151,21—25)

The first of these three sentences has been taken to show that Aspasius did not take himself here to be commenting on the Nicomachean Ethics — you do not say "In Y he says ..." if you are in the course of commenting on Y itself. 58 But 1153b9 — 14 appears in what is Book VII of our Nicomachean Ethics. The second of the three sentences offers a reason for thinking that at least part of the book which we know as Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics was written by Eudemus — witness the fact that "in the *** he [i. e. Aristode] speaks as though he has not yet discussed" pleasure. (The asterisks mark a lacuna of about six letters in the manuscripts at 151,25: a book-number has dropped out — a number which certainly referred to what we know as Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics.59) The third of the three sentences perhaps indicates that the authorship of the text was disputed — and that Aspasius was not gready exercised by the issue. Thus Aspasius thought, on the one hand, that some items were missing from the Nicomachean Ethics·, and he was inclined to hold, on the other hand, that at least a part of our EN VII had not been written by Aristode (and hence did not belong to the Nicomachean Ethics). And now a large and tempting leap: Aspasius' Nicomachean Ethics consisted of what are Books I-IV and VIII-X of our Nicomachean Ethics. Between the end of IV and the beginning of VIII Aspasius knew that there was a large lacuna — several books were missing. The books which now fill this old lacuna — that is to say, the books which we know as EN V-VII — were ascribed by Aspasius to Eudemus. 60 I find this a magnetically attractive story; and I take it that there is at least one indubitable truth in it. For it is as certain as such things can be

58 59 60

But note "the Nicomacheans" at 161,10 ... Whether we should restore "δεκάτφ" to the text is another and more ticklish matter. That is to say, he took them to form part of the Eudemiatt Ethics, which he reasonably ascribed to Eudemus rather than to Aristode (see below, n. 73).

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that the two accounts of pleasure, which we read in EN VII and EN X, were not designed by Aristotle to appear between the covers of the same book; it is certain, in other words, that our Nicomachean Ethics is a hybrid. But this indubitable truth does not prove that the rest of the story is true; nor that the rest of the story can and should be read into Aspasius' text. Indeed, it is plain that the text does not itself tell the story; and it is plain that what the text does say could be written up in several other — and less romantic — fashions. (Clearly, Aspasius had said more on the matter elsewhere — perhaps at the lost end of his commentary on Book IV or at the lost beginning of his commentary on Book VII. If these lost parts are recovered, we shall learn more about the history of our EN) However that may be, let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that Aspasius did tell roughly the story which I have just repeated: what might we thence infer about the probable extent of his commentary? Well, since the commentary is a commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics and Aspasius held that our EN V-VII were not part of the Nicomachean Ethics, then presumably he did not comment on them. Yet he did comment on at least part of at least one of these books, namely Book VII. Hence he must have done so in another context — and the obvious context is that of a commentary on the Eudemian Ethics. So Aspasius wrote two commentaries on Peripatetic ethical texts: one, which in large part survives, on what we know as EN I-IV and VIII-X; another, of which we have only a fragment, on what we know as the Eudemian Ethics afforced by what we know as EN V-VII. Heady stuff. Not, exactly, to be believed — but to be taken seriously (or so I think). Here I note only one further point. I have spoken as though Aspasius wrote, and took himself to be writing, a commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. He never says that this is what he is doing. Indeed, the two references in the commentary to the Nicomachean Ethics might suggest that this is not what he takes himself to be doing. Then perhaps he was writing a commentary on precisely the ten books which make up our Nicomachean Ethics, a work which, in that event, was already circulating in the first half of the second century AD; perhaps Aspasius realized, or surmised, that the work he was commenting upon was a hybrid; and perhaps he refrained from referring to it as the Nicomachean Ethics simply because he did not take it to be the Nicomachean Ethics. But let me return to sobriety, and say something about the nature and style of the commentary which we possess. First, it is worth remarking

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that the work is not introduced as a commentary. The first page gives the impression — at least, it gave me the impression when I first read it — that Aspasius is embarking on a treatise, or a lecture-course, on ethics. It is not evident until the second page that the book will be particularly tied to the philosophy of Aristotle (2,13). It is not evident until the end of the third page that the work is a commentary — and a commentary on a work by Aristotle (3,30).61 Even then, you will have to work out for yourself which work of Aristode's is being discussed. Later commentators make it plain from the outset what they are up to. They indicate that they are writing a commentary on a particular work; they say something about the goal and nature of the commentary; they make various general and introductory remarks about the text on which they are commenting. 62 None of this in Aspasius: why did he keep his purpose dark for a page or three? Well, perhaps he did not keep it dark. Perhaps the commentary originally had a few introductory paragraphs, since lost or deliberately omitted? Perhaps the text carried a tide which was sufficiendy limpid? 63 At any rate, the commentary no doubt started life as a course of lectures, and Aspasius will surely have said what he was up to when he started to speak? But even if Aspasius' pupils and readers will not, after all, have been surprised to discover, on page four, that they were engaged with a commentary on Aristode's Ethics, we might still wonder why Aspasius did not state more clearly that a commentary was what they were engaged with. Suppose that you had asked Aspasius what exacdy he was doing — compiling a commentary on a work by Aristode or rather composing a general treatise on ethics: how would he have replied? I suspect that he would have raised his eyebrows and said: "Why, both, of course". The commentary is surely a course in ethics — that is to say, Aspasius certainly expects us to consider various ethical propositions, and to accept some of them. It is equally surely a commentary on Aristode. But then what better way to give a course in ethics than to comment on Aristode? (More generally,

61

62 63

The lemma at 2,14 in our modern edition gives the game away rather earlier - but it is not certain that these lemmata were in Aspasius' original text, and it is far from certain that the lemma which now stands at 2,14 stood at the corresponding place in the original. So e. g. Eustratius, in EN 1,3-5,22. One of our manuscripts offers "Aspasius' notes [σχόλια] on Aristotle's Ethitf' at 1,1 (the 'notes' become a commentary, υπόμνημα, at the beginning of Book IV: 95,1). But we can hardly be sure that this tide was ancient.

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what better way to give a course on any philosophical topic than to give an exegesis of some work by one of the Older Masters?) And if Aspasius does not say "This is a commentary on Aristode's Ethics" perhaps that is because he thought of it — in part or even primarily — as a course in ethics. Nevertheless, the work is a commentary. It is a continuous commentary rather than a selective one; and Aspasius in effect takes himself bound to comment on anything in Aristode's text which might seem difficult. He does not comment on literally everything: many sentences get no more than a partial paraphrase, some phrases are passed over in silence, occasionally some five or ten lines of text are ignored. 64 In one place Aspasius says a word about his procedure: As to what comes next, since it is clear [δήλα] both in itself and on the basis of what has already been said, it is not necessary to go through it all - but we should consider any points where his words [λέξις] raise difficulties. (110,22-24)

Aspasius is commenting on IV 3, Aristode's account of pride and the proud. He plods resolutely to 1123bll; he then finds "what comes next" to be "clear"; and so he comments only lightly on 1123bll — 26, the heavier commentary resuming at 111,14 on 1123b26. The passage is not peculiar in any way; and what Aspasius says in it may be applied to his commentary as a whole. 65 It shows two things. First, it shows that Aspasius expected his readers to have a text of Aristode in front of them — and to be engaged in reading it. That is to say, he was not producing a substitute for Aristotle's text — he was not writing a paraphrase which might be found easier or smoother or more 'modern' than Aristode. He was producing a companion to Aristode's text. 66 Secondly, although the commentary — the point is banal — is primarily concerned to explain what is unclear in Aristode's text, clarity here is not to be understood as a purely linguistic matter; for Aspasius affirms that

64

65

66

But it should be noted, first, that the commentary shows many lacunae, and secondly (see below), that Aspasius' text of Aristode was not always the same as ours. Note Simplicius, in Pbys 571,9-10: και ό Άσπάσιος δέ τελέως παρήκε τα ϋστερα Aspasius' commentary on the Physics also passed over some passages in silence. And this is hardly astonishing: commentarios smbimus quorum officium est praetenre manifesta obscura disserere (Jerome, in Zach II vii 14). The same conclusion may be drawn from a dozen other passages. I remark that it is quite independent of the question about the origin and function of the lemmata.

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since everything in the present passage is clear, he need do no more than look at those places which present linguistic difficulties. I should not care to explain precisely what distinction is being drawn here; but it is clear enough roughly what Aspasius has in mind. Some difficulties in Aristode's text are linguistic: we do not understand this word, we cannot follow the syntax in that phrase. Other difficulties are deeper: we understand a sentence well enough, in the sense that we could, for example, translate it; but we still find it puzzling — from a philosophical point of view. Thus Aspasius implicitly characterizes his commentary as philosophical rather than philological. 07 A philosophical commentary of what species? and written for whom? As a first shot, I should be inclined to describe the commentary as paraphrastic in method and elementary in content; and I imagine that it was written for debutant philosophy students. Written — or spoken? Some extant commentaries certainly began life as written texts; but others — perhaps a majority — originated in lecture courses, the lecturer or his pupils later 'publishing' a written version. I can find nothing in Aspasius' text which tells clearly for either side. 68 For debutants? At 2,5 — 7 Aspasius says that "ethics is most indispensable ... and it is proper for us to practise it first, both in word and in deed". He means, inter alia, that ethics should be studied before the other parts of philosophy (a view which conflicts with the standard practice of starting philosophy with logic and which agrees with the later Platonist practice of attending to a young man's morals before letting him loose on logical or physical speculations). This suggests that Aspasius was writing or speaking for beginners. The commentary is paraphrastic. It is not a paraphrase in the strict sense; that is to say, it does not simply consist in a quasi-translation of the whole of Aristode's text. But its method of exegesis is, more often than not, the paraphrastic method. I find sentence S in Aristotle's text; my comment takes the form: "In uttering S, Aristotle says that P"; and the method works insofar as my sentence "P" is a more readily under67

68

Like all extant commentaries on Aristotle. The later commentaries all indeed contain philological notes, just as Aspasius' commentary does; but such notes are generally sparse, and they do not constitute the intellectual centre of the works. Exegetes of philosophical texts assumed that their pupils had already been through the grammar school and were generally capable of understanding, at the linguistic level, an old text. But see above, p. 8.

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standable paraphrase of Aristotle's S. Simplicius later contrasted two of the earliest commentators on Aristotle by remarking that while Boethus produced a genuine commentary, Andronicus' work was rather a paraphrase (in Cat 30,1 — 5). It has been suggested that Aspasius followed Andronicus, or at least that his style of commentary followed the Andronican style. Since nothing of Andronicus' paraphrastic commentary survives, the suggestion cannot be falsified. If much is paraphrase, more or less close, Aspasius will also frequently cite Aristotle verbatim: sometimes the citation is followed by an explanatory paraphrase; sometimes an extra phrase, serving as an explanatory gloss, is tacked on to the citation or interpolated into it; or else there may be a sentence or two — rarely much more — of genuine commentary. The commentary is occasionally interrupted — or enlivened — by a brief digression. The longest and most celebrated is the essay on the emotions, which appears — without any particular justification from the point of view of Aristotle's text - at 42,27-47.2. Or there is the short disquisition on 'arts and methods', τέχναι and μέθοδοι, at 2,16 — 3,18; or the lines on power or δύναμις at 5,23-34. More often — but not very often — there are brief discussions of objections which have been, or might be, made against this or that of Aristotle's views; and there are occasional discussions of problems or άπορίαι which certain passages raise or might be thought to raise.69 Digressions of this sort are both rarer and shorter in Aspasius than they are in most of the later commentators. In addition, they seem to have been distributed through the text at random — at any rate, I am at a loss to say why there is a note here but no note there, why a puzzle is raised over this passage but not over that. I wonder if Aspasius' text was originally rather more uniform in such respects than is the text which we now read; but I cannot point to anything which positively supports such a suspicion. The commentary is elementary — as Galen found Aspasius' commentary on the Categories elementary. Aspasius explains a great deal which seems — to me — pretty straightforward; and if he intends only to comment on obscure passages, he evidently assumes that his readers or pupils will find obscurity aplenty. Often enough, his paraphrases seem superfluous and little plainer than the paraphrased text: it is the Sergeant-Major's method of instruction. (First I says what I'm going to say. Then I says it. 69

See above, p. 7.

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Then I says what I've said.) To be sure, judgements of this sort are at best impressionistic; and it is true, too, that we can form litde idea of the general level of Peripatetic scholarship in Aspasius' time, so that what now seems easy may then have seemed perplexing. Nonetheless, it seems to me not implausible to think that Aspasius was intending to explain any passage in the Ethics which a tiro at philosophy might find tough. 70 Again, Aspasius presupposes very little background knowledge — you can understand most of what he says even if you know virtually nothing about philosophy and virtually nothing about Aristotle. Here at least a judgement need not be merely impressionistic. In our text there are six explicit references to other works of Aristotle;71 and there are also many passages in which a perceptive reader will spot, or suspect, an allusion to an Aristotelian text. The allusions, I take it, show no more than that Aspasius was thoroughly drenched in his Aristotle: they are unconscious echoes; or at any rate, they are not allusions which a reader is required or expected to pick up. None of the explicit references seems to me to presuppose that a reader will already be familiar with the texts to which Aspasius refers. Thus 7,20 — 22: "he has said in thζ Analytics that from necessities necessities follow ...". Aspasius does not mean "he has said, as you already know, ..." (nor "he has said, as you will later learn ..."): he means what he says, namely "he has said". If Aspasius knew his Aristotle, he also knew his Plato. There are half a dozen references to the dialogues; 72 and there are numerous implicit allusions. Again, we should not infer that Aspasius' pupils were supposed already to be familiar with Plato's works: we do not need, and are not expected, to pick up the implicit allusions. References to other philosophers are not frequent. When Aristode's text makes an allusion, Aspasius will often repeat it. In addition, there are allusions which do not derive direcdy from the text on which Aspasius is commenting: to Anaxagoras (156,14); to 'the Pythagoreans' (2,10; 13,3; 47,35); to 'the Socratics' (177,3); to Xenophon (24,12); to 'the old Peripatetics' (44,20); to Theophrastus (133,13; 156,17; 178,3); to Eudemus 70

71

72

No criticism here: an elementary commentary may be an excellent commentary. And in any case, I come to disinter Aspasius, not to blame him. To the Prior Analytics at 7,21; to the Posterior Analytics at 20,18; 49,1; 74,22; to the Topics at 124,13; to the Physics at 9,28. To the Apology, 54,23; Laches, 84,27; Theaetetus, 114,24; and - without explicitly naming the work - Laws, 46,8; Republic, 9,29; 117,4; 119,6.

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(151,24; 178,3); 73 to Andronicus (44,21.33); to Boethus (44,24); to 'the Stoics' (44,12; 45,16). 74 There are also anonymous allusions of the form "some say ...", on which I have already commented. And in other passages we may suspect that Aspasius has other philosophers in mind even though he does not say so. Some of these references are no more than passing allusions; in others there is some exposition or discussion. None of them, so far as I can judge, presupposes that the reader will be already au fait with the authors to whom Aspasius refers; and certainly none of them presupposes any deep knowledge of the history of philosophy. In short, the commentary could be used and understood by students who were beginning their work in philosophy. Most of the anonymous references to other philosophers are in the present tense; and although the tense itself signifies nothing, it is natural to wonder to what extent — if at all — Aspasius' commentary reflects contemporary interests and issues. For insofar as the work was conceived of, at least in part, as an introductory treatise on ethics we might expect that Aspasius was writing with half an eye on his own world; and although Aristotle's Ethics is doubtless stuffed with timeless truths, different historical circumstances might cause them to be presented and interpreted in different lights. It is difficult, for a number of disparate reasons, to form any very clear view on this question; but I incline to think that an attentive reading of Aspasius' text will show up a number of contemporary concerns. It is clear, for example, that Aspasius has some interest in detecting and recording homonyms. Perhaps this is explicable by the fact that tiros are all too likely to be confused by homonymy if a teacher does not point it out to them; perhaps Aspasius is doing no more than continue a tradition which goes back to Aristotle himself. O r perhaps — and the suggestion is at least worth investigating — perhaps homonymy was a fashionable topic of the day. Again, Aspasius rather likes 'divisions' or διαιρέσεις Here too various anodyne explications are readily devised. Here too it might be interesting to consider the possibility of a contemporary slant. Again, Aspasius displays some interest in the figure of Socrates — and in

73 74

The second clearly an allusion to the Eudemian Ethics, 1239al - 4 . Note also the indirect references to Antisthenes (142,9: below, p. 29) and to Speusippus (150,3: "according to certain people").

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particular in the nature of his alleged irony. I note that the Stoic Epictetus — a generation or so before Aspasius — mentions Socrates twice as often as he mentions anyone else and claims him for a proto-Stoic. And I imagine that Aspasius was aware of a contemporary fascination with the masks of Socrates. But such generalities have no value unless they are supported by a detailed study of the pertinent texts. Here I may briefly mention two texts. At 1124bl 8 —19 Aristotle asserts that "it is characteristic of a proud man ... to be grand with regard to those who enjoy power and good fortune". Aspasius comments: He does not suggest that a proud man, if he is in a monarchical state and one of the subjects, should lead a revolt against the ruler and monarch — that would be characteristic of a fool. (113,19 — 23)

No modern reader of the Ethics, I suppose, would for a moment imagine that Aristotle might have meant what Aspasius assures us that he did not mean; and it may be doubted whether any of Aristotle's own contemporaries would have been assailed by such a suspicion. Why does Aspasius make such an apparently pointless comment? Presumably the comment did not seem poindess when (and where) Aspasius made it. Presumably the "monarchical state" is the Roman State, and presumably the "ruler and monarch" is the Roman Emperor. Aspasius is advising his pupils —who, we might further presume, will have included well-connected Roman citizens — that Aristotle is not implicitly urging resistance to the Emperor. The question of how a wise man should behave towards a monarch was a topic of philosophical discussion. Moreover, it was a topic of practical concern — and more than one Stoic lost his head over it. In the sentence which I have quoted Aspasius at least glances at this lively and deadly issue. At 1158bll Aristode begins a short discussion of friendships between unequals — between father and son, old man and young man, man and wife, ruler and subject ... ; and he claims that these are all different sorts of friendship, "for the virtue [άρετή] of each of these people is different, and so is their characteristic activity [έργον]" (bl7—18). Aspasius has a long comment on this phrase (176,26-177,23) — long, that is to say, given the significance of the remark in the overall development of Aristotle's thoughts on friendship. He observes that there is "serious controversy" on the matter (176,29); for in opposition to Aristotle "some people" have denied that there are different virtues for father and son, for man and

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wife (176,30). He determines to examine the controversy in the particular case of man and wife — for "the same thing must be said about father and son too" (177,2). Since "the Socratics in particular" have argued that man and wife have the same virtue, Aspasius sets out their argument (177,3 — 7). He then offers a rebuttal of the argument (177,7 — 14), considers a possible objection to the rebuttal (177,14—15), sketches a possible reply to the possible objection (177,15 — 22) — and ends by confessing that "these matters must be considered further" (177,23) Who are 'the Socratics' from whom the discussion takes its start? In the Politics, 1260a20 — 23, Aristotle again maintains that "man and wife do not have the same modesty, nor the same courage or justice, pace Socrates"; and he presumably has in mind Plato's Meno, 72D-73C. Perhaps Aspasius is thinking of this Platonic text, either directly or by way of the Politics? But in that case he has transmuted Socrates into the Socratics — and the argument which he ascribes to the Socratics is by no means evidently identical with the argument which Socrates offers in the Meno. Now Diogenes Laertius ascribes the Socratic view to Antisthenes (VI 12), Aspasius refers elsewhere to Antisthenes by name (142,8 —10):75 perhaps 'the Socratics' of 177,3 are in effect Antisthenes? and perhaps the argument at 177,3 — 7 was taken from one of Antisthenes' lost works? (Remark that it is presented in dialogue form. This is not Aspasius' own style — either he is indulging in an uncharacteristic piece of whimsy, or else he is quoting someone else. Perhaps 177,3 — 7 is a fragment of Antisthenes?) However that may be, the issue itself might seem to be of marginal importance to an understanding of Aristotle — and of marginal interest in its own right. Why did Aspasius bother to raise it? Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa, had written a book on the question (Diogenes Laertius, VII 175): he was for the Socratics and against Aristotle — and as far as we know the later Stoics followed him. 76 In particular, we do know that Musonius Rufus, a generation or two before Aspasius, had explicitly taken up the issue in two essays, the one entitled That women too should be philosophers and the other Whether daughters should be educated in the same way as sons?1 Whether or not it was a matter of practical urgency, the question of female virtue was the object of some discussion in the 75

76 77

But there he observes that "they say that Antisthenes too held this opinion" — the turn of phrase does not suggest that he had any first-hand knowledge of Antisthenes. See the cento of texts assembled as SVF III 2 4 5 - 2 5 4 . See fragg III and IV Hense = Stobaeus, II xxxi 126 (p. 2 4 4 , 6 - 2 4 7 , 2 Wachsmuth) and 123 (p. 2 3 5 , 2 3 - 2 3 9 , 2 9 ) .

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imperial philosophy schools. 78 When Aspasius says that there is a "serious controversy" on the matter, we may perhaps take the present tense to refer to present time — and imagine that Aspasius is hanging a contemporary garment on a fortuitous peg in the text. Neither of the two passages which I have adduced is exactly elating; nor do I suggest that Aspasius' commentary will shed bright light on imperial philosophical concerns. (After all, it is an introductory and elementary text.) But I imagine that there are several contemporary allusions of this sort, not all of which are entirely without interest. A final observation on the general nature of the commentary: Aristotle is always right. To be sure, Aspasius never says that Aristotle is always right — indeed, he rarely says explicitly that Aristotle is right in this or that particular case. But the way in which he presents and reports Aristotle's views makes it plain that what Aristotle says in ethics goes in ethics. There is nothing wrong with loving Aristotle; and some philosophers maintain that any interpreter is logically obliged to embrace a Principle of Charity and ascribe as much truth as he can to the text which he is interpreting. Now love is blind, and charity is a dangerous virtue; and sometimes, I think, Aspasius' zeal discovers things in Aristotle's text which a more dispassionate eye will not perceive. But the same can be said of any commentator worth his salt — and here I am concerned to illustrate Aspasius' technique rather than to assess his talents. I shall cite two illustrative passages: in the first, Aspasius runs unsummoned to Aristotle's aid; in the second he defends Aristotle against attack. At 1125al2—15 Aristotle explains that a proud man will move slowly and speak gravely; for "since he takes litde seriously, he is not a man to hurry [σπευστικός]". Aspasius comments thus: He is not the sort of man who hurries ... unless of course he is pressed. We must supply [προσυπολαμβάνειν] 79 this qualification; since if he is trying to save a friend or a fellow-citizen 80 or someone else who matters to him, he will run and he will shout aloud. (115,14—16)

Aristotle says that proud men do not hurry. Aspasius thinks that proud men will hurry, in special circumstances. Hence he infers that we must supply the qualification, "unless he is pressed", in Aristotle's text. 78 79 80

And also a suitable subject for highbrow chitchat, to judge from Plutarch, mul virt. Compare "προσυπακούειν" at 22,35. Reading "πολίτην" for "πόλιν".

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This is a particularly clear and explicit example of a common enough phenomenon among commentators: Aristotle says, or appears to say, that P; in truth (or so the commentator thinks), Q; hence we should 'understand' Aristode to have said that Q. Some will decree that the phenomenon is in general disreputable: is it not better — more honest — to infer that Aristotle is wrong? Others will decide that at any rate the present example of the phenomenon is unacceptable. Still others — and I find myself among them — may feel that Aspasius' gloss is not as capricious as it may at first seem. (And Aristode himself explicidy warns us that his generalisations are to be construed as holding 'for the most part', ώς επί τό πολύ.) But however that may be, the phenomenon shows up clearly enough in Aspasius' commentary — and I take it that Aspasius himself was unblushingly aware of it. In several passages, as I have already said, Aspasius reports objections which have been brought against Aristotle. He always replies to them, and he always supposes that the objectors are wrong — either they have misunderstood what Aristode says or they have got their moral facts wrong or both. Thus at 1124b 12—15 Aristode observes that proud men "are thought to recall [μνημονεύειν] the benefits they bestow but not the benefits they receive ..., and to hear about the former with pleasure and the latter with displeasure". 81 Aspasius reports that "some people" find serious fault with this: surely the opposite ought to be the case — a good man will forget the benefits he has bestowed and remember those he has received, "for his is a grateful character" (113,9—12). Aspasius replies: But this is not what Aristotle says - he does not say that a proud man will forget the benefits he has received. A proud man is the very last person to do this — after all, he tries to be as it were a counterbenefactor to a greater degree. Rather, he is not the sort o f man w h o recalls such things in his speech [έν λ ό γ φ μνημονευτικός], nor does it give him pleasure always to be recalling to others the benefits he has received (and nor would he hear o f them with pleasure from others). (113,12—16)

The objection is not implausible; and Aspasius' answer is not unclever. He observes, following Aristode, that a proud man will habitually return with advantage any benefits he may have received: hence (so it is clearly implied) he must remember any benefits he has received, and Aristode cannot have meant to say that he would forget them. Hence when Aristode uses the verb "recall" he means it in the sense of "reminisce about" 81

There are some textual uncertainties here which I need not discuss.

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and not in the sense of "keep alive in foro interno"·, he means "recall έν λόγω", and Aspasius' paraphrase helpfully makes explicit the qualifying phrase. 82 Moreover, Aspasius attaches his interpretation to the following clause in Aristode's text, which says that a proud man will not willingly hear others talk about the benefits he has received. A cridc will note that Aspasius replies to only one half of the objection — and that his reply to the one half makes the other more pointed. For it seems that a proud man, on Aspasius' interpretation, will reminisce in company about the benefits which he has bestowed on others; and that is hardly an endearing — or, I dare say, a virtuous — characteristic. A critic might also wonder whether Aspasius is right to 'defend' Aristode in the first place. Perhaps Aristode's proud man does forget the benefits he has received. The objectors allege that a proud man is a good man; that a good man will not forget the benefits he has received, at least in the sense that he will not care to dwell on them in foro interno·, ergo ... Yet perhaps Aristode found no difficulty in supposing that a good man might forget the benefits he receives. But that is only to say that Aspasius has not said the last word on the issue. And I take him to have been concerned to say only the first words.

3. Aspasius and the Text of Aristotle What is the value of Aspasius' commentary? what, I mean, is its value or its interest to us? Not, you might think, very much. True, the poor condition in which the work now finds itself has diminished its value in a way for which Aspasius himself cannot be held responsible. Even so, the commentary is pretty thin stuff — to compare it, say, to Alexander's commentary on the Prior Analytics is to compare a fast-food oudet to a restaurant. Well, I do not suppose that Aspasius himself would dissent seriously from this judgement, were he able to comprehend it — after all, his aim (or so I have supposed) was rather different from Alexander's. Nonetheless, he might be inclined to add that, at its own modest level, his commentary should have some small attraction for us. I shall mention four ways in which it might attract, and illustrate the fourth. First, and rather obviously, Aspasius' commentary on the Ethics is a commentary on the Ethics. There are not many modern commentaries on 82

Cf anon in £7V189,l-4.

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the Ethics, and those which exist are not magnificent. I myself tend to find Stewart as useful as any — and I suppose that, on the whole, I find Aspasius as useful as Stewart. Aspasius' commentary lacks the comparative material which Stewart, in the modern fashion, carefully collects; on the other hand, he is more comprehensive than Stewart — like most ancient and few modern commentators, he turns most of the stones he finds, and in consequence he usually has something to say on any passage which you may find pu2zling. If what he has to say does not always (or does not often) satisfy, nonetheless it will frequently be enough to unjam a clogged mind. Secondly, and no less obviously, Aspasius' commentary is a document in the history of Aristotelianism. Aristotle's school had experienced some sort of revival toward the end of the first century BC; and by the end of the second century A D it was flourishing. For the intervening period we have relatively little information: Aspasius' commentary is the only Peripatetic work to survive between the time of Nicolaus of Damascus (if I may speak in his case of the survival of a Peripatetic work) and the oeuvre of Alexander of Aphrodisias. If only for that reason, it must interest anyone concerned with Aristotle and his school. As I have earlier intimated, the contents of the commentary will not stagger the historian, or even provide him with a mass of useful material. But if there are no treasures, there is surely a modest competence in the text. Thirdly, Aspasius' work, being the first ancient commentary of any sort to survive intact, will fascinate anyone who cares for exegesis and its history. Now to care for such things may seem splendidly esoteric; and to be sure there are esoteric aspects to it. (Esoteric, and entrancing — who, for example, can fail to be entranced by the history of the lemma?) But there are other aspects. Throughout its history, exegesis and commentary have constituted an important part of philosophy, and never more so than in the imperial period: the history of exegesis is not separable from the history of philosophy itself. The nature of commentary in the latest phase of Greek philosophy is abundantly documented; for the late third century we are not without evidence; and for the early third century we have again a rich set of texts. But before that, there is not much; and Aspasius' work is therefore a precious document. Fourthly, Aspasius' commentary tells us something, both direcdy and indirectly, about the state of Aristotle's text at the end of the first century AD. There is perhaps no need to flag the significance of this question;

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but since it happens to inflame me at the moment, I shall allow myself to enlarge a little upon it. What is the pedigree of 'our text' of Aristotle — that is to say, of the text which we now read in our OCTs or Teubners or Budes? Here is the sketch of an optimistic and orthodox story. Our text is based on the surviving mediaeval manuscripts of Aristode's works. Those manuscripts derive from a celebrated ancient edition of Aristotle's works — the 'Roman edition' done by the Peripatetic scholarch Andronicus of Rhodes, towards the end of the first century BC. Andronicus probably used Aristotle's own autographs, which a curious fate had unexpectedly conserved and brought to Rome; and in any event he produced an edition which met the best scholarly standards of his age. This edition became, for evident reasons, the official or canonical edition of Aristotle's works in later antiquity. Thus Bywater's OCT of the Nicomachean Ethics boasts a noble line: it rests on manuscripts which derive from a scholarly edition which was founded on papers from the hand of Aristode himself. To be sure, all texts corrupt. It would be absurd to pretend that Bywater's text always presents Aristotle's ipsissima verba. Moreover, in the case of some of Aristotle's works — the Eudemian Ethics is a notorious example — the state of the text is in fact lamentable. But such is the lot of all texts: Aristode, so the optimistic orthodoxy goes, is not immaculate; but he is far less spotty than most ancient authors. Alas, this optimistic story — or so I now think — is entirely false; 83 and the history of Aristode's text is far more twisted — and rather more exciting — than the orthodox suppose. It is precisely here that the evidence of the ancient commentators is invaluable; for the commentaries are themselves far earlier than our earliest manuscripts of Aristode's text, and they thus testify — in principle and under certain conditions — to the state in which that text found itself several centuries before the scribes whose ink we now read rolled up their cuffs. In general, the commentaries indicate that Aristode's text was a rather fluid thing. There is never any question, in any of the commentators, of an 'official' or 'canonical' edition (and I may remark that none of the commentators ever mentions the edition of Andronicus). Rather, the commentators are aware of the existence of variant readings, and they some83

See J. Barnes, "Aristotle at Rome", in J. Barnes and M. Griffin (edd.), Philosophia //(Oxford, 1997).

Togata

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times find it impossible to fix on 'the correct text'. It is true that, for the most part, these variants are minor — I mean, they show the same characteristics as the variants which meet us in all manuscripts of any age. But there are also, here and there, hints of rather more serious variants; and in a few cases the variants seem very serious indeed. The best study of all this remains the article which Hermann Diels wrote a hundred years ago on Simplicius' commentary on the Physics:S4 Diels observed that Simplicius' text frequendy differs from ours; and that Simplicius himself frequendy addresses textual problems, caused for the most part by differences among the different manuscripts which he consulted. It is a pity that Diels found time to discuss only the first four books of the Physics·, for it is in connection with the seventh book, which survives in two very different versions, that the question of a 'canonical' text becomes most pressing. Nonetheless, his article should be conned by anyone who cares for the text of Aristotle. What Diels did for Simplicius and the Physics might with advantage be done for the other commentators and the texts on which they have commented. A cursory glance at, for example, Alexander's commentary on the Prior Analytics shows that the text which he read was sometimes rather different from the OCT — and what is more, a comparison between his commentary and the later commentary of Philoponus proves that certain textual problems had disappeared during the intervening centuries, and that other problems had come to light. For the Ethics, Aspasius is our only surviving commentator from the pre-Byzantine period. In fact, he offers us (as I have already noticed) tantalising evidence about the early relations between the Nicomachean and the Eudemian Ethics — evidence which is clearly of the first importance for the history of these two texts. In addition, and at a less exalted level, he provides a vast quantity of material pertinent to the state of this or that sentence in the text which he interprets; and although in this respect he contributes less to the text of the Ethics than, say, Alexander contributes to the text of the Analytics, his contribution is still imposing enough. I may add that his contribution has not yet been exploited by Aristotle's editors. Bywater's OCT is, I suppose, the standard modern edition of the Ethics, or at any rate it is the edition in which pretty well all modern scholars read the text. In his Preface Bywater hails the recent publication 84

H. Diels, "Zur Textgeschichte der aristotelischen Physik", Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaft Berlin, phil.-hist. Klasse 1, 1882 (Berlin, 1882).

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of Heylbut's Aspasius, and his apparatus criticus not infrequently cites the evidence of 'Asp'. But about half of these citations are, in one way or another, false or misleading; and on the other side, Bywater has passed over much of the evidence which Aspasius supplies.85 (It is my impression that something similar can be said for most modern editors of Aristode's other works. It takes time to exploit the commentators, and an editor of Aristotle has other things to worry about.) Then how in detail might Aspasius be exploited? His contributions — his potential contributions — may usefully be ranged under five headings. First, there are the lemmata — direct citations from Aristode which every so often punctuate the text. Secondly, there are the citations — by which I mean those direct citations of Aristotle which are incorporated into the commentary itself. Thirdly, there are Aspasius' paraphrases — which do not directly quote but rather indirecdy presume a certain reading of the Aristotelian text. Fourthly, there is the commentary itself — which again will presume a particular reading. Fifthly, there are a number of passages in the commentary where Aspasius explicitly discusses textual points. It is easy enough to determine when we are dealing with an example of the first or of the fifth of these phenomena. The boundaries between the other phenomena are less clear cut: a citation will often shade into a paraphrase; and it will often be arbitrary to call a sentence in Aspasius a piece of paraphrase rather than of commentary. Nonetheless, the fivefold classification is serviceable enough. I shall first make a few sceptical remarks about lemmata and citations; then give an illustration of the way in which a comment-cum-paraphrase may lead us to the text of Aristode; and finally I shall discuss a couple of passages in more detail. First, then, the lemmata. The story of the Aspasian lemmata is deliciously complicated; and since it is told elsewhere in this volume I need not rehearse it here. What matters now is the value of the lemmata as evidence for the state of Aristode's text. At first blush, the value seems great; for here we have Aspasius quoting Aristode, and quoting him pure. And in point of fact, editors of Aristode often give special attention to the lem85

There is nothing surprising or shameful about this: after all, Bywater was producing an edition for schoolboys. But it is a shame - and a scandal - that his O C T has come to be regarded as an edition with which scholars may rest content. (In this paper I have taken the O C T as the text of reference; but for manuscript readings and the like I have relied on Susemihl's Teubner.)

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mata in the ancient commentaries. But their trust is misplaced. When an ancient commentary was copied, the text of the lemmata (if they too were to be copied) was often taken not from the copy-text of the commentary but rather from a text of Aristode himself. The reason for this is evident enough. If I want a text of Aspasius' commentary, then I shall surely want to read it alongside my copy of Aristode's Ethics. The lemmata will help me to find the rough place in my text of the Ethics: hence I shall want them to coincide with my copy of Aristode. In all the commentaries on Aristode there is clear proof that lemmata, whatever their origins, have in this way been tampered with. It follows that we cannot use the lemmata as evidence for the state of Aristode's text at the date of the commentary. To be sure — and trivially — any lemma belongs to the history of Aristode's text, and any lemma might in principle turn out to have some value for the establishment of his text. The issues are intricate, and the details will surely vary from one commentary to another (and from one manuscript of a commentary to another). But one thing is plain: we may not assume that the lemmata which stand in our manuscripts of the commentaries — or which stood in the archetypes of those manuscripts - represent the text of Aristode which the commentator had open before him. In particular, we may not assume that the lemmata in Aspasius' commentary represent the text of Aristode which Aspasius himself read. Next, citations. In Aspasius' commentary they are numerous; and since a citation (as I am using the word) is integral to the text of the commentary, we might here be more confident that it records the text of Aristode which Aspasius had before him. Frequendy, no doubt, that is so. But it is not always or necessarily so. One example may here illustrate the point (others will later come incidentally to light). At 1096a5 — 9 Aristode briskly dismisses the suggestion that the life of a moneymaker — the life of a businessman — might be the happy life. "The life of business", he says, "is constrained [βίαιος], and money is clearly not the good we are seeking". It is not altogether clear why or in what sense the life of business should be thought to be 'constrained' — modern scholars have offered various explanations, and some have been tempted to emend the text. Certainly, we shall hope to find something helpful in any commentary on the Ethics,86 Here is what Aspasius offers: 86

See e. g. Eustratius, in EN 38,23-29.

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They say that the life o f business is βίαιον, i. e. small, meaning that it is βίαιον with regard to happiness. (11,1—2) 8 7

Now this is odd. For the word "βίαιος" does not mean "small": it is connected to "βία", "force" or "compulsion", and Aspasius knows quite well that it means something like "constrained" (as his later remarks at 5 9 , 1 2 - 1 8 show). What is going on? More than one explanation might be conjectured; but the following suggestion seems to me to be the most probable. There is a Greek word which looks rather like "βίαιος" and which does mean "small": the word is "βαιός". It is not a rare word; but it is rather poetical — and it does not occur in any Aristotelian text. This, I take it, was the word which Aspasius read in his text of Aristotle at 1096a6; and he might reasonably have thought that his pupils would welcome a gloss. What Aspasius actually wrote, then, — and what a modern editor o f Aspasius should print — was this: They say that the life o f business is βαιόν, i. e. small, meaning that it is βαιόν with regard to happiness. (11,1—2)

Aspasius' explanation is pretty forced — and it is no surprise that the second hand o f one of the manuscripts of Aspasius adds a tentative gloss on the gloss. But, given the reading "βαιός", it was no doubt the best that could be done. At some point in its history, the text o f Aspasius was here 'corrected' from a copy of the Ethics. The result gives Aspasius what is doubtless the right text of Aristode — but it leaves him with an imbecile gloss on it. In another passage we can catch a similar process of 'correction' in midflight. At 87,11 Aspasius comments on 1117bl—2, where all our manuscripts of Aristotle read (correctly) "των κύκλω". Aspasius comments on a different reading, namely "των κύκλων", an evident and trifling corruption of the true text. Here the manuscripts of Aspasius give "κύκλων"; but the second hand in one o f them has crossed out "κύκλων" and substituted "κύκλω", 'correcting' Aspasius from Aristotle. 88 What does this imply? as cautiously as we must manuscripts o f Aristotle, text which we read; and

It implies, I fear, that we must treat the citations treat the lemmata. I f a citation agrees with our we cannot at once infer that Aspasius read the if a citation disagrees, we cannot at once infer

87

Why the plural ("they say") here? Does Aspasius mean to refer to the Peripatetics in general? or is he reporting the views o f some earlier scholars - or earlier commentators?

88

O r at least I suspect that this is what has happened - and that Heylbut's critical apparatus is inaccurate.

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that this was Aspasius' own reading. It is only when the wording of a citation is confirmed by its context — by the paraphrase or the comment associated with it — that we can be confident that we have Aspasius' reading before us. The citations, like the lemmata, are of no independent value for the reconstruction of Aspasius' text of Aristode. A paraphrase is not a citation, nor is a comment. But if paraphrases and comments never display the text of the Ethics which lay in front of Aspasius, they will often enough imply or suggest or insinuate a certain reading. And, paradoxically enough, such insinuations are more reliable than explicit citations; for they are not liable to 'correction'. Nonetheless, it is rarely an easy matter to divine the text from the comment. Here is a nice example. At 1096al9 — 22, in the first of Aristode's arguments against the Platonic Form of the Good, Bywater's OCT offers a text which translates thus: The good is spoken of both in what it is [εν τω τί έστι] and in quality [εν τω ποιω] and relation [έν τω πρός τι]; but what is per se [τό καθ' αύτό] and a substance [ούσία] is prior by nature to what is relational ...

Commentators generally suppose that Aristode is alluding to his doctrine of the 'categories of being' (as he will do explicidy in the second argument against the Form of the Good). They suppose, that is to say, that the phrases "what it is", "the per se" and "substance" all pick out the first Aristotelian category — which we normally denominate the category of substance; that "quality" refers to the category of quality; and that "relation" refers to the category of relation. And they suppose, further, that the two non-substantial categories stand in, so to speak, for all nine nonsubstantial categories.89 Now in fact various objections can be raised against any interpretation of this text which invokes the Aristotelian categories; 90 and in 1852 (hence long before the publication of Aspasius' commentary) Spengel proposed to excise the words "and in quality [και έν τω ποιφ]" from the text at a20: Aristode is not alluding to his own ten categories; rather, the reference is 89

90

The argument is roughly this: There are good things in all the ten categories. The categories form an ordered series. When the different kinds of Fs form an ordered series, there is no Form of F. Hence there is no Form of the Good.' Note 'Heliodorus', in EN 9,3-16: in his paraphrase of the argument he first goes through all ten categories, for each one giving an example of a good which falls into it; then he lamely observes that relation is posterior to substance - the other eight categories, and the notion that the categories form an ordered sequence, are forgotten.

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to an Academic theory, closely based on a celebrated text in Plato's Sophist, according to which all beings or οντα fall into one of two classes — either they are per se (καθ' αύτό) or else they are 'relative to something else' (προς ετερον). This version of Aristotle's argument seems to me to be correct (for reasons which need not be rehearsed here); and I take it that Spengel's emendation should be printed as the true text. In the light of this, consider Aspasius' comment on the lines in question. He does not cite them; but he does offer a fairly close paraphrase: They speak o f the g o o d both in what it is, i. e. in substance, and in the other categories; and what is per se - which is the same as substance — is prior by nature to the other categories. H e mentions relation alone because it is m o r e familiar that substance is prior to this. ( 1 1 , 2 3 - 2 7 )

Clearly, Aspasius has not anticipated Spengel's interpretation of Aristotle; for he thinks that Aristotle has in mind his own ten categories and not the two Academic kinds of δντα. Nonetheless, he seems to have read the text which Spengel wanted to restore to Aristotie. He feels it necessary to explain why Aristotie "mentions relation alone" of the non-substantial categories. Hence his text of Aristotle mentioned relation — but no other non-substantial categories. Hence his text of Aristotle did not contain the words "καί έν τω ποιώ" at a20. Lovely — but trustworthy? When Aspasius says " H e mentions relation alone" he is thinking specifically of what Aristotle says in a21 rather than of what he says in a20. This emerges clearly from the following figure: Aristotle (1) T h e g o o d is spoken o f both in what it is and in quality and relation; (2) but what is per se and a substance is prior by nature to what is relational ...

Aspasius (1*) They speak o f the g o o d both in what it is, i. e. in substance, and in the other categories; (2*) and what is per se — which is the same as substance - is prior by nature to the other categories. (3*) H e mentions relation alone because it is more familiar that substance is prior to this. (11,23-27)

Here (1*) is a close paraphrase of (1); (2*) is a close paraphrase of (2) — and (3*) follows the paraphrase of (2), not the paraphrase of (1). We may immediately infer that in (2) — i. e. at a21 — Aspasius had a text which

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referred to substance and relation alone. A text, in other words, just like the text of our manuscripts of the Ethics. We cannot immediately infer that Aspasius' text of (2) — of a20 — also referred to substance and relation alone. We cannot immediately infer that Aspasius supports Spengel. May we nonetheless draw an indirect inference about a20? Well, it is true that Aspasius' comment on a21 would make excellent sense if in a20 as well as in a21 he found only substance and relation mentioned: he would then be answering the question "Why, in this argument against Plato, does Aristode mention relation alone of the nine non-substantial categories?". 91 But his comment on a21 would make equally good sense if his text of a20 — 21 was exacdy the text which the OCT prints; for he then would be answering the question "Why, in the second premiss of the argument, does Aristode mention relation alone of the two non-substantial categories which he mentions in the first premiss?". One minuscule fact seems to tell for the second of these two interpretations: Aspasius suggests that Aristode "mentions relation alone because it is more familiar [γνωριμωτέρως] that substance is prior to relation". The adverb "γνωριμωτέρως" is a comparative (rather than a positive or a superlative); and it invites the following gloss on Aspasius' comment: 'In a21 Aristode mentions only relation, and not both relation and quality as he has done in a20, because it is more familiar that substance is prior to relation than that substance is prior to quality'. Evidendy, this last gloss is far from mandatory; and more, much more, remains to be said on this litde text of Aspasius (and also, to be sure, on the litde text of Aristode). In other passages there is an easier path from Aspasius' paraphrase or comment to Aristode's text; but in every case the path must be trodden warily — and editors of Aristotle (as I have said) are usually pressed for time. In a dozen or so places Aspasius notes the existence of a variant reading; usually — but not always — he comments on the text which the variant produces; sometimes — but rarely — he argues for or against a particular reading. He never says where he has found his variants. Perhaps he had collated his own copy of the Ethics against other manuscripts (later commentators do so as a matter of course)? But he never expressly refers to 91

Cf Eustratius, in EN43,12-13 - an answer to the question "Why, in a20, does Aristode mention only two out of the nine non-substantial categories?".

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other manuscripts. Perhaps his own copy had variants noted in its margins? Perhaps he knew of the variant readings from the works of earlier scholars? However that may be, he did know of variant readings. At 1112al8 Aristotle puts the question whether we deliberate about anything whatever: he answers the question with a firm No, and successively eliminates various candidate objects of deliberation. O f one stage in the eliminative process Aspasius has this to say: H e says that deliberation is concerned with opinions [δόξας] rather than with sciences [έπιστήμας]. What he means is this: he has shown that acts o f deliberation are concerned with the objects o f those arts [τέχναι] which are not precise and independent; and he says that deliberation is concerned with items for which we have only opinions rather than with those for which we have arts - for example, it is those who have opinions about medical matters rather than those w h o have mastered the art w h o deliberate. . . . It is also written as follows [γράφεται δέ και ούτως]: Deliberation is concerned with arts [τέχνας] rather than with sciences [έπιστήμας], the productive disciplines being called arts and the theoretical sciences ... (72,28—73,4)

The comment bears on 1112b7, for which Aspasius thus knew two readings: the reading from which he starts, "περί τάς δόξας ή τάς έπιστήμας"; and the variant, "περί τάς τέχνας ή τάς έπιστήμας". The way in which the second reading is introduced perhaps suggests that Aspasius took it to be not only second but secondary; but he does not reject it in favour of the first reading — indeed, he gives no indication that there is a choice to be made between the two readings, or that it might be interesting to develop arguments for and against each variant. Rather, it is as though there were two texts, mildly but definitely different one from the other, each of which had an equal claim to be considered Aristotelian. Did Aspasius perhaps take both texts to be genuine — deriving, perhaps, from different 'editions' of the Ethics? ('Second editions' were not unknown to ancient scholarship; but Aspasius never mentions them.) Or did he, like a good professor, prefer to leave the choice of reading to his pupils? (Yet he does not even suggest that they have a choice to make.) However that may be, his paraphrase of the second reading is lucid enough; and I presume that Aristotle is usually construed in this way. For the second reading is the reading printed by Bywater, and accepted by most modern scholars. Yet it is not an easy reading. At 1112a30—31 Aristotle has affirmed that deliberation is concerned with what we can effect or do, so that he has already eliminated (implicitly, at least) the theoretical sciences as potential areas of deliberation. Hence it is odd to find him

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assuring us, at 1112b7, that deliberation concerns the practical arts rather than the theoretical sciences. It is worth taking a look at the first reading. The first reading has, as they say, less support: Bywater's apparatus criticus to 1112b7 simply reports "δόξας altera lectio ap. Asp."; and although, according to Susemihl, the variant "δόξας" also appears in a couple of Aristotelian manuscripts, its witnesses are overshadowed by the witnesses for the second reading.92 Nonetheless, it is the reading which Susemihl himself prints. What sense does it give? At 1112bl — 6, Aristode has said that deliberation is more appropriate in some arts or τέχναι than in others: Aspasius construes the first reading for b7 as a further comment within the same context — in those arts, such as medicine, where deliberation is highly appropriate, it will be more appropriately used by those who have not mastered the art (but only have 'opinions' on the matter) than by those who have mastered the art. This makes decent sense; but it is perhaps a trifle forced — and we might more easily take Aristode to mean that we are more inclined to deliberate about matters which fall under no art (and thus are mere matters of 'opinion') than about matters which do fall under some art. The following objection might be raised against the first reading: it requires us to construe "περί τάς δόξας ή τάς έπιστήμας" as though it were "περί τάς δόξας ή τάς τέχνας" - indeed, Aspasius himself explicidy takes "έπιστήμας" here to mean "τέχνας". Yet the two words standardly have a different sense in Aristode. But the objection has no weight. At 1112bl Aristode has just used the word "έπιστήμη" to cover the practical arts (and Aspasius correctly glosses "έπιστημών" by "τεχνών" - 72,9): the use of "έπιστήμη" at b7, far from surprising a reader, keeps Aristotle's usage steady. I incline to think that the first of Aspasius' two readings is the correct reading. It is pleasing to find it in Aspasius — and as the first of his two readings. It is a pity that he himself expressed no preference and offered no argument. At 1156a31 Aristode begins some brief remarks about the friendships of the young. One of his comments reads thus, both in Susemihl's Teubner and in Bywater's OCT: 92

'Heliodorus', in EN 47,25 - 2 6 , paraphrases the second reading; anon in EN gi ves nothing away (for 149,28, which might seem to support the second reading, is a comment on 1112bl rather than on b7).

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Young men are also passionate; for passion is for the most part in accordance with the emotions and caused by pleasure. 93 T h e G r e e k is pretty c r a b b e d , and a pupil might reasonably expect s o m e help f r o m a c o m m e n t a t o r . H e r e is what A s p a s i u s has to say (in Heylbut's version o f the text): For young men are also passionate, he says; for the passionate for the most part act in accordance with their emotions or because of pleasure. He thereby makes it clear that young men become passionate in accordance with their emotions only and not also in accordance with reason as good men do. For in good men emotions are indeed aroused in relation to talented young men - just as horse fanciers feel for handsome colts; but in them there is also reason, which urges them to care for such people. But the passion of the young is in accordance with their emotions; for those who are passionate for these things for the most part act because of pleasure. But the passion of the good is for the most part because of benefitting and educating young men — for it is in longing especially for this that they surrender to passions for the talented. It is also written as follows: For young men are passionate — for passion for the most part is according to the emotions and because of pleasure. This reading makes it clear that it is understandable [είκότως] that the young are passionate; for passion for the most part is because of the emotions and pleasure, and reason is found rarely and in few cases. So since young men live according to their emotions, it is intelligible [εύλόγως] that they are passionate. (166,18-31) It is plain that A s p a s i u s knew two different readings o f the text at 1 1 5 6 b l — 3 . It is plain, too, that he thought that the two texts carried different meanings, or at least different e m p h a s e s ; for he indicates what it is that each reading " m a k e s clear". (Here, again, he expresses n o preference f o r o n e reading over the other, nor even indicates that a choice is to b e m a d e and that arguments might b e welcomed.) B u t what were the two readings which he had b e f o r e him, and what was the d i f f e r e n c e in sense or in nuance between t h e m ? 93

1156bl - 3 : και έρωτικοί δ' οί νέον κατά πάθος γαρ και δι' ήδονήν τό πολύ της έρωτικής. - The final phrase is difficult. I take the genitive "της ερωτικής" to be partitive, and "τό πολύ της έρωτικής" to be in effect equivalent to " ή έρωτική ώς επί τό πολύ". As for the adjective "έρωτική", what noun should we understand with it? The commentators suggest " φ ι λ ί α " or " ο μ ι λ ί α " or "κοινωνία" or " ή δ ο ν ή " - none of which is immediately supported by the context. The same question arises at, say, 1164a3 — where again, the context supplies no pertinent feminine noun. But at 1164a3 it is plain that we should supply " τ έ χ ν η " (as the parallel with " π ο λ ι τ ι κ ή " at 1163b34 demonstrates) and of course the standard noun to supply with an adjective of the form " Χ - ι κ ή " is " τ έ χ ν η " (or "επιστήμη"). At 1156b3 we should understand "τής έρωτικής τεχνής". This, I fear, will seem absurd — but I need not defend it here (and I shall translate " ή έρωτική" simply by "passion").

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For the first of the two readings, Heylbut prints the following text: καί έρωτικοί γαρ oí νέοι, φησι, κατά πάθος γαρ ή δι' ήδονήν τό πολύ τοις έρωτικοϊς. For the second reading he prints this: έρωτικοί γαρ oí νέοι, κατά πάθος γαρ καί δι' ήδονήν τό πολύ τής έρωτικής. The first reading thus appears to differ from the second at three places: the initial "καί" of the first is missing in the second; the "ή" of the first reading becomes "καί" in the second; and for "τοις έρωτικοΐς" of the first we find "τής έρωτικής" in the second. In the first of these three places, the first reading agrees with all our other evidence for Aristode's text. In the second place, our other evidence all sides with the second reading. In the third place, one manuscript agrees with the first reading and everything else with the second. In addition, each of Aspasius' two readings differs from the rest of the Aristotelian evidence in one place: instead of the first of the two "γάρ"s in the Aspasian readings there is found a "δέ" in the manuscripts of Aristotle. Before looking at these points in more detail, let me recall that, for this part of Aspasius' work, there are two different manuscript traditions; for the commentary on Books VII and VIII is preserved along with the other surviving parts of Aspasius' commentary (in what I shall call the independent tradition) and it is also conserved as part of the composite Byzantine commentary (in what I shall call the composite tradition). As for the text which here concerns us, Heylbut adduces four witnesses: two manuscripts for the independent tradition, Ζ and N; and for the composite tradition, one manuscript, B, and the Aldine edition. And now to details — and first, the initial "γάρ". The word is found in both manuscript traditions for the first reading, at 166,18, and it seems plain that it formed part of Aspasius' text of that reading. For the second reading, at 166,27, the composite tradition again has "γάρ"; but here the independent tradition apparently offers "δέ", in agreement with the Aristotelian manuscripts. 94 How, then should we reconstruct the second reading? There are two options. First, we might put "δέ" in the second reading, thus finding a fourth difference between Aspasius' two variants. And we should then imagine that in the composite tradition the "δέ" at 166,27 94

I say "apparently": Heylbut's apparatus to 166,27 reports that Ζ and Ν each have "δέ"; his apparatus to 166,25 reports that Ν omits the three sentences which occupy 166,25-28.

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was deliberately changed to bring it into line with the "γάρ" of 166,18. Secondly, we might put "γάρ" in the second reading, supposing that the independent tradition changed "γάρ" to " δ έ " at 166,27 in order to conform to what was then held to be Aristode's text. I find myself siding with Heylbut and the second option — but I confess that I can produce no powerful argument in its favour. Yet even if the two readings did indeed differ on this point, I cannot think that the difference impressed itself on Aspasius: at any rate, nothing in his commentary makes anything of it — or hints at it. I may add that the "γάρ" makes excellent sense in the context of Aristode's text; for it makes Aristode's train of thought perfecdy clear and explicit (whereas a " δ έ " is at best neutral and at worst misleading). And I would print "γάρ" rather than " δ έ " in the text o f the Ethics. (I recall reading, long ago, a sentence in Spengel — or was it Susemihl? — to the effect that when it comes to a choice among " δ έ " and " δ ή " and "γάρ" manuscripts have no authority ...) What, next, of the initial "και", missing in the second reading? (Here there are no manuscript variants recorded in Heylbut's apparatus.) Aspasius' commentary does not allude to, let alone discuss, this supposed difference between the two readings; and I suspect that it never existed. It is easy enough to imagine that in citing the variant at 166,27 Aspasius did not bother to repeat the initial "και"; and it is equally easy to imagine that the initial "και" was accidentally dropped in the course of copying. 95 However that may be, it is hard to think that the presence or absence of the "και" could make any interesting difference to the sense, or even to the emphasis, of the text. And the same is surely true o f the next point, the difference between " ή " and "καί". Indeed, it is difficult to discover any difference at all in meaning between these two readings. I take it that " ή " will not be construed as genuinely disjunctive ("Either in accordance with their emotions or else because of pleasure") and that the "καί" will not be construed as genuinely conjunctive ("Both in accordance with their emotions and because of pleasure"). Rather, each connective will be construed epexegetically; and in that case if there is any distinction at all between them it will 95

I once entertained the more exciting thought that the initial "καί" at 166,18 should be construed as Aspasius' own connecting particle rather than as part of the citation from Aristode; so that each o f Aspasius' two readings omitted the initial "καί". But comparison with other passages in the commentary makes it clear that the "καί" is part o f the citation (and in consequence that Aspasius' sentence manifests an asyndeton).

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be one of subtle nuance rather than of gross sense. There is nothing in Aspasius' commentary to suggest that he found the distinction between "ή" and "καί" significant; and I am strongly inclined to think that this supposed difference between the two readings is also a phantom difference: at 166,29 we should correct "ή" to "καί", confusion between these two words being one of the commonest of scribal errors. One point remains: "τοις έρωτικοΐς" in the first reading, "της έρωτικής" in the second. Or so it is in Heylbut's text. As for the second reading, at 166,28 the independent tradition has "της έρωτικής"; 96 and so does manuscript Β in the composite tradition. But the Aldine edition prints "τοις έρωτικοΐς" (as it also does, with admirable consistency, in the paraphrase at 166,29). No doubt Heylbut is right to print "της έρωτικής": it has the better textual support; and the false reading in the Aldine is readily explained (between "τοις έρωτικοΐς" and "της έρωτικής" there would have been no audible difference). What of the first reading? If we may trust Heylbut's apparatus cnticus, at 166,19 "τοις έρωτικοϊς" is again found in the Aldine edition — and nowhere else. The composite manuscript Β reads "τής έρωτικής"; and so does the independent manuscript N. As for Z, the other representative of the independent tradition, it has "τής έρετικής", a trivial error for "τής έρωτικής". In short, the textual evidence for 166,19 is virtually identical to the textual evidence for 166,28; and if we take "τής έρωτικής" in the second reading, we should surely take it in the first as well. Then why did Heylbut opt for "τοις έρωτικοΐς" at 166,19? Well, Aspasius ' paraphrase of the first reading seems to tell decisively in favour of this text. He says: ... for those who are passionate for these things act for the most part because of pleasure [δι' ήδονήν γαρ τό πολύ τοις τούτων έρωτικοΐς], (166,24-25)

The words "τοις ... έρωτικοις" in the paraphrase pick up something in the text of the first reading: they surely pick up, and hence guarantee, "τοις έρωτικοΐς". But this argument is an illusion. In the paraphrase (again, according to Heylbut's apparatus), both witnesses for the composite tradition do indeed show "τοις έρωτικοΐς" — but both witnesses for the independent tradition have "τής έρωτικής". And there are two strong reasons in favour of the independent tradition. First, the genitive "τούτων" in the formula 96

Or rather, its sole representative, Ζ (above, n.94), has this reading.

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"τοις τούτων έρωτικοϊς" cannot be construed as partitive ("those of the young who are passionate"); and if it is objective ("those who are passionate for these items"), then the phrase "these items" becomes quite inscrutable, lacking any evident reference. In brief, the genitive cannot be construed. Secondly, the passage I have just quoted continues thus: ... for those who are passionate for these things act for the most part because of pleasure, whereas that of good men [της δέ των σπουδαίων] ... (166,24-25)97 Now with "της" here we can only understand "έρωτικής"; 9 8 for Aspasius means to refer to "the passion of good men". And we can understand "έρωτικής" here only if we have already come across it in the first part of the sentence: hence we must read "της έρωτικής" and not "τοις έρωτικοΐς" there. That is to say, Aspasius' text should be printed thus: δι' ήδονήν γαρ τό πολύ της τούτων ερωτικής, της δέ των σπουδαίων το πολύ δι' ώφέλειαν καί παίδευσιν των νέων. Here there is no difficulty with the genitive "τούτων" — Aspasius refers to the passion of the young. The sentence makes decent sense and shows sound grammar — and it is also stylish, with a neat chiasmus. The fact that we should print "της έρωτικής" in the paraphrase at 166,25 does not stricdy entail that we should print the same word in the citation at 166,19. But evidently we should not print a different text there, namely "τοις έρωτικοΐς", unless we have pretty powerful and independent reasons for preferring it to "τής έρωτικής". And, as I have urged, we have no reasons at all. I conclude that, so far as the text of Aspasius is concerned, the dative plural, "τοις έρωτικοΐς", is another phantom. It should disappear from his text, its presence in some witnesses signifying no more than a common and trivial error. (Its occurrence in one Aristotelian manuscript is, no doubt, an independent manifestation of the same error.) And now we are up the creek and in the soup. For all three (or four) of the putative differences between the two readings which Aspasius records have disappeared. Or rather, it is certain that the two readings did not split between "τοις έρωτικοΐς" and "τής έρωτικής". I do not believe that they split between "γάρ" and "δέ", between "καί" and nothing, or between "ή" and "καί"; but even if they did differ in one or more of 97 98

I note that there should be a comma before "τής δέ" rather than Heylbut's full stop. Ζ in fact has "ερωτικής" in the text.

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these three ways, it is plain that these differences ground no difference in sense — or at least, no difference in sense on which Aspasius comments. To back down the creek and brush off the soup we had better take a look at the glosses which Aspasius puts on his two readings. The second reading is glossed or paraphrased as follows: This reading makes it clear that it is understandable [είκότως] that the young are passionate; for passion for the most part is because of the emotions and pleasure, ... (166,28-30)

Nothing remarkable there: you might think that the paraphrase was scarcely necessary — and scarcely more easy to understand than Aristotle's text; but you will hardly deny that it is an accurate paraphrase of Aristotle, given the second reading of the text. (That is to say, it is an accurate paraphrase of the Teubner and the OCT Aristode.) As for the first reading, we may infer that, in Aspasius' view, it does not "make clear that young men are passionate ..." — rather, it makes something else clear. What Aspasius says is this: He thereby makes it clear that young men become passionate in accordance with their emotions only and not also in accordance with reason as good men do. ... But the passion of the young is in accordance with their emotions; for their passion for the most part is because of pleasure, whereas the passion of the good ... (166,20-25)

It is perfecdy plain that this cannot be regarded as a reasonable paraphrase of the first reading as Heylbut prints it. Of what text might it have been a reasonable paraphrase? That is to say, how should we reconstruct the first reading in the light of this paraphrase?" Two things may be affirmed with some certainty. First, Aspasius attaches the phrase "in accordance with their emotions [κατά πάθος]" closely to the initial adjective "passionate [ερωτικοί]". That is to say, the fact that he can paraphrase with "young men become passionate in accordance with their emotions" shows that he must have read the first words of the text, in the first reading, as follows: και ερωτικοί γαρ oí véoi κατά πάθος.

He reasonably understood this to mean: "The young are passionate in accordance with their emotions"; and he reasonably glossed it as: 'It is

99

And on the assumption that the text of the paraphrase is not itself awry, and that the paraphrase was not merely inept.

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their emotions, and not their reason, which guide the passions of the young'. Secondly, Aspasius takes the phrase containing the words "because of pleasure" to explain or justify the claim that it is emotion which determines the passion of the young. That is to say, he read the words δι' ήδονήν το πολύ της ερωτικής as a unit; he reasonably understood it to mean: "For the most part their passion comes about because of pleasure"; he reasonably glossed it as: 'for those passions usually owe their origin to pleasure'. In short, Aspasius glossed the first reading as follows: T h e passion of the young is usually guided by their emotions; for it is usually produced by a desire for pleasure'. Then what exactly was the first reading which Aspasius found in his text of Aristotle? Evidently it was something rather different from the second reading — and also from the version or versions which the Aspasian manuscripts now offer us. I do not claim to be able to recover the exact words which Aspasius had before him; but it seems to me that the sense of the words, whatever they may have been, is beyond serious doubt. Aspasius' first reading had the same sense as this sentence: και έρωτικοί γαρ oí νέοι κατά πάθος· δι' ήδονήν γαρ τό πολύ της ερωτικής. That sentence, or something close to it, should be printed in any edition of Aspasius; and it should be considered by any editor of Aristotle's Ethics. Whether it should be accepted by any editor of Aristotle's Ethics is another matter. 4. Conclusion This paper has (at length) an end, not a conclusion. Since it is customary to round things off with a final banality, here is one: Aspasius has baked a dry pie — but a probing thumb will pull out a plum or two.

ROLAND WITTWER*

2. A S P A S I A N L E M M A T O L O G Y τα λήμματα γαρ ζητοϋσιν ούχ ήττον ή τήν τιμήν Aristotle, Pol. 1321a41

I

Ancient commentators wrote different kinds of commentaries, and they knew that they did. 1 Here is a rather late but interesting report: τοις των 'Αριστοτελικών συνταγμάτων έξηγηταϊς άλλοις άλλως επήλθε περαναι τα της υποθέσεως, οί μέν γάρ, δσοιπερ αυτό τοΰτο έξηγηταί, ιδίως έκθέμενοι και κατά μέρος το κείμενον τήν έρμήνειαν έπισυνήψαν, σώαν τε κάν τη διαιρέσει τήν λέξιν του φιλοσόφου τηρήσαντες και τα παρ' έαυτών προσέφερον εις σαφήνειαν. ούτοι δέ είσιν οί περί Σιμπλίκιον και Άμμώνιον και Φιλόπονον και Άλέξανδρον πρότερον τον Άφροδισέα και ετέρους πλείστους, οϊ πολυστίχους συντάξεις πολλών γεμούσας καλών εις τάς διαφόρους τών 'Αριστοτέλους κατέλιπον πραγματείας, οί δέ τρόπον ετερον αυτόν γάρ ύποδύντες Άριστοτέλην και τω της αύταγγελίας προσχρησάμενοι προσωπεία», ώς εύσύνοπτον και τό πάν εν είη και μή διακόπτοιτο, τήν μέν λέξιν παρήκαν αύτήν, ούτε διηρημένην οΰθ' ήνωμένην τοις ύπομνήμασι συνταξάμενον ... οίος ό εύφραδής Θεμίστιος εις πλείονα τών 'Αριστοτέλους πεποίητο πρότερον και Ψελλός ύστερον μιμησάμενος έν τη λογική και ετεροι. The report is from Sophonias, a late 13th or early 14th century Byzantine monk, in the introduction to his own paraphrase of Aristode's De anima,2 He distinguishes two groups of commentators: on the one side there are the proper commentators, on the other side the paraphrasers. The two groups differ in his view mainly in two respects:

* This paper has been written post festum. Aspasian lemmatology was not on the programme in Pontignano; it was a subject of lively debate nonetheless. I would like to thank the symposiasts for inviting me to write the piece and the editors for their useful comments on an earlier draft. I am most grateful to Hugh Johnstone and to Jonathan Barnes for their encouragement, advice and help. 1 See e.g. Themistius, in An. post. 1,1 — 12; Simplicius, in Cat. 1,1-2,29; 3 0 , 2 - 3 . 2 Sophonias, in De Anima, 1 , 1 - 2 2 Hayduck {CIAG XXIII,i: Berlin, 1883) .

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(a) Proper commentators place the text commented on in their own text, paraphrasers do not. (b) While the commentators speak in their own voice when they comment, the paraphrasers always speak in the voice of the author commented on.3 Here I am only going to concentrate on (a). The presence of the text commented on is a distinctive feature of a proper commentary. What else does he say on this feature? ιδίως έκθέμενοι και κατά μέρος τό κείμενον τήν έρμήνειαν έπισυνηψαν. έκθέμενοι: The commentators set out the text... ιδίως: on its own ... κατά μέρος: part for part ... τήν έρμήνειαν έπισυνηψαν: and joined the interpretation after it. All this exactly applies to what we now call the "lemmata". Lemmata are parts of the text commented on which are placed before the comment. They are set out on their own, that is they are not parts of sentences (nor of arguments) of the commentary. We also have evidence that lemmata of Aristotelian commentaries were indeed written in εκθεσις, that is, that their lines projected into the left margin by one or two letters,4 but I wonder whether Sophonias had this evidence too. 5 Why then does Sophonias not say: "The λήμματα are a distinctive feature of the commentaries proper", if this is exactly what he means? Why use a description if there is a shorter name? The truth is that there is no name for lemmata in Greek, "λήμματα" has more than one meaning, but it does not mean lemmata, and when Aristotle said in his Politics that people were searching for λήμματα no less than for honour, he was not speaking of people looking for lemmata but of oligarchs hunting for money. There are very few direct references to lemmata in ancient texts. Most of the few I have found refer to them, as Sophonias does, as "what is said in εκθεσις". 6 3

4

5

6

Perhaps he alludes also to the fact that commentaries are longer than paraphrases. On which cf. Themistius, in An. post. 1,11 —12. Cf. e. g. Anon., in Top. (PFay 3 = CPF 111,2); this is true for commentaries in general. For the "typographical" format of the lemmata on papyri see K. McNamee, Marginalia and Commentaries in Creek Literary Papyri, diss. Duke University, 1977, 3 4 - 3 5 and M. del Fabbro, 'IL commentario nella tradizione papiracea', Studia papyrologica 18, 1979, 69 — 132, passim. I do not know whether we find such typographical characteristics in Byzantine MSS, and I do not know either to what extent Sophonias still had access to older material. Simplicius, in De cáelo, 336,29: Ό μέντοι 'Αλέξανδρος, καίτοι έν τη της λέξεως εκθέσει γράψας ομοίως δέ ει και άφθαρτον, öv δέ, έν τή εξηγήσει ώς οϋτως έχουσαν τήν γραφήν έξηγεΐται ομοίως δέ εΐ και άίδιον, öv δέ, και λέγει τό άγένητον λέγεσθαι και κατά του ö άδύνατον γενέσθαι; an early example is Apollonios of Cition who introduces a lemma in his own commentary with such a phrase {in De art. 11,16 Kollesch/Kudlien):

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Later on in his introduction Sophonias gives us to understand that proper commentaries have a disadvantage: There is no stylistic unity in such a work; the whole thing becomes quite disjointed in going back and forth from the comment to explanations of particular words and vice versa.7 But there are also advantages: σώαν τε κάν tfj διαιρέσει την λέξιν του φιλοσόφου τηρήσαντες (i) The commentator preserves a sound Aristotelian text in the lemmata and (ii) he preserves it in its division. (i) "Earlier commentators read earlier texts and fortunately wrote them down in the lemmata of their commentaries. Earlier texts were sound, they did not suffer from corruption as ours do. Unfortunately we no longer have these early texts themselves, but we still find what we are looking for in the lemmata of the commentaries." Modern scholars are more sceptical. Two things are true, they say: earlier commentators read earlier texts and, unfortunately, (with some very few exceptions) we no longer have these early texts. The rest is fantasy.

7

ίνα δέ πάνυ εύπαρακολούθητά σοι τα κατά μέρος γένηται, πρότερον τάς του 'Ιπποκράτους λέξεις έκθήσομαι ... . C f . also Orígenes, in ev. Matth., XIV,12,69-80; Gregorius Nyssensus, in illuck Tunc et ipsefilius,22,22; Proclus, in Ale. 181,2 and 312,23; Philoponus, in An. pr. 193,28-29. But the phrase was also used to introduce quotations (see e. g. Orígenes, Contra Cehurn, 1,5,8 ff.: Έ ν τοις έξης οϋν θέλων αύτό κοινοποιήσαι ώς οΰ πρώτον ύπό τούτου εΰρεθέν εκτίθεται 'Ηρακλείτου λέξιν τήν λέγουσαν "Ομοια, ώς ει τις τοις δόμοις λεσχηνεύοιτο, ποιεϊν τούς προσιόντας ώς θεοϊς τοις άψύχοις; cf. V,6,l ; VI,6,1 f. et passim-, Simplicius, in De Caelo 670,6: ... ή προσεχώς ΰπ' έμοϋ του Πλάτωνος έκτεθείσα ρήσις; Simplicius, in Phys. 48,26 (quoting Eudemus)) and to refer to an item in a lexicon: Eustathius, in II. E 408 (vol.2 p. 111.9 van der Valk). Athenaios refers in Deipnosophistae, 12.46 533E to a lemma in a commentary of Chamaileon with "έν τφ περί 'Ανακρέοντος προβείς τό· ξανθή δ' Εύρυπύλη μέλει ó περιφόρητος Άρτέμων" (see also 7.15 281Ε and cf. Fr. Leo, 'Didymos περί Δημοσθένους', Nachrichten von der Königlichen Gesellschaft d. Wiss. Güttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, 1904, 254—261, at 257); cf. similarly Proclus referring to one of his own lemmata in in Ale. 56,6: ταύτα μέν οΰν ληπτέα τα δόγματα τήν πρώτην έκ των προκειμένων ρημάτων (cf. ibid. 156,20). In Latin we find "lemmata" in epigrams by Martial (X,lix,l; XI,xlii,2; XIV,ii,3: "lemmata si quaeris cur sint adscripta, docebo:| ut, si malueris, lemmata sola legas") and in Plinius sec., Epist. IV,27,3. In neither passage does "lemmata" mean lemmata in commentaries, but rather headers of epigrams or epigrams themselves (pace F. Lasserre, 'L'élégie de l'huître', QUCC 19, 1975, 165; del Fabbro, above n.4, 78). Cf. in De Anima, 2,8 ff.: τοις μέν οϋν έξηγηταΐς καί ή λέξις διηρημένη τετήρητο, άλλ' οϋν τόν νουν διεσπάσθαι άνάγκη καί μή πάνυ τι σώζειν το συνεχές, τω τε μήκει του λόγου ευπετώς της διανοίας ούχ επομένης καί ταΐς μεταξύ σχολαΐς, ας αναγκαίας τό περί τήν λέξιν ασαφές αύτοις ένεποίησε.

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First, nobody really believes that earlier texts were sound. They were corrupt, and perhaps as corrupt as ours are, for corruption is everywhere, and always has been. But they often suffered from different corruptions; and, what makes them interesting for us, they were sometimes free from corruptions our texts have. As to the rest different sceptical stances have been advocated. A strong version holds that the commentators did not put the lemmata in the commentaries at all. Nobody has advanced this view generally, but there are some who have thought that this is true for particular commentaries.8 A weaker and more widely accepted version holds that the commentators did indeed put the lemmata in the text, but as time went on, the lemmata were replaced by the scribes and we now read in our medieval MSS of the commentaries what the medieval scribes read in the Aristotle of their time.9 For other commentaries it has been shown that scepticism is out of place. First and trivially, in the case of the lemmata we find in commentaries preserved on ancient papyri (in Anon, in Tht. for example),10 there at 8

9

10

Cf. e. g. P. Moraux, 'Notes sur la tradition indirecte du "de Caelo" d'Aristote', Hermes 82, 1954, 1 4 5 - 1 8 2 , at 1 5 3 - 1 5 4 (about the lemmata in Simplicius, in De caelo)·, but see E. Lamberz, 'Proklos und die Form des philosophischen Kommentars', in J. Pépin, H. D. Saffrey (éd.): Proclus — Lecteur et interprète des anciens, Paris, 1987, 1 - 2 0 , at 9 - 1 0 ) ; A. Kehl: Der Psalmenkommentar von Tura Quaternio DC. Papyrologica Coloniensa I, Köln/Opladen, 1964, 23 (about the lemmata in Pap. Colon. Theol. 1 = Didymus Caecus, on the Psalms)). As first evidence for this, defenders of this view often adduce the fact that the lemmata offer different readings from the one we find in the quotations or semi-quotations of the same text in the commentary. But note: (1) Already Simplicius observed (cf. in De caelo 336,29 f. quoted in n.6) that the text Alexander commented on differed from the text Simplicius found in the lemma. Simplicius does not at all doubt that both readings go back to Alexander; otherwise he would not have made this remark in the way he does. (2) The fact that the readings of the lemmata differ from those of the quotations may only indicate that one of the two has been changed, it does not show by itself which. Nonetheless, for particular commentaries scholars have convincingly shown that what we read in the lemmata derives indeed from a medieval ms. (or of a member of a medieval MSS family), (cf. e. g. R. Klibansky, Plata Latinus III, London 1953, XXIXXXXIX and C. Moreschini, Ί lemmi del commento di Proclo al Parmenide di Platone', Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 33, 1964, 2 5 1 - 2 5 5 on Proclus, in Parm.\ A. Carlini, Ί lemmi del commento di Proclo all'Alcibiade I e il codice W di Platone', Studi Classici e Orientali 10, 1961, 1 7 9 - 1 8 7 on Proclus, in Ale). But we are told that the reverse also happened: cf. the case of Parisinus 2142, where, according to J. Ilberg, 'Die Hippocratesausgaben des Artemidorus Kapiton und Dioskurides', Rheinisches Museum 45, 1890, 1 1 1 - 1 3 7 , at 112, the direct transmission of the Hippocratic treatises has been contaminated by the readings we find in Galen's commentaries on them. On the lemmata of which see H. Diels and W Schubart, Anonymer Kommentar ζ» Piatons Theaitet, Berliner Klassikertexte 2, Berlin, 1905, XX-XXIV; A. Carlini, 'Il commento anonimo al Teeteto e il testo di Platone', in: Storia poesia e pensiero nel mondo antico. Studi in onore di Marcello Gigante, Napoli, 1994, 8 3 - 9 1 ; D. N. Sedley and G. Bastianini, 'Com-

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least w e c a n b e sure that the readings are n o younger than the ink they were written with. Secondly, in a few cases where scholars have s h o w n that the text o f the l e m m a t a (or at least the text o f s o m e o f t h e m ) does n o t d e p e n d o n the medieval transmission, and is in a c c o r d a n c e with w h a t the c o m m e n t a t o r m a d e his text say. 11 W h a t does this s h o w against Sophonias' claim? T w o things: soundness is relative, and his claim, if n o t simply false, is surely false in its generality. (ii) T h e r e remains the s e c o n d point: the l e m m a t a are set out part for part and therefore they divide the text. Sophonias n o w claims that the division m a d e by the l e m m a t a d o e s indeed preserve Aristotle's division o f the text. T h e division o f the text o f o u r editions into chapters and paragraphs and also into sentences is a medieval o r m o d e r n invention. 1 2 O n e may think that the division into chapters and paragraphs is an uncontroversial m a t t e r and does n o t in any case affect the meaning o f a text. This is true for straightforward works, I think, where w e see also without typographical assistance where a section begins and w h e r e it ends. In s o m e w h a t m o r e o b s c u r e texts, however, c h a p t e r division m a y in fact be controversial and alter sense, for it makes a difference w h e t h e r w e read a passage as

11

12

mentarium in Platonis Theaetetum', in Corpus dei Papiri Filosofici Greci e Latini III, Florence, 1995, 2 2 1 - 5 6 2 , at 244-246. Cf. e. g. E. Diehl,: 'Der Timaiostext des Proklos', Rheinisches Museum 58,1903, 246 - 269 on Proclus, in Tim.·, H. Diels, 'Zur Textgeschichte der Aristotelischen Physik', Philos.-hist. Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften Berlin, 1882,1 —42 on Simplicius, in Phys.\ A. Busse, 'Über die in Ammonius' Kommentar erhaltene Uberlieferung der aristotelischen Schrift Περί έρμηνείας', in Festschrift Johannes Vahlen %um siebzigsten Geburtstag, Berlin, 1900, 71 - 8 5 on Ammonius, in De int.·, K. Praechter, [reviewing. Syrianus, in Met. (ed. G. Kroll), C1AG VI,1J Gottingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1903, 5 1 6 - 5 3 8 (= K. Praechter, Kleine Schriften, 282-304), 523, on Syrianus, in Met.·, cf. also W Jaeger: 'Emendationen zur aristotelischen Metaphysik Α-Δ', Hermes, 52, 1917, 4 8 1 - 5 1 9 , 482 who says programmatically about the text of Aristotle that Alexander of Aphrodisias read: "Die nächste Aufgabe der Kritik wird es sein, Alexander sorgfaltig durchzuinterpretiren und den Bestand seiner Lesarten aufzustellen, keine ganz einfache Sache, da man sich nie an das offen zutage liegende Material in den Lemmata oder den (...) sogenannten direkten Citaten halten darf, vielmehr durch peinliche Interpretation des umfangreichen Commentars erst jedesmal die von ihm vorausgesetzte Lesart feststellen muss." But already in antiquity the question on how to divide an Aristotelian treatise into sections was disputed. It was indeed part of the canonical questions to be setded in the introduction to the commentaries. (It is the sixth task of the tenth question of the list we find in Simplicius, in Cat. Cf. I. Hadot (sous la dir.): Simplicius, Commentaire sur les Categories, Fase. 1, Leiden, 1990, 138 and 156: a detailed study by Ph. Hoffmann is promised for fascicule II.)

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(for example) an argument for a thesis stated before, or rather as a new thesis on its own. 13 At a stil] lower level there are the sentences. There too we can sometimes doubt whether a phrase is to be read with the preceding sentence, or rather with the following one, and there may be a difference in meaning depending on the solution we adopt. 14 Yet here again scepticism may destroy idle hopes. First, one may doubt whether there has ever been such a thing as an original written division of the Aristotelian treatises.15 And regarding chapter division we must say that generally the lemmata of ancient commentaries are just too small to single out paragraphs or chapters. They normally contain only a sentence or two. Furthermore, in those cases where more than one commentary on an Aristotelian work is preserved, we observe that their lemmata often do not divide the text in the same way. Hence again Sophonias' claim is unlikely to hit the truth. But now I fear that I have misused Sophonias to say what I wanted to say about a modern dispute. His first point, I think, is rather this: the 13

14

15

For an example see e. g. An. post. A 7; Themistius seems to think that generally this is one of the two main reasons for Aristotle's obscurity: cf. Themistius, in An. post. 1,16-19: πολλά μέν οϋν εοικε τών 'Αριστοτέλους βιβλίων εις έπίκρυψιν μεμηχανήσθαι, ούχ ήκιστα δε και τα προκείμενα, πρώτον μέν δια τήν συνήθη βραχυλογίαν, έπειθ' ότι και ή τάξις τών κεφαλαίων ού διακέκριται. For a nice example see e. g. De int. 16al6, where David Sedley proposes to read οΰτε γαρ ψευδός οϋτε αληθές πω, σημεϊον δ' έστί τοϋδε instead of οϋτε γάρ ψευδός οϋτε άληθές πω. σημεϊον δ' έστί τοϋδε as printed in our editions, (cf. D. Sedley, "Aristotle's De interpretatione and ancient semantics", in: G. Manetti (ed.): Knowledge through signs, University of San Marino, 1996, 8 7 - 1 0 8 ; see 93.) Cf. also the discussion in some Platonic commentaries about the question: which persona is speaking? see e. g.: Democritus apud Olympiodorus, in Ale. 105,17-106,2 (Westerink) (= H. Dörrie and M. Baltes, Der Platonismus in der Antike I-IV, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1987-1996, 79.1b) Punctuation was probably not used, or at least not systematically used in Aristotle's day. cf. Kiihner/Gerth, §92. It is true, as Kiihner/Gerth indicate, that Aristode himself complains in Rhet. 1407bl4—16 that Heraclitus is difficult to punctuate. But the remark about Heraclitus does not imply that punctuation was normally used; for Aristotle does not complain that Heraclitus did not punctuate, he complains that it is difficult for the reader to do. In any case, here as well as in Poet. 1461a24, Soph. El. 166a36 (and already in Plato, Prot. 346E), only punctuation within a sentence is discussed. Cf. however Rbet. 1407a20-21 where Aristotle maintains that the end of a sentence should better be marked by rhythm than by using the παραγραφή. For later times, see Porphyrius, Vit. Plotini 26,37-39: νύνι δέ πειρασόμεθα εκαστον τών βιβλίων διερχόμενοι τάς τε στιγμάς αύτών προσθειναι και ει τι ήμαρτημένον εϊη κατά λέξιν διορθοϋν, which suggests that to punctuate was the task of the editor. On whether or not it was the job of a scribe to preserve the punctuation cf. e. g. E. G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Anáent World, Oxford, 1971, 11 — 12 with the literature quoted there.

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readings in the proper commentaries are "sound" compared to what wefindin a paraphrase. They are literal, independent quotations, and not paraphrases, whatever the accuracy or otherwise of the text from which they were taken. And his second point about the division of the text can be taken, but here I am less sure, 16 as stating the following: proper commentaries respect the original division of the text, i. e. they are continuous and follow Aristotle's text line for line, chapter for chapter. They do not change his order of exposition, while paraphrases often do exactly this in order to make plain what Aristotle says.17 So, after all, Sophonias may be right in his two points, but they are far less exciting. There is a last point in Sophonias which I would like to focus on. Sophonias gives examples for each group of commentators. The first paraphraser mentioned by him is Themistius, the first proper commentator Alexander. Now in the case of Themistius we know that he himself claims to be the inventor of the paraphrastic style in commenting on Aristotelian treatises.18 We do not find similar remarks in Alexander. Was he nonetheless the first to comment in this style? Some reports of later commentators suggest that he was not. 19 Direct evidence however is scarce. There are not many surviving commentaries earlier than Alexander. We now possess several earlier examples on papyrus (as Anon, in Tht. or Didymus, Περί Δημοσθένους to quote only the most famous) which also show directly that Alexander was not the first to have commented in this style. And even before the discovery of these papyri, older texts which could show this were known through medieval 16

17

18

19

Sophonias seems to contrast καν τή διαιρέσει τήν λέξιν του φιλοσόφου τηρήσαντες in line 7 with οϋτε διηρημένην οΰθ' ήνωμένην τοις ύπομνήμασι συνταξάμενοι in line 13 — 14, which is in favour of the above mentioned interpretation. See Sophonias, in De Anima, 2,20-21: τοις δέ παραφράσασι τούτο μέν οϋ πρόσεστι καθάπαξ τήν λέξιν παρεΐσιν, έκεινο δ' ούν άναγκαίως. Cf. Themistius, in An. Post. 1,7-10: τό μέντοι έκλαμβάνοντα τά βουλήματα των έν τοις βιβλίοις νεγραμμένων σύν τάχει τε έξαγγέλλειν και τή συντομία του φιλοσόφου κατά δύναμιν παρομαρτεΐν καϊνον τε έδόκει καί τινα ώφέλειαν παρέξεσθαι. This claim is in conflict with Simplicius' report in in Cat. 26,17 f. and 30,3 where Andronicus is said to have paraphrased Aristotle's Cat. Themistius' claim for novelty is not restricted to his paraphrase on An. post., I think; so either Themistius does not know (or not acknowledge) that others have written before him in this manner on Aristotle, or these people did not write exacdy in this style. The question deserves closer examination. Cf., in addition to Andronicus, also the case of Nicolaus of Damascus. See e.g. Simplicius on Boethus in in Cat. 29,30-30,3: μήτε γαρ Βόηθον είδέναι, ος φησι δεικνύναι τον 'Αριστοτέλη τίνα εστίν τα ομώνυμα λέγοντα 'Ομώνυμα λέγεται ών όνομα μόνον κοινόν, ό δέ κατά τοΰνομα λόγος έτερος· και έξηγούμενος δέ ó Βόηθος καθ' έκάστην λέξιν τό της ουσίας παραλέλοιπεν ώς ούδέ γεγραμμένον.

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MSS such as Apollonios of Cition's commentary on Hippocrates' De articulis20 But these are not examples of early commentaries on Aristotle which were written in this style. The direct evidence for early Aristotelian commentaries is thinner still: I know of two pieces: (1) Anon, in Top. (PFay 3 = CPF 111,2) and (2) Aspasius, in EN. Anon, in Top. is a fragment on papyrus of the first century AD. Unfortunately it is in a very bad state, but what we can see is the text of Aristotle's Topics part by part in εκθεσις, and something in between. It is a plausible guess, I think, that what we can see in between, are letters from comments on these parts of the Aristotelian text and hence that the whole thing was a proper commentary. 21 The second example is Aspasius' commentary on the Aristotelian Ethics. Here much more is preserved, but nothing on ancient papyri. All we have are late medieval parchments.

II The parchments contain lemmata. There are 31 lemmata which cover the text of EN.22 Almost all of them have an abbreviated form. Only a few words of the beginning and of the end of the text commented on are quoted; in between, a "εως" connects the two quotations. In what follows I am going to investigate whether these lemmata go back to Aspasius himself and if so, whether they had already the form and the readings they offer now.

20

Apollonios Citiensis, in Hippocratis De ariiculis (ed. J. Kollesch-F. Kudlien, CMC XI 1,1, Berlin 1965). The commentary has lemmata as well. Often however they are not really commented on, but only presented and then followed by a painted illustration. But Apollonios feels obliged to justify his deviant practice: διό και μηθείς ήμάς άργότερον ισταμένους περικάμπτειν ύπολάβοι την μετά τάς λέξεις διήγησιν, άλλά τό διλογεϊν εργώδες είναι νομίζομεν. ( 2 0 , 3 - 5 ) .

21

On Anon, in Top. see CPF 111,2 and the literature cited there. Compare PBerol. inv.11749: Commentarium in Platonis "Politicum" (?) ( = CPF III, 8), which also offers passages in εκθεσις and something in between; and cf. also POxy. 19,2221 (Anon, in Nicandro, "Theriaca") in which the relation between text and commentary is, as in Anon, in Top, about 1:1 (cf. del Fabbro [above, n.4], 77 n.25) See 2,14; 11,13/4; 15,1; 19,12/3; 23,30/1; 27,10; 31,1/2; 37,2; 40,4/5; 58,2; 66,33/4; 70,21/2; 87,33; 9 2 , 3 - 6 ; 95,3/4; 100,15/6; 103,1/2; 108,1; 116,9/10; 118,17/8; 121,3; 122,12/3; 129,8; 134,5/6; 146,12; 150,1/2; 158,2/3; 163,25/26; 169,23/24; 176,6/7; 183,29/30; some lemmata probably dropped out, cf. 41,28; 75,16; 141,22.

22

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Before trying to give an answer to these questions it is worth mentioning a few philological facts about the medieval parchments we have. 23 It looks as though all our MSS which contain the preserved Aspasian text go back to a single source: an old, much mutilated codex, quite difficult to read, which was only rediscovered at the end of the 13th century. 24 These MSS can be grouped into two families which go independendy back to that source: 25 on the one side there are the MSS which contain the remains of Aspasius' commentary only (Z and R in Heylbut). On the other side there are the MSS of a collection which includes the remains of Aspasius' commentary together with Byzandne commentaries on EN (N in Heylbut). I shall call the former line "exclusive", the latter "composite". Both lines together form the "complete" transmission. All the MSS of the "complete" transmission offer lemmata of the same form, at the same place with almost the same readings. It is clear then, that the lemmata were already to be found in the early mutilated source of our MSS. Some of the lemmata are corrupt in all the MSS in such a way that they no longer can be recognised as such. 26 It is clear then that the corruption goes at least back to their source. But if a scribe deliberately puts lemmata in a text, he will surely put in recognizable ones, and therefore it was not the scribe of the common source of our MSS who put the lemmata in the commentary. 27 We may hope to go a step further, since for book VIII there is a different transmission as well. Book VIII was also part of another earlier Byzantine compendium of commentaries on EN (B and a in Heylbut), which was probably assembled in the middle of the 12th century. 28 There

23

24 25 26

27

28

In addition to Heylbut's praefatio to his edition, I rely here on what Rose [42], 6 9 - 7 6 and Moraux [25], 2 4 9 - 2 5 4 report. Cf. Rose [42], 7 2 - 7 3 ; Moraux [25], 250-253. Cf. Rose [42], 7 2 - 7 3 ; Moraux [25], 252, n.83. i. e. the corruption affected also their form, not only the text they include, see e. g. 1 9 , 2 - 3 where we read Περιγεγράφθω μέν ούν τάγαθόν ταύτην δέ ήμϊν εϊναί φαμεν την εύδαιμονίαν instead of Περιγεγράφθω μέν ούν τάγαθόν εως άρίστην είναί φαμεν την εύδαιμονίαν. Cf. also 15,1; 37,2; 108,1; 121,3. Note also that in both Florentine MSS (R and N), which are members of different families, the lemmata are written as if they were parts of the commentary. They are not specially marked at all. (I owe this information to Hugh Johnstone, who kindly also looked up some readings for me.) In the Latin translation Grosseteste adds at the beginning full lemmata, but translates the abbreviated lemmata of our Greek MSS afterwards as well. See Heylbut [1] VI-VII; Rose [42], 6 8 - 7 0 .

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is no thorough study on the relation between this partial "Byzantine" and the "complete" transmission of the text. Scholars generally agree that this line of the transmission does not depend on the same (mutilated) source, for otherwise — this seems to be their argument — the editor of the Byzantine compendium would surely have preferred the Aspasian commentary to the anonymous scholia on EN he actually wrote down.29 This is at most a plausible guess, and in any case it does not show that the ultimate source of the "Byzantine" line was not exactly the old mutilated copy which is the source of the "complete" transmission. More work has to be done to see clearly. Here I note merely that at least the longer gaps 30 and also some smaller ones31 are to be found in both lines of the transmission. If these gaps are due to the mutilation of the ancient source of the "complete" transmission, as Moraux thinks, this is a good reason to believe that the "Byzantine" transmission goes ultimately back to the mutilated source as well. Yet I am not sure whether Moraux is right in holding that all these gaps go back only to this mutilated source.32 Nor is it likely that the last part of book VIII, where we actually find all these common gaps, was to be found at all in the ancient source of the "complete" transmission. Only Ν (the main ms. of the "composite" line) and copies made from it 33 include the end of book VIII. It is likely then that the scribe of Ν relied here on what he found in a MS of the "Byzantine" line, which he at any rate used for the books where no Aspasian material was available.34 29 30

31

32

33 34

So first Rose [42], 7 5 - 7 6 , followed by Moraux [25], 252. See 180,10; 181,17; 182,5. The gap at 180,10 clearly is due to a hole in a source, for the commentary is interrupted in midphrase. The other "gaps" however may also go back to Aspasius himself, of course. See e. g. 183,20/21: ή μέν ούν δούλος ούκ εστι φιλία προς αύτόν *** ισότητα Β: ή μέν δοΰλον *** ισότητα Ν (To judge from the apparatus the lacuna is indicated in both MSS). Cf. 128,1 in app. ait., where Ν and Ζ say almost in the same words that the beginning of book VII is missing: Άσπάσιος (Άσπασίου Ν) εις τό ήτα των 'Αριστοτέλους ήθικών νικομάχω (νικαμαχείων Ν)· οΰ κατ' αρχάς αλλ' άπό του μέσου, από του ρητοϋ του ούτωσί διεξιόντος' ότι μέν ούν άκρασία και εγκράτεια εστι μόνον περί απερ ακολασία καί σωφροσύνη. If Ν and Ζ go independendy back to the source, as Moraux thinks, it is clear that this note was already in the source. And if it was not a marginal note by a later hand, it is likely that the source of our MSS was already copied from a mutilated MS. (I may also note here that the scribe who put this note in does indeed say on which passage Aspasius is commenting, but he does not use a lemma of the εως-form.) Note that according to Heylbut [1] VI the end of R has been supplied from N. To be sure, the end of book VIII is disordered differently in Ν and in the MSS of the "Byzantine" line (cf. Heylbut [1] VII), but there are exacdy the same bits of the text which are put together differently in both lines.

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Thus there is no sign so far that the "Byzantine" line depends on the ancient source of the "complete" line, and there is some evidence to the contrary. 35 This being so, the lemmata, in the form they have, will go back at least to the source from which the two lines originate. Of course, it would be important to know the age of this common source, for its date would give us a secure terminus post quern non for the lemmata we find. I have no answer here. Nor do I know how old the source of the "complete" line was. Scholars generally affirm that this later source already was "very old", but they never say how old "very old" is.36 Fortunately, there is also other evidence for the existence of lemmata, beside the fact that they are now in our MSS.

Ill

First, we might ask whether anyone in antiquity referred to Aspasian lemmata. Aspasius' commentaries are mentioned summarily twice: once by Galen 37 and once by Porphyry 38 . But we learn hardly anything about their form, let alone whether they had lemmata or not.

35

36

37 38

Note the many omissions (the longest is at 177,21) and readings (e. g. 162,3; 164,30; 166,1; 170,32) which are particular to the "Byzantine" line. The "Byzantine" line quite regularly also omits έστιν and has ώς instead of ώσπερ. Both mistakes may go back to abbreviations in a earlier source. Specialists, I am sure, will be able to determine whether it was copied from a minuscule or majuscule source. If we compare the conflicting readings of Ν and Z, we see that, in the source, above ail 'o' and 'ω', but also 'λ' and 'κ' and ' λ ' and ' σ ' were written in a manner that they could easily be confused. It seems that in the source accents and breathings were regularly used, for in numerous places Ζ and R write fragments of a word with accents and breathings (see e. g. 2,1 πολύ Ζ: πα.ύ R; 22.9 ενέργεια Ζ 2 : έν... ΝΖ; 109,13 πάσας αύτόν Ν: πα... Ζ; 117,11 έπίψογοι Ν: έπί... Ζ; 132,32 αίρετώτερον Ν: αΐ... Ζ; 143,18 ούσαι] ού... Ζ; 152.15 έπειχειρεΐ Ν: έπι.,.ρεί Ζ; 157,19 γλυκύ] ,.κύ Ζ; and cf. especially (for here at least it is clear that the accents are not from Heylbut) 133,23 τοΰτ' αυτούς Ν: τούο... Ζ. At 2,11 Ζ 2 probably conjectured rather than read περί πλείστου where R read πρά... ; similarly 2,15 πρώτον οΰν Ζ 2 : ...τον R. Contrast however: 108,6 μετάβασις Ζ: μετα... Ν; 132,25 άκρατους] ακ... Ζ.) The scribes must have copied them from their source, for how could they know which accent to put on the letters, if they did not know what words the letters were parts of? Note also that it was not always clear to the scribes how the text of the source should be divided: cf. e.g. 21,32 έν ψυχή θείναι Ν: έμψυχωθήναι Ζ; 22,29 αν τό Ζ: αύτό Ν; 100,34 μή δεόντως Ζ: μηδέ δντος Ν; 121,31 ό πάντας Ν: απαντας Ζ. Galen, De /¡brispropriis liber, XIX, 4 2 , 1 2 - 4 3 Kühn. Porphyrius, Vit. Plot. 14, 1 0 - 2 5 .

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Aspasius is also sometimes mentioned as following one reading of Aristotle rather than another 39 and we may wonder where this information was ultimately taken from. Is it that Aspasius discussed the different readings and preferred one, or did he quote a passage, or was it indeed set out in a lemma? The question is difficult to answer, for we cannot check any reference of this sort. His readings are never mentioned, and the commentaries on those works where he is said to have adopted a particular reading do not exist any more. Once, indeed, the way in which an Aspasian reading is introduced by Simplicius may suggest that it was indeed taken from a lemma in one of his commentaries. But the passage is puzzling and I would not dare to build too much upon it.40

IV At any rate only internal evidence can guide us back to Aspasius' autograph. We have to see whether Aspasius himself says or implies that there were lemmata in his text. A. First we find two phrases in the commentary which explicitly introduce Aristotle's text. At 2,13 we read before the first lemma: â δε λέγει εχουσιν ούτως. The passage is odd, for it is not clear what the subject of εχουσιν should be and the context does not help to determine it either. Most naturally we would expect that ä δε λέγει is the subject of the phrase, but in that case the verb should be in the singular in decent Greek and decent Greek (at least in this respect) is what Aspasius writes.41 Of 39

40

41

Aspasius' own readings are referred to in Simplicius, in Phys. 422,19-26 and 423,13-14; 436,13-18; 714, 3 7 - 3 8 , 727,35-728,10; 950,3-6; cf. also Alexander, in De Sensu 9,24-10,2. The passage is found in Simplicius, in Phys. 714.31-715.7. First, it is clear, from what Simplicius says, that Aspasius reported the readings of others (δια τοϋτό τίνες μεταγράφουσι την λέξιν, ώς Άσπάσιος φησιν, οϋτως· ό δέ χρόνος εστίν ούχ ό άριθμούμενος, άλλ' φ άριθμοϋμεν). But then he seems to say that Aspasius himself sets out the following sentence of Aristotle giving a different reading (και τήν εφεξής δέ λέξιν ό Άσπάσιος οϋτως εκτίθεται· εστι δέ ετερον ούχ φ άριθμοϋμεν άλλα τό άριθμούμενον). And what follows makes it clear that Aspasius indeed accepted this reading. I thought that Simplicius' second remark might refer to a lemma in Aspasius' commentary on the Physics because Simplicius uses εκτίθεται τήν λέξιν elsewhere in this sense; but the phrase is probably better taken here as referring simply to a quotation. I have found no other construction of a neuter with a plural verb in Aspasius. And cf. e. g. 107,31: α δέ λέγει ... δήλά έστιν.

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course it is easy to suppose a scribal error here and to correct the text. 42 What makes me hesitate however is that the same oddity occurs again in the second of the two explicit phrases which introduce a lemma: At 40,3 we read immediately before a lemma: λέγουσι δέ ούτως 4 3 If we take these plural forms seriously, the two passages imply that according to Aspasius the text of EN was written by more than one person. N o w Aspasius is indeed ready to concede that single books (or rather one part of a single book of our EN) may not have been written by Aristode 44 , but that is not quite the same thing as to believe that the whole of EN was a joindy written work. There is no evidence in the commentary in favour of this latter belief as far as I can see; 45 there is much in it which is against it. Perhaps then the source was simply wrong in the two instances. That for sure will seem a bizarre coincidence. But the coincidence can (at least in part) be explained, or so I think: we have evidence elsewhere in the text that the source had abbreviated word endings 46 and more importantly, the source was probably already copied from a MS which had abbreviations

43

44 45 46

Heylbut reports in his apparatus ad loc. the following readings of the MSS: R: Ζ /Ζ2·. φαίνεται δέ ό 'Αριστοτέλης φαίνεται δέ ό 'Αριστοτέλης περί πλείστου ταύτην τήν περί πλείστου ταύτην τήν διδασκαλίαν ποιεϊσθαι· διδασκαλίαν ποιεϊσθαΓ λέγει δέ *** περί του λέγει δέ αύτήν είναι (?) περί ανθρωπίνου *** ή ευδαιμονία του ανθρωπίνου τέλους, ήτις *** εχουσιν ***. εστίν ή ευδαιμονία, ä δέ [p. 1094al] Πάσα τέχνη λέγει εχουσιν οϋτως. ... τον ρητέον περί τέχνης και [ρ. 1094α1] Πάσα τέχνη μεθόδου, περί πράξεως καί Πρώτον οΰν ρητέον περί προευ ... ρείας. τέχνης και περί μεθόδου, ετι και περί πράξεως και προαιρεσεως. We see that only Ζ 2 gives the phrase in question in its entirety and, notoriously with Z 2 , we do not know whether the scribe read something more in his source or rather made a conjecture of his own. One thing however is clear: εχουσιν was already to be found in the source. Heylbut prints λέγει δέ οϋτως and refers to Felicianus who seems to have translated λέγει by appellat. The Greek MSS have λέγουσι. Felicianus' testimony has little weight (as Heylbut himself indicates in the praefatio). Whatever Felicianus relies upon, it seems clear to me that at least the source of Ζ and Ν had λέγουσι here. Cf. 151,24-26. Or hardly any: cf. 11,2 λέγουσιν; 82,3 φησι Heylbut: φασι ZN; but see below. Cf. e.g. 9,11 ονομάζει ZN: όνομάζουσι Ζ 2 ; 25,15 λέγουσιν R: λέγει ZN; 114,3 and 140,8: λέγει Ν: λε1"' Ζ.

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too 47 . The faulty readings may then just be due to a faulty disambiguation of abbreviations of an older source. Of course one may believe that these two passages were only later introduced into the text, and take the oddity of their readings as evidence that there is something wrong with them. But I prefer to think that the corruption of these passages rather shows that they are indeed very old. At any rate, the two passages are not the only ones which show that Aspasius put lemmata in his text. An interesting case is found at 92,3 — 6: όχι δ' ούτως λέγει, προελθών σαφέστερον ποιεί· λέγει γαρ περί τάς ιδίας των ηδονών πολλοί και πολλαχώς διαμαρτάνουσι. Των γάρ φιλοτοιούτων λεγομένων εως και ούχ ώς οι πολλοί

χαίρουσιν.

έν γαρ τούτοις δύο εϊδη υπογράφει των ιδίων ηδονών, το μέν ετερον των χαιρόντων οίς μή δει, ο και παντελώς παρά φύσιν έστίν και ούδέ όνομάζειν άξιον ... The paragraph division in Heylbut is misleading here: with λέγει γάρ Aspasius surely introduces a section of Aristotle's text from περί to χαίρουσιν. That is clear from the sentence before: only the whole passage can "make plainer" what he says. And it is also clear from the sentence which follows: έν γαρ τούτοις clearly makes reference to the whole text quoted before. Heylbut does not print this quotation as a lemma, although it has the same form as all the others have. He has probably simply overlooked it. But he might not have printed this passage as a lemma because he considered it as a lemma of a different kind, for admittedly the lemma here is a special case at least in two respects. It includes far less text than all the others do and it is integrated much more closely into the commentary than the others. Everyone must accept, I think, that this lemma was already included in his commentary by Aspasius. But perhaps someone may not be willing to deduce from such a special case the existence of all the others. Once again, scepticism here will only prolong the debate for a round or two. B. There are still other passages which show that Aspasius had already put lemmata in his text. For discussion I pick out here only two or three. λέγει δε και αύτός τοιαύτα περί των ώς άληθώς φίλων προελθών. ρ. 1156α3 Αεϊ άρα εύνοεϊν άλλήλοις κατά συμβεβηκός. 47

εως του ού γάρ πάνυ συνδυάζεται τά

Cf. e. g. 19,25 εϊρηκε Heylbut: εϊρηκα ΖΝ; 40,7 πρόττομεν Heylbut: πράττεσθαι ΖΝ; 72,20 εχουσι Heylbut: εχουσαι ΖΝ; 149,32 χρήται Heylbut: χρώνται ΖΝ; cf. also 168,17 λέγονται ΖΝ: λέγεται Ba; 173,5: γίνονται Ba: γίνεται ΖΝ.

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Kai εκ των προειρημένων καί έκ των νϋν λεγομένων λάβοι άν τις, οτι τήν φιλίαν ορίζεται ό 'Αριστοτέλης εϋνοιαν έν άντιπεπονθόσι μή λανθάνουσαν.(= 163,24-28) Here the sentence before the lemma already suggests that Aspasius will quote Aristotle's text; but it is the sentence after the lemma which is of more importance. The question is what έκ των προειρημένων καί έκ των νϋν λεγομένων refers to. From what things that have been said could somebody "infer that friendship is defined as reciprocal goodwill which is not unnoticed"? Aspasius clearly believes that there are two places where something has been said which might — by itself 48 — suggest such a definition: one before, one just here. There is only one passage in Aristotle's text Aspasius has commented on up to that point which can be referred to: it is the passage at 1155b31 — 1156a3 on which Aspasius comments in 163,9 — 24 immediately before the lemma. The other obvious passage which suggests this definition of friendship is the passage immediately after in Aristode's text (1156a4—5). "Just here" must then refer to this passage which the lemma includes as its first sentence. A similar passage is found at 180,20 - 23: p. 1159b25 ("Εοικε δέ, καθάπερ έν άρχή εΐρηται, εως πολλά γάρ τά κοινά ισοις οΰσιν.)

"Εοικε δέ, ο καί έν άρχή εΐρηται, έν οϊς ελεγε "καί των δικαίων τό μάλιστα φιλικόν είναι" τοις νΰν είρημένοις είναι ομοιον. Aspasius is glossing here a remark made by Aristotle in 1159b25 —26: Έ ο ι κ ε δέ, καθάπερ έν άρχή εΐρηται, περί ταύτα καί έν τοις αύτοΐς είναι ή τε φιλία καί τό δίκαιον. Two things are similar: what Aristotle says in the passage Aspasius quotes from EN A and what he says in the second part of the sentence quoted above which Aspasius refers to with τοις νυν είρημένοις. It is clear that Aspasius presupposes that his reader has read Aristode's sentence, for otherwise it would be impossible to understand what τοις νυν είρημένονς refers to. Our Greek MSS do not have a lemma here, whereas the Latin translation does. It runs from 1159b25 to 1161bl0. As its first sentence it in-

48

The "καί έκ ... καί έ κ . . . " structure of the sentence makes it clear that the two passages suggest the definition each for itself and not only conjointly. The "Byzantine" transmission (and the Latin translation based on a member of it) omits the second έκ and has καί έκ ... καί. But this gives a bad reading, and it would be necessary to delete the initial καί and to add a δέ to avoid an unpleasant asyndeton in the text. Heylbut is surely right in preferring the reading he prints.

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eludes the passage under question here. It is not the occurrence of νυν alone which is of interest here; what matters also is the tense of the participle είρημένοις. Normally Aspasius speaks in his commentary as if he were presenting Aristotle's text: ("Aristotle then says p; Aristotle then asks", etc.) And quite naturally he uses present tense sentences to do so. Only when he has already quoted a passage does he refer to it with phrases in past tenses.49 So, either there is a lacuna in the commentary in which Aristotle's text was once introduced, or Aristode's text was indeed presented in a lemma here. The commentary does not begin asyndetically as it normally does after a lemma50. Hence, one might think that it is the former which is true. Of course, we can reply that the "δέ" was introduced once the lemma fell out; yet I prefer to think that our sentence is asyndetical even as it stands. For Aspasius does not really use δέ as a connecting particle here; rather, he quotes it from Aristotle, and in doing so he does not intend it to be functional in his own sentence.51 (Cf. a similar case at 134,7.) C. There is other evidence too. In a few cases we find a conjunction after a lemma.52 Some of these conjunctions clearly connect the following sentence to the lemma and not to the preceding part of the commentary.53 But unfortunately the text is often uncertain.54

49

50 51

52

53

54

Cf. είπε(ν) 48, 19; 79, 34; 86, 8; 96, 6; 99, 31; 100, 2; 102, 3/4; 138, 22; εϊρηκε(ν) 48, 21; 85, 3; 104, 8; 120, 23; 153, 4; 154, 30; 156, 31; εδειξε 104,8. On asyndeta see below p. 67. Note however, that in the Latin translation, which alone gives a lemma here, the text continues differently: "Circa principium huius libri dixit: iustorum maxime amicabile esse videtur. Addit autem nunc et huic dicto aliquid simile, dicens amicitiam et iustum circa eadem et in eisdem esse. . . . " (155, 06ff. Mercken). Mercken notes in his apparatus mticur. 0 6 - 1 4 circa principium ... et amicitia] ex Aspasit commento (H.180,20-181,2) sumptum esse videtur sed solum (10-13) et reliquis ... amicitia commilitonibus ad verbum translatum est. This however is not what the Bishop of Lincoln normally does. There are for sure similar cases in his translation, but normally if he translates, he does so word for word. We may wonder then whether he did not here read quite a different text. See 2,14: ούν; 19,12: γάρ; 40,6: δή; 92, 6: γάρ; 183,32: μέν ούν. Note that 176, 8: γόρ is only an apparent case of a conjunction after a lemma, for και γάρ έστιν άλλοτριώτερα is part of the preceding lemma, it does not follow it. 2,14 ούν; 40,6 δή; 92,6 γάρ (i. e. all the cases where lemmata were already explicidy introduced); it is not clear to me whether γάρ after 19,12 refers to the lemma or to the preceding sentence in the commentary, μέν οϋν in 176,8 is quoted from Aristotle. 2,14: ούν is only found in Z 2 , clearly omitted in R (cf. n.42 above); 40,6: δή is a conjecture of Heylbut: all the MSS have δει instead. The whole sentence which follows the lemma is corrupt.

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D . Finally, as I already mentioned, the asyndeta. The text normally begins asyndetically after the lemmata. 55 Given the fact that asyndeta are in Aspasius (as in any Greek author) very rare, we can be quite sure that their regular occurrence after the lemmata indicates that there was at least some rupture there; and because we know that commentaries as a rule began asyndetically after the lemmata, 56 we may think that together with the asyndeta there were surely lemmata as well. All this taken together suggests to me that Aspasius had already included lemmata in his commentary. 57

V

I now turn to the form of the lemmata. In Heylbut's CIAG edition most of the lemmata have the following appearance: p. 1153bl Άλλα μην και οτι ή λύπη εως ού γαρ άπλή ούδ' έπιεικής.

55

56

57

Exceptions (in addition to the passages already cited in n.53) are 134,7; 150,3 and 180,22 where the text following the lemma is connected with δέ (but for 134,7 and 180,22 cf. above) See Sedley/Bastianini (above, n.10), 257 (about Anon, in Tit.); Lamberz (above, n.8), 10 (for later times); but note that this is not the case for Apollonius of Cition's commentary on Hipp. De artic. But I do not want to conceal a final passage at 41,27 which still puzzles me: ώς δέ τοϋτο εχει φανερώς αύτός έπέξεισιν. (Lemma), έπί δέ τούτοις λέγει σημειον δεΐν ποιεΐσθαι των αρετών και των κακιών τήν έπιγινομένην ταις ένεργείαις ήδονήν ή λύπην ό μέν γαρ άπεχόμενος των σωματικών ήδονών και χαίρων σώφρων, ό δέ άπεχόμενος μέν λυπούμενος δέ ακόλαστος έστι, καν οτι μάλιστα άπέχηται. Here then finally another good piece of evidence for the existence of a lemma, I thought. To be sure, έπέξεισιν does not necessarily introduce a lemma (Cf. 51,32; 89,12), but here together with αύτός and without an object, it is likely that it does. N o MS has a lemma after έπέξεισιν, but if there were lemmata, it is clear that there was a lemma exactly there, for the preceding lemma ends with the passage commented on immediately before and the lemmata normally cover the whole of Aristotle's text. (That is why Heylbut can note in his apparatus ad loc.·. "hinc huius libri interciderunt lemmata"). But if we turn to the sentence after the lemma, things become puzzling, for έπί δέ τούτοις can not refer to the text in the lemma; if it did Aspasius would simply be wrong. Aristotle does not say what Aspasius almost literally quotes after the text included in the lemma, he says it exactly there. Is it not then odd to continue in the way Aspasius does after having quoted Aristotle's text? It is as if Aspasius ignored the lemma here in between. Of course we could correct the text and read έν δέ τούτοις, but things do not become much better, for, as I said, what follows is almost a literal quotation, and, in any case, there remains an unpleasant δέ after a lemma too.

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"p. 1153bl" refers to Bekker's Aristotle edition. It is far from certain whether there was such a thing as a standard edition Aspasius could have referred to. 58 Moreover nobody in ancient times referred to an Aristotelian work by indicadng its line-numbers 59 , and quite generally the lemmata of commentaries refer to the text only by quoting it. 60 Hence the ancient form of this lemma was rather: Ά λ λ α μην και ότι ή λύπη εως ού γαρ άπλή ούδ' επιεικής.

The lemma has an abbreviated form. The text it includes begins with "'Αλλά μην καί οτι ή λύπη" and ends with "ού γάρ άπλή ούδ' επιεικής". There are about 100 Bekker lines included in the lemma between the beginning and the end which are not quoted here. Almost all the lemmata in Aspasius share this form. The question is whether the original lemmata already had an abbreviated form as well, and, furthermore, whether they had this particular abbreviated form. Both questions are difficult to answer. All we can say with certainty is that they go at least back to the common source of the "Byzantine" and the "complete" line of the transmission. But, as I have already said, we have no idea so far about the date of this source. To decide whether this form of the lemmata was already the original form or not, all we can do is (a) see whether passages in the commentary indicate of which form the lemmata were and (b) see if there was a common lemma form in Aspasius' time. (a). It has long ago been noted that Aspasius' commentary often only rephrases Aristode's text in other words. This being so there would be a 58

59

60

See Kenny [19], 17 — 18; and most recently: J. Barnes, 'Roman Aristotle', inj. Barnes and M. Griffin (eds.), Philosophia Togata II, Oxford, 1997, 1 - 6 9 , at 57-59; also above, pp. 3 4 - 3 5 . There are however three references by line-numbers to Stoic works: cf. D. L. VII, 187 and 188 referring to two works of Chrysippus; and Cassius Scepticus ap. D. L. VII 33 referring to a work of Zeno; but the references are very approximate and this way of referring clearly was not the rule. Cf. Th. Birt, Das Antike Buchwesen, Berlin, 1882, (Nachdruck: Aalen, 1959) 175-176; W. Schubart, Das Buch bei den Griechen und Römern, BerlinLeipzig, 21921, 76-77; also C. Wachsmuth, 'Stichometrisches und Bibliothekarisches', Rheinisches Museum 34, 1879, 3 8 - 5 1 . There is a nice exception to that rule: In Asconius' commentary on five forensic speeches of Cicero, written between 54 and 57 AD, we find lemmata such as the following: "Cir. ver a primo DC dicit de Castoris templo: Id autem templum sublato aditu, revolsis gradibus, a coniuratorum reliquiis atque a Catilinae praevaricatore quondam, tum ultore, armis teneretur" Asconius does not say a word about his way of referring. So we may guess that he was not the first and only commentator to have written lemmata of that form. See Birt (above, n.59), 176-178.

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good reason for Aspasius not to have put full lemmata in the text, for as Apollonios of Cition already noted in his commentary on Hippocrates, it is not worth writing down the same things twice: άλλα τό διλογεΐν έργώδες είναι νομίζομεν. 61 But even if it is indeed possible to understand most of Aspasius' commentary without having your text of Aristotle beside it, many passages in the commentary suggest and some of them imply that the reader of Aspasius was indeed supposed to have Aristode's text before his eyes.62 This alone does not show that the text could be found in the commentary, of course. However, the passages discussed above seem to imply that the text which the lemmata abbreviate could indeed be read in its entirety; for the text referred to or introduced is not written out in full in the lemmata as they stand. Yet neither this will establish that there once were full lemmata in the text, for (i) if the commentary represents the text of a lecture, it is possible that what is written in an abbreviated form was originally read aloud in its entirety. Internal evidence will then be of no use for the question about the written form of the lemmata. 63 And (ii): What is the force of the lemmata as now formulated? Do they state that the commentary will discuss the passage which begins with "A" and ends with "Z", or do they rather (or at the same time) tell you to read that section? If the latter is the case, nothing is odd about these abbreviated lemmata. You are just supposed to look up your text of Aristotle in a scroll beside. 61 62

63

Cf. n.20 above. See 110, 2 2 - 2 4 : τα δέ έξης, επειδή και καθ' αυτά δήλά έστι και έκ τών είρημένων, ούκ ανάγκη πάντα έπιέναι, αλλ' εϊ τινα εχει ένστασιν κατά την λέξιν ταϋτα θεωρητέον, and cf. e. g. 53,1: όσα δέ περί αρετών έξης ή κακιών διαλέγεται, έπεί ύστερον έρεΐ άκριβέστερον, ύπερκείσθω εις τότε; 56,23/4: α δ' εϊρηκεν οϋτως δτι μέν ουν έστιν ή ηθική άρετή μεσάτης και πώς και τάλλα, τά μέν άλλα δήλα; 151,16-17: εστι δέ, ώς φησι, τά έξης της φράσεως· Ισως δέ άναγκαΐον αίρετωτάτην είναι τήν ήδονήν, εϊπερ έκάστης εξεως, και τά έξης; 152,22: τό δέ μετά ταϋτα λεγόμενον γένοιτο αν γνώριμον μικρά προβάλλουσιν; and especially 122,27-29: δια τοΰτο δέ μετατεθείκαμεν τήν λέξιν, ϊνα και ώς γέγραπται άναγίνωσκοντες μετά τό αύθέκαστός τις οϋτως έπιφέρωμεν άληθευτικός. Was it once a lecture? Perhaps. Aspasius surely was a teacher, for he had at least one student (namely Galen's peripatetic teacher) and some passages in the text may indicate that his commentary originated as a lecture. Cf. e. g. 150,9-10: ή μέν ούν όλη βούλησις του λόγου τοιαύτη, τά δέ κατά τήν λέξιν οϋτως εχει; this is an early instance of the theoria-lexis division, which, at least later on, became a distinctive sign of commentaries derived from lectures (cf. A. J. Festugière, 'Modes de composition des Commentaires de Proclus', Museum Helveticum 20, 1963, 7 7 - 1 0 0 ; L. G. Westerink, 'Ein astrologisches Kolleg aus dem Jahre 564', BZ 64, 1971, 6 - 1 0 [= Texts and Studies in Neoplatonism and Byzantine Literature. Collected Papers, Amsterdam 1980, 279-283], 281; Lamberz [above, n.8], 16-17.)

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(b). To look at what was commonly done at the time the author wrote is certainly a good way to settle such editorial questions, but it is a very risky way if one only has a few particular instances on which to base an inductive argument. And this is exactly the case here. Only a few commentaries contemporary to Aspasius survive on papyrus to some extent. 64 In all of them the text of the lemmata is fully written out. Of Greek commentaries preserved in medieval MSS there is Apollonios of Cition's commentary on Hippocrates which is earlier than Aspasius'. This commentary has full lemmata as well.65 Evidence on papyrus for an early abbreviated lemma is found in Theon's commentary on Pindar's Pythia66, in an anonymous commentary on Sappho which dates probably from the 2nd century AD, 67 and also in an anonymous commentary of that time on Alcaeus. 68 Perhaps we also have with Anon, in Aläb. I69 an early philosophical commentary with abbreviated lemmata on papyrus, but the text is controversial: different readings have been proposed to fill up the gaps, and on some readings the lemmata disappear. 70 We also have a few abbreviated quotations (not 64

65

66

67

68

69

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Anon, in Top., Anon, in Tht., Didymus Περί Δημοσθένους Anon, in Thuc. (POxy VI,863), Ammonius in II. (POxy 11,221); Anon, in II. (POxy VIII,1086); Anon, in II. (POxy VIII,1087). Cf. perhaps also Anon, in Platonis "Politicum" (?) (PBerol inv. 11749 = CPF 111,8); and earlier: Comment, in Phaed. (?) (PHeid G inv. 28 + PGraec Mon 21 = CPF 111,7); and still earlier: PDerveni. But we cannot be sure (for different reasons in each case) that these papyri were parts of commentaries. Cf. in Latin also Asconius' commentary mentioned above in n.60, which also offers full lemmata. (=POxy. 31, 2536, written in the 2nd century AD); see 1.20-21 where οφρατόν Έυρυάλας εκ καρπαλιμαν γενύων χριμφθέντα σύν εντεσι μιμήσαιτ' έρικλάγκταν γόον. εύρεν θέος (pyth. XII, 20 — 22) is abbreviated to δφρα τον Έυρυάλας έκ καρπαλιμαν γεννών εως του εύρεν θέος; cf. del Fabbro (above, n.4), 78. (=Pap. Colon, inv. 5860 II) published by M. Gronewald: "Fragmente aus einem Sapphokommentar", ZPE 14, 1974, 114-118. The fragment is in a very bad state: only a few single words and letters remain. At line 11 the editor reads "εωτου" (sic) followed perhaps by a Hochpunkt. The words seem to be placed in the middle of a quotation or a lemma which runs from line 10 to 13. Given the fact that neither the conjunction εως του nor the noun εως is found in Aeolic dialect, it certainly abbreviates the quotation and does not properly form part of it. (del Fabbro [above, n.4], 78, n.32 refers to this passage too.) On Hochpunkte before lemmata compare: Anon, in Tht. 19,20; 21,46; 22,24; 66,43 (cf. Diels/Schubart [above, n.10], XIX). (=POxy XXI, 2307); see fr.14, col. ii, 2 - 3 : ψόμμος[ | εως όνστείχει; and perhaps fr. 12, 2 — 3: αιδετ[ | εως μετωπον and fr. 12,9: ]εως[ ; cf. F. Vendruscolo, 'Una riconsiderazione di P. Princ. Inv. AM 11224C: Commento ali 'Alcibiade Γ, ZPE 99, 1993, 279-285, at 280. =POxy 1609 + PPrinc Inv. AM 11224C (=CPF 111,5; end of 2nd cent.) The lemmata are abbreviated in the form: "A μέχρι Ζ". Cf. Β. Η . K r a u t , T w o Papyri f r o m t h e P r i n c e t o n Collection. II. P.Princeton inv. A M

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lemmata) preserved in medieval MSS of works written before or in Aspasius' days.71 Later on, most of the commentaries abbreviate the text of the lemmata either by quoting only the beginning of the text or by using lemmata of the εως τοΰ form. 72 Only in a minority is the full text written out. 73 If they had an abbreviated form, did they have this particular abbreviated form: "Α εως Z"? The abbreviated lemma we find on papyrus in

71

11224C and Plato's Alcibiade?, ZPE 51, 1983, 75 - 79, and Vendruscolo, above, n.68 (pro abbreviated lemmata) vs. F. Lasserre, 'Anonyme: Commentaire de ì'Alàbiade I de Platon', in F. Decleva Caizzi et al.·. Varia Papyrologica, (Studi e Testi per il Corpus dei Papiri Filosofici Greci e Latini 5), Florence, 1991, 7 - 2 3 (contra). Demetrius, De ehe. 3 (quoting the beginning of Xenophon, Anab.): ώσπερ έν τή άρχή της 'Αναβάσεως της Ξενοφώντος τό τοιούτον Δαρείου καί Παρυσάτιδος μέχρι τοΰ' νεώτερος δέ Κόρος,..., (idem at 19) and cf. 21 (quoting the beginning of Plato, Rep)·. Διαλογική δέ έστι περίοδος ... ώσπερ ή τοιάδε· κατέβηνχθες εις τον Πειραιά μέχρι τοΰ· άτε νϋν πρώτον άγοντες. (But the dates of Demetrius are notoriously uncertain). Cf. also Harpocration, Lexicon in decern oratore* Atticos, A 155 [άντίθεσις] (quoting Demosthenes): ώς ό αύτός Δημοσθένης έν τω Κατά Μειδίου από του ό μέν γε οπό φίλου εως του βαδίζειν χορηγοΰντι. And see perhaps already Isocrates, Antidosis, 59 quoting himself (Paneg., 51-99): 'Ηγούμαι δέ τοις προγόνοις ήμών ούχ ήττον εκ των κινδύνων τιμάσθαι προσήκειν ή των άλλων ευεργεσιών μέχρι τοΰ και τότε προταχθέντες ύπέρ απάντων νΰν έτέροις άκολουθείν άναγκασθεΐμεν. (cf. also Antid. 66 quoting De Pace 2 5 - 2 6 ; Antid. 73 quoting Ad Nicocl. 14-39). These abbreviated quotations are only transmitted in one MS, Γ = Urbinas 111, which however is the main MS for Isocrates. (Note however that at Antid. 194 also in Γ a similar quotation of Contra Soph. 1 4 - 1 8 is fully written out.)

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A few occurrences are found in Alexander, cf. e. g. in Met. 37,4; cf. also Quaest. 111,6 (89,25 — 90,2), where the text discussed in the quaestio {De an. 424a24 - 425al 3) is first quoted in this abbreviated form (the first part of the quotation being a few lines longer than normally it is in Aspasius), and in Syrianus, in Met. 87,1/2. Lemmata of this form are regularly used in Porphyrius, in Harm. Ptol. and in the commentaries of Proclus and Simplicius. Note that Alexander uses such abbreviations also in the commentary itself to pick out a part of the text: cf. e. g. in Met. 104,20 (after a lemma): Αΰτη ή λέξις έως τοΰ ετι δόξειεν αν αδύνατον είναι εν τισιν άντιγράφοις ού φέρεται; cf. also in Met. 267,17 ff.; in An. pr. 409,10; Man/. 151,11 ff. which shows that such abbreviations go back to Alexander himself. In Orígenes, in ev. Matth, many quotations are abbreviated with και τα έξης εως του. Cf. e. g. XVI,3, inc.: Ουδέν δέ λυπεί έκθέσθαι τήν πρότεραν και παραπλησίαν τοις έκκειμένοις λέξιν οϋτως έχουσαν τότε διεστείλατο τοις μαθηταϊς αύτοΰ, iίνα μηδενί είπωσιν ότι αύτός έστι ν ό Χριστός και τα έξης εως τοΰ καί τή τρίτη ήμέρα έγερθήναι.

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Cf. e. g. the case of Ammonius, in De int. But Ammonius justifies his deviant practice of writing out the whole text of the lemmata in the introduction to his commentary (see in De int. 8,25-29: τούτων ούν προειλημμένων ώρα λοιπόν ήμΐν έπί τήν έξήγησιν της λέξεως χωρεϊν, ην συνεστραμμένην οϋσαν εμφάσεώς τε καί πολυνοίας γέμουσαν και ΰπό βραχείας παραλλαγής άπαν ενίοτε τό νόημα έξαλλάττουσαν καί έν πολλοίς τών αντιγράφων ήδη τοΰτο πεπονθυΐαν άπασαν εξής έδοκιμάσαμεν παραθέσθαι προς διάγνωσιν της άκριβεστέρας είναι δοκούσης έκδόσεως; cf. Lamberz [above, n.8], 11-13).

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Theon's commentary for example has a slightly different form: "Α εως τοϋ Ζ"; and it is this form which we normally find in the MSS of the later commentaries. Regarding three lemmata all our MSS offer this common form for Aspasius as well74. In another four cases Z 2 alone adds a του. 75 But lemmata with εως alone are attested on ancient papyri as well,76 and in Alexander we find both these forms together. As we rarely find the form without article later on, the occurrence of this form in Aspasius may indeed be taken as slight evidence that the lemmata go back to early times. I may add here that it is also possible that the lemmata were abbreviated but contained more text quoted at the beginning and at the end than we now find in our MSS. There is no manuscript evidence for such a Procrustean procedure in our case, but that such things happened is clear from the transmission of lemmata in other commentaries. 77 Not all the lemmata we find in Aspasius have this abbreviated form. The first lemma at 2,14 and another lemma at 87,33 do not. Only the beginning of the text is quoted there. 78 I am not sure whether these are truncated εως-lemmata, as Heylbut thinks, or whether they are just lemmata of another form. 79 For later times we know of commentaries where lemmata of both these forms occur together. 80 Finally there are also a few smaller lemmata in the text which only quote a few words and are 74

75

76

77

78

79 80

See 158,2/3; 163,25/26; 169,23/24. Note that all these three occurrences are in book VIII, the book which is transmitted in both traditions. But note also that in 169, 23 - 24 the Latin translation does not translate του but ού, and où is indeed the immediately preceding word of the second part of the lemma in Aristode's text. It is possible then that the του of the Greek MSS is a misread ού of the original. See 15,1; 23,30/1; 100,15/16; 108,1; see also Heylbut's praef. suppL· Reginensis 122: εως του (15.1)] άν in textu, del. a man 2, quae in mg.: του ή βιβλ. See POxy XXI, 2307 (quoted in n.68) and perhaps also Anon. In Ale. I ( = C P F 111,5) with lemmata of the form "Α μέχρι Ζ " without article. Cf. Vendruscolo (above, n.68), 280. cf. e. g. Proclus, in Ttm. on which see Diehl (above, n.ll) and Κ. Praechter, [reviewing Proclt Diadochi in Piatonis Timaeum commentario (ed. E. Diehl)], Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen 167, 1905, 518. 2,14: πάσα τέχνη; 87,33 Μετά δέ ταύτα περί σωφροσύνης. Heylbut notes ad loc. "prior lemmatis pars esse videtur". But of course there is a truncated lemma at 108,1 (truncated after εως). See e. g. Porphyrius, in Harm. Ptol.\ Simplicius, in De cáelo (on which cf. Lamberz [1987], 10); More difficult however are two lemmata in Aspasius we find at the end of book VIII (cf. 182,6 and 184,35). They too quote only the beginning of the text and the commentary continues asyndetically afterwards as after all the others. The problem with these two lemmata is that they offer a text which was already included in the preceding εως-lemma.

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followed by a word for word commentary, one of them being also abbreviated with κ α ι τά λ ο ι π ά at the end. 81 So far then there is nothing, I think, which is clearly against the view that these lemmata go back to Aspasius. But even if such abbreviated lemmata were commonly used in Aspasius' time, in one respect Aspasian lemmata remain exceptional: they include far more text than any other lemma or quotation of his time. 82 Yet, as far as I can tell, they contain more text than any other lemma in antiquity tout court, and therefore this is not evidence against an early date either.

VI The text included in a lemma varies between 6 and about 160 Bekker lines, and there is no such thing as a standard length for a lemma to be found. 8 3 Nonetheless the division is not random. The lemmata divide the text into organic parts. A lemma never begins nor ends in the middle of a sentence, hardly ever in the middle of an argument. 84 It coincides roughly with what can be taken as the general structure of the work, though in a few cases it is admittedly a bit odd. 8 5 The division is partly the same as our Roman numbered chapter division 86 which — to judge from Susemihl's edition — goes back to Zell 87 . But all the common divi81

82

83

84

85

86

87

See e. g. 48,12; 130,2; the abbreviated lemma is at 1 0 4 , 7 - 8 : note that the commentary continues asyndetically after it as well. All the abbreviated lemmata and quotations mentioned above include only a few words, while Aspasian lemmata abbreviate a text of an average length of about 70 Bekker lines. Aspasian lemmata include also about twenty time more text than an average full lemma of Anon, in Tht. or Anon, in Top. Only Apollonius of Cition offers one or two full lemmata of almost comparable length. Nor has the commentary in between or the commentary plus the corresponding lemma a regular length. The only exception here is the lemma at 163,25/26 where the conclusion of an argument seems to be cut off. But the conclusion can also be taken as a résumé with which the following section starts. The first lemma of book I and the first of book II, for example, contain also the introduction to what follows. And also the lemma at 8 9 , 3 - 6 , which I have discussed above, is much too short to single out a main section. See 15,l:I.vii; 31,l/2:I.xi; (41,28):II.iii; 58,2 = III.i; 103,1/2 = IV.ii; 108,1 =IV.iii; 118,17/ 8 = IV.v; 121,3 = IV.vi; (141,22):VII.xi; 150,l/2:VII,xiii; 176,6/7 = Vili.vii + viii; (180,20/ 21) = VIII.ix-xi; 183,29=VIII.xii-xiv; see also 19,2/3 which begins at 1.7 (Bekker). [":" abbreviates "begins at the same passage as", " = " "corresponds to".] Aristotelis Ethicorum Nicomacbeorum libri decern (ed. Carolus Zell) Heidelbergae, Möhr & Winter 1820. Zell does not say a word about his division into chapters and paragraphs. He uses this division for references in his commentary which accompanies the edition.

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sions are so obvious that it is not surprising that the text was always divided there. Did Aspasius invent this division or did he take it over from the text he read? I am inclined to believe that the latter is the case, but only for a practical reason: N o matter whether the function of an abbreviated lemma is to tell you to read a text which goes from "A" to "Z", or to indicate that the commentator will now discuss that section of text, the lemma will lose its function if you cannot see immediately in your own text where it begins and where it ends. There were no line-numbers which could help. The beginnings and ends of the lemmata must have been recognÌ2able by themselves. I guess that this was provided by the fact they coincided to the beginnings and ends of sections which were somehow marked in the text. Perhaps there were more sections than the ones to which the lemmata refer, but there were at least these. So far, this is only a guess, of course. But there is some evidence on papyrus which gives support to this assumption. The few early papyri of Aristotle's text we have so far contain only two passages where chapters are divided in our editions. One passage is Cat. 10b25 — 26 preserved on an Oxyrhynchean papyrus of the beginning of the 3rd century AD 8 8 , the other Pol. 1292a38 —39 preserved on a papyrus of the 1st or 2nd century AD, whose provenance is unknown. 8 9 Both papyri use exactly the same sign, the diple obelismene (">—"), to mark the division, a sign we find nowhere else in any of the Aristotelian works preserved on papyri. 90

88

89

90

The same division can already be found in a latin translation of EN printed in Paris in 1510: Opus Aristotelis de Moribus ad Nicomachum: Joanne Argiyopylo Bizantino traduttore, adietío familiari Jacobi Stapulensis commentario. I do not know whether it goes further back in time. POxy 2403 ( = C P F I, 24,2) contains cat. Ila25-b2, 13b20-27 and 1 4 a l 2 - 1 5 : Cavini/ Funghi note ad loc. "Il passagio da un capitolo all'altro (A26) viene segnalato dai due punti accompagnati da diple obelismene" The passage mentioned here is the one from our, that is Bekker's, chapter 8 to chapter 9. PMich inv. 6643 + PBrux inv. E 8073 ( = C P F I, 24,5) which contains pol 1292a30-b2 and 1293al5-18. Menci notes ad loc.: "Non compaiono segni di interpunzione, ma in PMich II 2 una diple obelismene segna la fine di paragrafo." PMich II 2, that is at 1292a38 —39, where our Pol Δ,4 ends and our Pol Δ.5 begins. Cf. R. Barbis, 'La diplè obelismene: Precisazioni terminologiche e formali', in Proceedings of the XVIII Congress of Papyrology, Athens, 1988, 4 7 3 - 7 6 , at 475-476: "In sostanza, lo scopo del segno è quello di indicare una divisione, chiara e netta, all'interno del testo: la sua larga utilizzazione nella stesura de commentari è quindi pienamente giustificabile, pensando a come la diplè obelismene riesca a coniugare un sistema di separazione immediatamente comprensibile con un tempo di realizzazione relativamente rapido." The sign was sometimes also used to separate the lemmata from the commentary. See e. g. Didymus, Περί Δημοσθένους; McNamee (above, n.4), 34, n.45 gives a list of all these occurrences in commentaries.

Aspasian Lemmatology

75

To be sure, the evidence is thin, but all we have till now is clearly in favour of the view that in the first centuries AD Aristotle's works were divided into chapters by unambiguous marks.91 Aspasius could then refer to the ends and beginnings of chapters with abbreviated lemmata in the way he does because his readers could easily find these passages in their text of Aristode. Unfortunately there remains a gap in this explanation. If we have sure evidence that some copies had chapter divisions, what we need to establish the conclusion is evidence for a standard division shared by most of the copies, which we do not have. But there is nothing so far which disproves it either. And in any case, we do not have to presuppose that Aspasius wanted everybody in the world to be able to find out where his lemmata began and where they ended. Perhaps he was content if just his pupils could find them all in the texts they read at school.

VII Finally, let us turn our attention to the readings of the lemmata. The lemmata, abbreviated as they are, quote only a few words of Aristode's text and therefore offer very litde which may help to reconstruct the text of Aristode which Aspasius read. Quotations, paraphrases and comments will be of much more value for that task simply because there is much more material to judge from. Here then, first a list of all the differences I have found 92 : I. AspasiusL against Aristode (O b K b M b L b ): •(1) 1096al7 κομίζοντες: *(2) 1101a21 και περί μεν τούτων διοριστέον:

91

92

κομίσαντες; προκομίσαντες M b περί μέν τούτων επί τοσούτον διωρίσθω

Cf. for later times an abbreviated lemma in [Ammonius], in An. pr. 75,6/7 which refers to the end o f a section: p. 42b37 Έπε i δ' έχομε ν περί ών οι συλλογισμοί εως τέλους του πρώτου τμήματος του περί γενέσεως συλλογισμών. But contrast perhaps also with Themistius' complaint in in An. post. 1,16 — 19 (quoted in n.13 above.) I rely completely on what Heylbut and Bekker report. I have however checked Bekker against Aristotelis Ethica Nichomachea, recognovit Fr. Susemihl, Leipzig, 2 1887 (and against "Fr. Susemihl ad ed. epist. crit", in Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea edidit et commentario continuo instruxit G. Ramsauer, Leipzig, 1878, 730 - 740) where this was possible. (Supplementary information from Susemihl has been inserted in brackets.)

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(3) *(4) (5) •(6) *(7) (8) •(9) *(10) (11) *(12) (13) *(14)

1103a9 δέ εξεων: 111 lb4 διωρισμένου: 1111 b4 του έκουσίου (-σία Ν): 111 2al2 δόξειεν άν τινι: 1123a33 μή τελεϊν άσχήμονας: 1123a34 ή μεγαλοψυχία δέ: 93 1126bl0 ολην έξιν έξης: 1127al2 ή μεσάτης: 1128b9 κοίναις: 1152a35 αλλήλους: 1153bl άλλά μήν και ότι: 1154b31 παραπλήσιον δέ έπί ϋλης:

εξεων δέ διωρισμένων του τε έκουσίου: του ακουσίου M b δόξη τινί μήτε λίαν άσχήμονες ή δέ μεγαλοψυχία όργήν εξεις το μέσον κατά τόν άλλον βίον άλλήλας άλλά μήν οτι και: άλλά μήν ότι K b M b γάρ άπλή ούδ' έπιεικής

II. MSS of Asp. L with Aristotle (O b K b M b L b ) against other MSS of Asp. L Ζ with Aristotle against N: (15) 1109b30 της αρετής δέ Ζ, Ar.: (16) l t l l b 4 έκουσίου Ζ, Ar.: (17) 1120b27 ειρήσθω Ar., Ζ corr. ex είρήσθαι: (18) 1125a34 μεγαλοψυχία Ζ, Ar.: (19) 1158bll φιλίας είδος Ζ, Ar.:

της άρετής δή Ν έκουσία Ν είρήσθαι Ν μεγαλόψυχοι Ν είδος φιλίας Ν

Ζ 2 with Aristotle against ΖΝ: (20) 1096al7 την δόξαν Ζ 2 , Ar.: (21) 1099a31 όμως Ζ 2 , Ar.:

δόξαν ΖΝ ομοίως ΖΝ

Ν with Aristotle against Ζ: (22) 1109b30 περί πάθη Ν, Ar.:

πάθη Ζ

R with Aristotle against Ζ: (23) 1098al9 ολίγος R, Ar.:

ό λόγος Ζ

RN with Aristotle against Β: (24) 1163b28 έπί τοσούτον ειρήσθω RN, Ar.:

ειρήσθω έπί τοσούτον Β

MSS of Asp. L with MSS of Aristotle against MSS of Asp. L with MSS of Aristotle: (25) 1118b22 ώς ούχ Ζ; (Nb): (26) 1120b27 δή μεσότητος Ζ; K b L b O b : (27) 1159b24 άλλοτριώτερον Za; M b :

ούχ ώς Ν: ή ώς K b : και ώς (H a )L b M b O b δέ ή μεσάτης Ν: δέ μεσάτης M b άλλοτριώτερα NB; K b L b O b

MSS of Asp. L against MSS of Asp. L against Aristotle: (28) 1126bl0 ή περί Ν:

93

Ν stops the quotation before δέ.

και περί Ζ: ούν περί Ar.

Aspasian Lemmatology

77

III. Asp L with MSS of Aristotle against MSS of Aristotle (O b K b M b L b ): 1098a20 1099a30 111 9b22 119b22 1120b26

ούδέ Asp L ; K b M b L b : εϊναί φαμεν Asp L ; (Ha)Mb: λέγομεν Asp L ; LbMb(et pr. Ha): δέ έξης Asp L ; O b M b L b καί ταϊς δόσεσιν Asp L ; L b M b :

1122al8 1125b25 1125b26 1127al3 1157a35 1157bl 1157bl 1158bl1 1163b27

δόξειε Asp L ; O b M b L b : τον μέσον Asp L ; O b K b : μέν Asp L ; O b : ταϋτα Asp L ; Mb: τά Asp L ; K b L b : δέ Asp L ; K b M b L b : νενεμημένης Asp L ; K b M b : έκείνης Asp L ; O b K b L b : περί μέν τούτων Asp L ; Mb(Nb):

οΰτ' O b φαμέν είναι K b L b O b λέγωμεν K b O b δέ και έξης K b καί δαπάναις Ha: καί ταϊς δαπάναις M b L b δόξαι (Ha)Kb το μέσον L b M b om K b L b M b τά αύτά O b K b L b άλλά M b O b δή O b κατανενεμημένης L b O b έκείναις M b περί μέν ούν τούτων O b K b L b

I. In 14 cases all the MSS of Aspasius considered by Heylbut offer a reading in a lemma which differs from Aristode (that is from Aristode as preserved in the medieval EN MSS collated by Bekker). But many of these different readings are clearly due to corruptions of the lemmata. As I have already said above, there is evidence that the lemmata were no longer recognised as such by the scribes. If a "εως''-lemma is taken as a part of the commentary, it becomes a syntactically ill-formed compound of words, pure nonsense, and therefore corruption will easily occur: a scribe will then, we may presume, either blindly copy what he reads, or try to make sense of what he reads and thereby transform it into something else. There are indeed traces of both types of scribal activity to be found in our text. 94 In other cases it is clear that the text of the lemmata is corrupt for otherwise Aristotle's text becomes ungrammatical 95 or makes no sense. 96 In all these cases, the reading of the lemmata is of no use to anybody interested in Aristode's text. (In the list above they are therefore marked with an asterisk "*".) In a few cases what we read in a lemma differs from what we read in a quotation or in a paraphrase of that same passage (the cases are marked in the list with "·"): 94

95 96

For blind copying see (7) μη τελεϊν for μήτε λίαν and (14) παραπλη... for γάρ άπλή. For transformation: see the lemmata at 1 9 , 1 2 - 1 3 ; 37,2; 4 0 , 4 - 5 ; 121,3 which lost their form. Cf. (4), (10). Cf. (2). Yet given the fact that we have only parts of sentences we cannot be sure in all these cases whether what is ungrammatical in combination with our text was ungrammatical with the text Aspasius read: cf. (12)

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1096al7 κομίζοντες Asp'-(11,13): 1112al2 καί δόξειεν αν τινι AspL(66,34): 1126bl0 ολην εξιν εξης Asp L (118,18):

WITTWER

κομίσαντες Asp Q (ll,19) δόξη τινί Asp p (70,16) όργήν εξενς Asp p (121,l)

For other commentaries scholars have argued that this sort of difference shows that the lemmata do not report what the author read. 97 This however does not follow here, for (i) in the second and the third cases, the readings are surely due to errors o f a scribe copying the lemmata. 9 8 So, only the first case really offers conflicting readings, and this single case may simply go back to a mistake on a scribe's part as well. (ii) it is clear from other passages that the quotations in Aspasius' commentary have been contaminated by the direct transmission o f Aristotle's t e x t . " If there is a difference between a lemma and a quotation, it may perhaps be due to a change in the quotation.

And, finally, note also that, surprisingly, Aspasius does not share with us a quite fundamental principle according to which only one reading can be the true one. In almost all the passages where he discusses variants, he does not adopt one particular reading by rejecting the other. The reason, I think, is not that he did not know which reading to prefer and therefore suspended judgement, it is rather that he was happy to have both readings at the same time. 100 But if there is nothing which clearly shows that the readings in the lemmata do not correspond to the text Aspasius commented on, there is nothing which proves it either. And as in these matters the absence of evidence to the contrary can hardly be taken as sufficient reason to claim that the readings are original, we have to see further whether the differ-

97 98

99

100

Cf. n.9 above. In the second case probably to make sense of the second part of the lemma; in the third case there surely was a diplography of εξεις at the beginning of the corruption. Cf. e. g. 1 1 , 1 - 2 ; 87,11; 1 6 6 , 1 8 - 3 1 discussed in this volume by Jonathan Barnes, 44 - 50; cf. Bywater [4], 2 who points also to 9,31 ήθεσιν instead of the presupposed εθεσιν, to 107,26 έπί των δαπανημάτων instead of έπεί των δαπανημάτων, and to 176,29 έκάστω instead of εκάστου. See e. g.: 7 3 , 2 - 4 ; 7 5 , 1 1 - 1 3 ; 166,27-31; 167,29-33; cf. Simplicius, in De caelo 336,29 (quoted in n.6 above) and see Diels (above, n.ll), 30, n.3, who, observing this attitude in other ancient commentators, criticizes them severely: "Am meisten fehlt den Interpreten die Einsicht, dass doch nur eine Lesart richtig sein kann. Daher die Unentschiedenheit selbst bei direct sich widersprechenden Varianten. ..."

Aspasian Lemmatology

79

enees of the text in the individual MSS are due to interventions of our scribes and also whether generally the readings depend on a medieval source of the direct transmission. II. The individual MSS of Aspasius (or in the case of Ζ the different hands) quite often give different readings for the lemmata. Yet many of these differences concern only the order of the words101 or are due to omissions102. Other differences surely go back to errors in reading the source.103 Almost all the differences which remain concern only the endings of a word104 and such differences may well go back to abbreviated word ends in the source.105 Therefore, we can safely assume that the scribe of our MSS report what they read in their source and not what they read in their Aristotle. This in any case was to be expected if they did not recognise the lemmata as such. III. There are readings of lemmata which give support to some of our medieval MSS of EN against others. As far as I can see, the text of the lemmata does not depend on a medieval MS or a MSS-family of the direct transmission. The trouble here is that I cannot see far, for full information of the MSS-readings is only provided by Bekker's apparatus for Ob, Kb, M b and L b . 106 There are a lot of other MSS whose reading I do not know and it is well known — alas — that Bekker reported from time to time readings which are not to be found in the MSS. The following table shows how the text of the lemma agrees with the MSS Ob, Kb, M b and Lb. (The number in brackets indicates in how many of the cases a reading of that MS is supported or rejected against the reading of all the other three.)

101 102

103 104 105

106

(19), (24), (25). (20), (22). (21) Cf. the same mistake of Ζ and Ν in the commentary at 30, 11; (23). (15), (16), (17), (18), (26), (27). See e. g. Heylbut's apparatus ad 100,16: ειρήσθω Ζ, con. ex είρήσθαι NR; cf. McNamee (above, n.4), 33: "Abbreviation is sometimes excessive, especially in lemmata, although hypomnemata without any abbreviations at all are not uncommon." Cf. also Vendruscolo (above, n.68), 281. Jackson's edition of book V is more complete but does not help here, for nothing on book V is preserved of Aspasius. I have checked Bekker's reading against Susemihl (above, n.92) where this was possible.

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MSS

pro

contra

ob

5 (1)

9(2)

Kb

6(0)

8(2)

Mb

10(3)

4(1)

Lb

8(0)

6(0)

The only papyrus of £7V 0 7 found so far, which is contemporary to Aspasius, seems to support mainly L b . 108 The text of the lemmata has no such particular affinity to L b (nor a particular hostility towards it). If there is any affinity, then it is rather an affinity with M b . 109 But in both cases the text which can be compared with our MSS is so short that not more than an impressionistic judgement can be made. And, in any case, it seems that MSS-families are relative to the single books of EN, and not to the whole of it. 110 Finally there is a further difficulty here 111 . According to Bywater there is a clear case of cross-contamination from Aspasius' commentary into our EN-MSS. At 1120b7 a gloss has been inserted into the text of O b which derives pardy from Aspasius (99,20) and partly from a scholion at fol. 5a V.6.112 Bywater lists also a dozen readings in M b which according 107

Or of EE\ the fragments contain two passages of the common books: 1142bl 1 — 17 and 1144a6 — 11 (POxy 2402 = CPF I, 24,3). Unfortunately Aspasius' commentary on these passages is not preserved, toe readings which give support to some of our EN-MSS against others are the following: 1142bll ώρισται LbOb: τε και κακώς KbMb; 1142bl5 τι T3KbLbOb: τε Mb; 1142bl6 τις ï>KbLbMh: om. O b ; 1144a6 εύδαιμονίαν T3LbOb: ευδαιμονία Kb, τον εύδαίμονα Mb; cf. also Kenny [19], 48 — 9 who compares the readings with the best iîiï-MS, L. 109 But note Mb was surely written after the common source of our Aspasius MSS. According to E. Mioni Mb dates from c. 1467 and was copied from G a (=Venice Marc. Graeci fondo antico 212, f. 1 -94v). (I take this from R. A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif, L'Éthique à Nicomaque, Louvain-Paris, 1970, 1,1, 309). We may of course wonder what readings G a has. 110 Cf. Gauthier and Jolif (above, n.109), I, 1, 312-313. 111 I would like to thank Hugh Johnstone for pointing this out to me. 112 In O b we read το γαρ μή έπιβλέπειν έφ' εαυτόν άλλ' εις τό καλόν ελευθερίου, ούδέ γάρ έστιν ελευθερίου τό την οίκείαν χρείαν της του δεομένου προτιμοτέραν instead of τό γαρ μή βλέπειν έφ' έαυτόν ελευθερίου; see Bywater [4], 6 - 7 ; But as this is a hybrid of Aspasian material (cf. 99,20: où γάρ πάντως εις αυτόν αποβλέπει άλλ' εις τό καΑόν) and material from scholia, it is quite clear to me that it was at least not directly taken over from Aspasius' commentary. Hugh Johnstone informs me per litteras that traces of this insertion can already be found in an earlier MS, namely in F (=Laur. 81,18;

Aspasian Lemmatology

81

to him must have been taken over from Aspasius. 113 If he is right, we may be tempted to explain the slight affinity of the readings in Aspasius' lemmata and M b as a result of cross-contamination from the former to the later. But I doubt whether Bywater is right. A m o n g the common readings he lists I do not see a single case which is clearly in favour of his view. N o r does the list as a whole suggest to me that these readings must have been taken over from Aspasius into M b . 1 1 4 Bywater is strongly biased in favour of K b . While he is ready to accord some value to L b , he purports to show that O b and M b "are essentially products of contamination" 1 1 5 and to prove this he is led more than once to a tour de force. So, regarding the testimony of Aspasius, basically, when Aspasius corresponds to a reading of K b Bywater thinks it is a sign for the excellence of K b , when Aspasius corresponds with O b or M b it is a sign of interpolation of readings from Aspasius, and not evidence that that is what Aristotle originally wrote. 1 1 6 VIII Is there any philosophical fruit to pick after this long investigation? D o the lemmata offer any variant which is even mildly philosophically interesting or at least of some interest for the history of philosophy?

113

114

1,5 116

f.26v [the passage under question is partly damaged]). It is clear then that it goes at least back to the common source of F and O b . Cf. Bywater [4], 9: 1095b9 των Ησιόδου] του 'Ησιόδου M b Asp. 1098a33 γίνηται] γένηται M b Asp. 1100a4 ώσπερ] ώς M b Asp. 1102a5 τις] om. M b Asp. 1102b9 εΐ πη] ει μή M b Asp. 1102b34 τε om. M b Asp. 1112a7 τφ ώς άληθώς] τω αληθής M b ; comp. Asp. τώ άληθής είναι 1113al2 βούλευσιν] βούλησιν M b ; Asp. records both readings. 1149b24 επιθυμίας] έπιθυμίαν M b Asp. 1152b7 χαίρειν] μάλιστα χαίρειν M b ; comp. Asp. οίον ώς αν εϊποις μάλα χαίροντα. 1156b3 της ερωτικής] τοις έρωτικοϊς M b ; Asp. records both readings 1158b33 διάστημα] τό διάστημα M b Asp. 1160a4 χρήματα] χρημάτων M b Asp. 1161al8 προσνένεμεται] απονέμεται M b Asp. Bywater [4], 9: "{the common readings) agree with the text of Aspasius in certain cases, where it is clear that he is not attempting to give the ipsissima verba of Aristotle, but varying the language slightly as is the way of paraphrase. These last instances are decisive as to the provenance of the Aspasius readings in M b ." Bywater does not say explicitly which cases he has in mind. Probably he is thinking of 1112a7 and 1152b7. But in 1112a7 the Aspasian MSS have τω άληθές είναι and at 1152b7 I cannot see a trace of direct contamination. Note however that according to Susemihl (above, n,92) the codd. Lambini have at 1152b7 μάλα χαίρειν, which may or may not derive from Aspasius. Bywater [4], 5 Cf. Bywater [4], 4: "The coincidence observable between the text in Aspasius and that in the inferior MSS of Aristotle lose their significance as soon as one sees - as I think

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The answer is short and disappointing: there is nothing of interest at all to get out of the lemmata as far as variant readings in the text are concerned. All the variants which remain concern the expression of the text and do not affect its sense. But this is not the whole story. The lemmata divide the text without leaving gaps: as far as we can see, a new lemma always begins where the former ends. This clearly shows that the lemmata were intended to cover the whole text of EN. The only passage not included in the lemmata is the passage at the end of book VII, E N 1154b32-34: περί μεν ούν έγκρατείας και άκρασίας και περί ηδονής καί λύπης ειρηται, καί τί εκαστον καί πώς τα μεν άγαθά αύτών έστιν τα δέ κακά' λοιπόν δέ καί περί φιλίας έροϋμεν the passage which glues together the two rather disjoined parts of this book about incontinence and pleasure and makes the bridge to the following treatise on friendship. We may assume then that Aspasius did not read this passage in his text, and hence that it was not in his text. 117 And this in turn is a good reason to excise the passage.118 Admittedly, there is a problem with the lemma at 150,1 —2 which we would expect to include our passage. All the MSS have the following reading for the lemma: Άλλα μην καί ότι ή λύπη εως παραπλήσιον δέ

117

118

one must in the case of O b and M b — that these readings have been imported into the later MSS by correction of their text from Aspasius." ... if this was not just a mistake; see Diehl (above, n.ll), 250 — 51 who is ready to ascribe such mistakes to Proclus himself. But Proclus comments on Platonic dialogues and in his commentary such gaps between the lemmata occur more than once. Note however that there is a second case in Aspasius too: at 58,2 a ταΰτα at the end of a lemma fell out. The commentary makes clear that Aspasius read it in his text. Cf. 66,32: καί άτοπον δη το τιθέναι αύτά ακούσια. I must add that Aspasius does not comment on this passage, though this in itself does not prove anything: there are other remarks o f this type Aspasius does not comment on (e. g. I l l 9 b 2 2 , 1126bl0, 1152a35-6). Cf. Susemihl (above, n.92) who notes ad loc.·. "32. περί μεν - 34. έροϋμεν secludenda esse ci. Asp. vel alii ap. Asp.". But his note is odd, for Aspasius did not suggest that the words be excised, as Susemihl claims that he did. Perhaps he is attributing a tacit conjecture to him, i. e. he thinks that Aspasius read the sentence, but deemed it spurious and therefore did not provide a lemma covering it. But there is no evidence which gives support to such a story, and we do better to assume that Aspasius' text of Aristode simply did not contain this passage. The passage has been excised also for reasons independent of Aspasian lemmatology: cf. e. g. Ramsauer (above, n.92); A. Grant, The Ethics of Aristotle, (Fourth Edition, revised), London, 1885; A. J. Festugière, Aristote: Le Plaisir (EN VI111-14; Χ 1- 5), Paris, 1936; Gauthier and Jolif (above, n.109).

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επί ΰλης. 1 1 9 As it stands the second part of the lemma does not refer to any text of Aristode we know of. But I think Heylbut is right in taking the MSS reading παραπλήσιον δέ επί υλης as a corruption of ού γαρ άπλή ούδ' έπιεικής, a passage we find in EN 1154b31, for the two readings share quite long sequences of letters, namely ...αραπλη...δεεπι,.,ης, and I have found no passage in Aristode which is closer to the MSS text than this one, which, after all, would be a very suitable passage to refer to here. 120 So although the lemma-text as we read it in our MSS certainly dates from a later period than Aspasius and has no authority over our medieval .Ë7V-MSS, the intended reference to EN 1154b31 of the lemma in question stems from Aspasius, and that is all that really matters here. The passage had two functions. To excise it raises two questions: (a) Was EN VII always a single book? (b) Did it precede EN VIII?

Bibliography (excluding items referred to in the general bibliography to Aspasius, below pp. 191 -194). R. Barbis, 'La diplè obelismene: Precisazioni terminologiche e formali', in Proceedings of the XVIII Congress of Papyrology, Athens, 1988, 4 7 3 - 7 6 J. Barnes, 'Roman Aristotle', i n j . Barnes, M. Griffin, Philosophia Togata II, Oxford, 1 9 9 7 , 1 - 6 9 Th. Birt, Das Antike Buchwesen, Berlin, 1882, (Nachdruck: Aalen, 1959) A. Busse, 'Uber die in Ammonius' Kommentar erhaltene Uberlieferung der aristotelischen Schrift Περί ερμηνείας', in Festschrift Johannes Vahlen %um siebzigsten Geburtstag, Berlin, 1900, 7 1 - 8 5 A. Carlini, Ί lemmi del commento di Proclo all'Alcibiade I e il codice W di Platone', Studi Classici e Orientali 10, 1961, 179-187 A. Carlini, 'Il commento anonimo al Teeteto e il testo di Platone', in Storia poesia e pensiero nel mondo antico. Studi in onore di Marcello Gigante, Napoli, 1994, 83-91 E. Diehl, 'Der Timaiostext des Proklos', Rheinisches Museum 58, 1903, 2 4 6 - 2 6 9 H. Diels, 'Zur Textgeschichte der Aristotelischen Physik', Philos.-hist, Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften Berlin, 1882, 1—42 H. Diels, W Schubart, Anonymer Kommentar Piatons Theaitet, Berliner Klassikertexte 2, Berlin, 1905

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Hugh Johnstone kindly looked up this passage for me in the Florentine MSS Ν and R. The reading of N, he informs me, is correcdy reported by Heylbut and R differs from it only insofar as it has παραπλησίως instead of παραπλήσιον. Aspasius seems to comment on the same text that we have up to 1154b30, and it is difficult to imagine what Aristode should have wanted to add with a sentence ending "and similarly in the case of matter" immediately after.

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M. del Fabbro, 'Il commentario nella tradizione papiracea', Studia papyrologica 18, 1979, 69-132 A. J. Festugière, Aristote: Le Plaisir (EN VII 11-14; X 1-5), Paris, 1936 A.J. Festugière, 'Modes de composition des Commentaires de Proclus', Museum Helveticum 20,1963,77-100 R. A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif: L'Ethique à Nicomaque, Louvain-Paris, 1970 A. Grant, The Ethics ofAristotle, (Fourth Edition, revised), London, 1885 I. Hadot (sous la dir.), Simpliaus, Commentaire sur les Catégories, Fase. 1, Leiden, 1990 J. Ilberg, 'Die Hippocratesausgaben des Artemidorus Kapiton und Dioskurides', Rheinisches Museum 45, 1890, 1 1 1 - 1 3 7 W.Jaeger, 'Emendationen zur aristotelischen Metaphysik Α-Δ', Hermes, 52, 1917, 481-519 A. Kehl, Der Psalmenkommentar von Tura Quaternio IX. Papyrologica Coloniensa I, Köln/Opladen, 1964 A. Kenny, The Aristotelian Ethics, Oxford, 1978 R. Klibansky, Plato Latinus III, London 1953 B. H. Kraut, 'Two Papyri from the Princeton Collection. II. P.Princeton inv. AM 11224C and Plato's Alcibiades', ZPE 51, 1983, 7 5 - 7 9 E. Lamberz, 'Proklos und die Form des philosophischen Kommentars', in J. Pépin, H. D. Saffrey (éd.), Proclus - Lecteur et interprète des anàens, Paris, 1987, 1 - 2 0 ; add. 369 F. Lasserre, 'Anonyme: Commentaire de l'Alcibiade I de Platon', in F. Decleva Caizzi et al.·. Varia Papjrologica, (Studi e Testi per il Corpus dei Papiri Filosofici Greci e Latini 5), Florence, 1991, 7 - 2 3 Fr. Leo, 'Didymos περί Δημοσθένους', Nachrichten von der Königlichen Gesellschafl d. Wiss. ^u Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, 1904, 2 5 4 - 2 6 1 K. McNamee, Marginalia and Commentaries in Greek Literary Papyri, diss. Duke University, 1977 P. Moraux, 'Notes sur la tradition indirecte du 'de Caelo' d'Aristote', Hermes 82, 1954, 145-182 C. Moreschini, Ί lemmi del commento di Proclo al Parmenide di Platone', Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 33, 1964, 251 - 2 5 5 K. Praechter, [reviewing Syrianus, in Met. (ed. G. Kroll), CI-AG VI,1J Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1903, 5 1 6 - 5 3 8 (= Κ. Praechter, Kleine Schriften, 282-304) Κ. Praechter, [reviewing Prodi Diadochi in Piatonis Ttmaeum commentarla (ed. E. Diehl)], Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen 167, 1905, 518 Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea edidit et commentario continuo instruxit G. Ramsauer, Leipzig, 1878 W. Schubart, Das Buch bei den Griechen und Römern, Berlin-Leipzig, 2 1921 D. N. Sedley, G. Bastianini, 'Commentarium in Piatonis Theaetetuni, in CPF III, Florence, 1995, 2 2 1 - 5 6 2 Aristotelis Ethica Nichomachea, recognovit Fr. Susemihl, Leipzig, 2 1887 E. G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Anäent World, Oxford, 1971 F. Vendruscolo, 'Una riconsiderazione di P. Princ. Inv. AM 11224C: Commento all Alcibiade V, ZPE 99, 1993, 2 7 9 - 2 8 5 L. G. Westerink, 'Ein astrologisches Kolleg aus dem Jahre 564', BZ 64, 1971, 6 - 1 0 ( = Texts and Studies in Neoplatonism and Byzantine Literature. Collected Papers, Amsterdam 1980, 279-283) CPF = Corpus dei Papiri Filosofia Greci e Ijitini I* and III, Florence, 1989, 1995 Kühner/Gerth = R. Kühner, Β. Gerth, Aurfiihrliche Grammatik der Griechischen Sprache, Hannover, 1890-1904

BOB SHARPLES

3. ASPASIUS O N E U D A I M O N I A

Aspasius' discussion of Aristotle's primary account .of ευδαιμονία, in Nicomachean Ethics 1 1097al5 — 1102a4 (Aspasius 15,1—34,7) is in general a competent piece of interpretation which involves relatively few surprises. But there are features of Aspasius' treatment which reflect controversies between Aristotle's time and his own, or show him taking a distinctive position himself on issues in the interpretation of Aristotle which are still controversial today, or, indeed, both. And an examination of these will be helpful both for our assessment of Aspasius and for our awareness of possible ways of reading Aristode.

/. The practical life and the life of contemplation (θεωρία). An issue posed to every reader of the Nicomachean Ethics is that of the relation between the account of ευδαιμονία in 10 1177al2-b32, which appears to contrast the rival claims of the life of contemplation and the life of practical activity, and the account of ευδαιμονία in book 1, where this contrast is at least not explicit. Aspasius' answer is clear; he reads book 1 as an anticipation of book 10. Aristotle at 1097a22 —4 asks whether there is one end or more in the sphere of action (literally: of things that can be done, πρακτά). Aspasius in commenting on this passage, at 15,12—14, refers rather to the question whether happiness consists not just in the πρακτόν αγαθόν but in something else such as contemplation. His formulation seems to exclude the idea that contemplation could be a part of the πρακτόν αγαθόν. 1 Similarly at 19,1—2 Aspasius interprets the reference at 1098al7 —18 to the best virtue, if there is more than one, as relating to θεωρία, again introducing an explicit reference to θεωρία where there is none in Aristotle. 2 1 2

I am grateful to Michael Frede for this point. The claim at 19,2 that excellence of character, καλοκαγαθία, exists first - i. e. presumably first in time in an individual's life, before θεωρία comes to be practised well - seems surprising in the light of 1095a2 and 1142all ff. (If the reference were to ethical virtue

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At 1099a29 Aristotle refers to happiness as the best activities or the best one among them. Aspasius at 23,25 ff. introduces an explicit reference to θεωρία, admittedly qualifying it by ίσως and by μάλιστα; 3 and once again, even more clearly than at 15,12, the contrast between θεωρία and the πρακτόν άγαθόν is presented as an exclusive one. 4 And finally, at 29,22 Aristotle's reference to the most honourable virtues at 1100bl5 is glossed by Aspasius as referring to the virtues of θεωρία, which may seem to create at any rate an apparent tension with the immediately preceding point, both in Aristotle and in Aspasius himself, that virtues are more persistent than έπιστήμαι.

2. Classes ofgoods and parts of the end. At 15,29 ff. Aspasius distinguishes between things chosen for their own sake, those chosen for the sake of something else (i. e. instrumental goods) and those chosen both for themselves and for something else, i. e. the virtues which are chosen both for themselves and for happiness. The threefold classification is indeed based on Aristotle, E N 1 1097a30-34; it had become standard. 5 Aspasius' discussion shows the influence of debate over the nature of the Aristotelian τέλος. He states the issue of the nature of ευδαιμονία in the form of the question, what are the things that complete (συμπληροΰν)

3

4

5

coming first in Aristotle's order of discussion, a point which is made below at 23,28 - 9, the sense would be clear, but it seems hard to get this out of the Greek.) However, that ethical virtue must precede θεωρία has also been indicated at 2,3 ff., the point being that we need to be morally virtuous before engaging in θεωρία (cf. 1,1 ff.; Moraux [25] 2 7 0 - 2 nn.162-3). At 25,22, on 1099b9, Aspasius surprisingly claims that, while ethical virtue for the most part comes from habituation, practical wisdom, φρόνησις, is entirely acquired by learning, like theoretical wisdom. Cf. Becchi [34] 5384, arguing that Aspasius here introduces an un-Aristotelian distinction between two kinds of happiness. Cf. Moraux [25] 274 and n.169, contrasting Aspasius' distinction between two types of happiness with Simplicius' claim {in Cat. 6,11) that the fullest human happiness is the common goal of both practical action and theoretical contemplation. Cf. Aspasius 13,24 ff., Arius Didymus ap. Stobaeus, Eel. 2.7.19 p. 137,4-7. Moraux [25] 648; R. W. Sharpies, 'The Peripatetic classification of goods', in: W. W Fortenbaugh (ed.), On Stoic and Peripatetic Ethics: the work of Arius Didymus. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1983 (Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities, 1) 139-159, at 140, 1 4 6 - 8 and 157 n.59. — At 32,9 ff. Aspasius notes four classes of goods, the honourable, the praiseworthy, δύναμεις/instruments, and the beneficial; cf. Arius ap. Stobaeus 134,20, Magna Moralia 1.2 1138bl9, Alexander, In Topica 242,4. Sharpies, op. cit., 1 4 3 - 4 , 151, 155 n.36.

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the τέλος (15,12-14)? Diogenes Laertius (5.30) reports it as Aristotle's view that happiness is a συμπλήρωμα from the three classes of goods, goods of the body, goods of the soul and external goods. This was the view of the second-century B. C. Peripatetic Critolaus, according to Arius Didymus; Arius himself rejects it, arguing that only the goods of the soul are parts of the end, and that virtue employs the other classes of goods. 6 And at 24,3 Aspasius himself asserts that external goods are needed, not as parts of happiness or as completing it, but as instruments for noble actions. 7 However, while the view of Arius and Aspasius may give a lesser role to external goods than did Critolaus, it still regards them as necessary in a way that the Stoic view does not. Becchi 8 is right to regard Aspasius' treatment of this issue as anti-Stoic. At 22,20 Aspasius picks up Aristode's reference at 1098a25 to the view of those who say that happiness is accompanied by pleasure, or not without pleasure. The former, he says, makes pleasure a part .of happiness. This seems a bit strained; it is fair enough to say that the formulation "not without pleasure" makes it clear that pleasure is not itself a part of the end, but it seems less clear that "accompanied by pleasure" or "with pleasure" really suggests that pleasure is a part of happiness. One may suspect that Aspasius is again influenced by the debate over whether things other than virtue are or are not parts of the end. His conclusion as far as pleasure is concerned is that it is intrinsic to virtuous action, and so does not need to be included explicidy in the definition of happiness (22,29).9

6

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8 9

Arius Didymus, in Stobaeus, Eel. 2.7.3b, p. 46,10-20 Wachsmuth; for Critolaus' followers the end (τέλος) is "what is completed from all the goods", το έκ πάντων των άγαθων συμπεπλη ρωμένον. Cf. also 13,30; Moraux [25] 278; Becchi [34] 5385, comparing (?) Alexander of Aphrodisias, de anima libri mantissa 166,19-21. See below, n.l9. [34] 5 3 8 5 - 6 . Following Aristotle, Aspasius contrasts the pleasures of ordinary people and those of the good. At 23,12 the text appears to say of the pleasures of the base that "they are pleasant to them alone and belong in themselves to no-one else". (As was pointed out at the Summer School, the most natural explanation of the shift from the dative αύτοις to the genitive άλλου is that ήδεΐαι, "pleasant", is to be supplied with the former but not the latter.) "Belong in themselves to no-one else" is odd, for one might have thought that the pleasures of the base do not belong to good people at all, and are not pleasant to them even per accidens. Perhaps we can take the sense as "they do not belong in themselves to anyone other than the base, as they would do if they were pleasant in themselves, like the noble pleasures, rather than just accidentally"; but this seems tortuous.

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5. External goods and happiness Antiochus of Ascalon had challenged the Stoic claim that virtue alone is good by arguing that other things make a difference, though a small one; 10 virtue is sufficient for happiness, but bodily goods complete the happiest life. This invited the reply that there cannot be a degree of happiness which is adequate while not being the greatest possible, for that would imply the absurdity that someone could be too happy. This argument indeed depends on the premiss "anything added to what is sufficient, is excessive" (Cicerj, De finibus 5.81); the premiss may seem questionable, but it has possible Aristotelian antecedents. After stating that happiness is self-sufficient (EN 1097bl4) Aristode asserts that happiness is "most choiceworthy of all things, not being counted in with other goods"; being reckoned with other goods it becomes more choiceworthy and involves an "excess" of goods if anything else is added to it (1097bl7 —19). The interpretation of this passage has been controversial; some have argued that the second option, "being reckoned with other goods", is counterfactual and intended as an evident absurdity,11 so that Aristode asserts the same principle that is employed in Cicero's argument, that happiness cannot in fact be added to. Others on the contrary have pointed to the fact that there is no indication in the Greek that the second part is counterfactual, and have argued that the passage supports the Antiochean view that there is a basic level of happi10

Cicero, De finibus 4.59, 5.71. With the argument in the former passage that anyone, presented with a choice between virtue plus health and virtue plus sickness, would choose the former, compare (?) Alexander of Aphrodisias, De anima libri mantissa 163,4 ff. The argument is actually invalid against the Stoics, because it presupposes that there could be a single situation in which there was a choice between virtue and virtue plus preferred indifférents. But virtue for the Stoics is defined in terms of one's attitude to preferred indifférents in given situations, i. e. making the right selection among them, though whether you actually get them does not matter. And therefore, in any given situation either it will be virtuous to select health and morally wrong to reject it, or else — if e. g. health can only be achieved by compromising your own virtue through stealing to pay the doctor's fees - it will be virtuous to reject it and wrong to select it. There is, it seems, no case in which virtue minus health and virtue plus health present themselves as alternatives in a single situation.

11

The literature on this passage, which has played a major part in the debate concerning "domninant" and "inclusive" ends in the Nicomachean Ethics, is immense and still growing. For the view in the text here cf. notably R. A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif, eds., L'Éthique à Nicomaque, vol.2.1, Louvain: Publications Universitaires and Paris: BéatriceNauwchaerts, 2 1970, 5 3 - 4 (and below, n.13); also Roger Crisp, W h i t e on Aristotelian Happiness', Oxford Studies in Andent Philosophy 10 (1992) 233 - 240, at 235 - 6, and Gavin Lawrence, 'Nonaggregatability, Inclusiveness, and the Theory of Focal Value: Nicomachean Ethics 1.7 1097b 16 —20', Phromsis 42 (1997) 3 2 - 7 6 , at 3 3 - 3 4 and n.2.

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ness which can be improved upon by the addition of further goods. The claim in the first option will then be not "it is the most choiceworthy, not being counted in with other goods" but as "it is the most choiceworthy even if it is not counted in with other goods". Taking just one good at a time, happiness is the good that is best, though a combination of goods may be superior to any single good, even happiness, on its own. 12 The passage was taken in this second way by Eustratius and following him by Albertos Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas. 13 Aspasius discusses the point at some length (16,32 — 17,17). He interprets Aristotle as rejecting the τόπος, or stock theme, that, of goods that are included in the same reckoning, the larger number is more choiceworthy than the smaller.14 Happiness, however, Aspasius argues, cannot be included in the same reckoning as other goods; "if we have happiness, we have everything" (17,7 — 8). And he concludes by saying At any rate (Aristotle) says that happiness is "most choiceworthy not being included in the same reckoning", that is to say not being of such a nature as to be included in the same reckoning as the other goods, as has been said. "But if it is included in the same reckoning," that is in the class of things that are reckoned up, "it would be more choiceworthy (when) accompanied by the least of goods": this does not apply to happiness, and for this reason it is "most choiceworthy of all things" (17,12—17).

White claims that Aspasius, while indeed treating the claim that happiness could be counted together with other goods and made more choiceworthy thereby as a counterfactual, intends only to rule out the counting of happiness together with the means to it, and not to imply that it could not have added to it other goods that would make the combination better though not, apparently, more choiceworthy.15 But the restriction of the 12

13

14 15

S. R. L. Clark, Aristotle's Man, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 1 5 3 - 4 ; Kenny [19] 204 and n.2; R. Heinaman, 'Eudaimonia and self-sufficiency in the Nicomachean Ethics', Phronesis 33 (1988) 3 1 - 5 3 , at 4 2 - 2 3 ; White [32] 119 ff. Gauthier and Jolif, loc. cit. in n . l l , call this interpretation (in Eustathius; see next note) "un contresens parfait"; conversely Clark, loc. cit, calls the claim that happiness cannot be increased (above, at n . l l ) "grotesque". Eustratius, in EN, CIAG 20, 64,3-65,17; Gauthier and Jolif, loc. cit. in n . l l (rejecting Eustratius' interpretation); Kenny, loc. cit. in n.12, and White [32] 136 ff., endorsing it. Eustradus at 65,6 asserts it as Aristotle's position that happiness plus a good head of hair is more choiceworthy than happiness on its own. Referring to Topics 3.2 117al6-21; White [32] 1 3 8 - 9 . White [32] 139-140 and n.54. Similarly at 1 4 0 - 1 of "Heliodorus", in EN, CIAG 19.2 13,1-9: "H(eliodorus) as well, then, characterises happiness both as a goal than which nothing is more choice-worthy and also as a goal to which further goods can be added".

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rejection of "counting together" to only some goods, and the contrast between being better and being more choiceworthy, do not seem to be present in Aspasius' text. 16 In claiming that external goods are necessary to happiness, but not parts of it (above, §2) Aspasius sides with Arius Didymus against Antiochus. For, as Julia Annas has shown, Arius, in arguing that virtue is not sufficient for happiness, is interpreting Aristotle's argument at 1100b28 ff. as claiming that a virtuous person who suffers misfortune will not be happy, though not wretched either. 17 Aspasius takes the same view (30,20; also 25,9 —10).18 Antiochus' position, on the other hand, that virtue is sufficient for a happy life though not for the happiest life, corresponds with a reading of 1101 a6 — 8 which sees Aristotle as distinguishing between "happiness" (ευδαιμονία) and "blessedness" (μακαριότης) and as allowing that a virtuous but unfortunate person can be happy even if not blessedI19 True, at 1100b26 Aristotle says that great good fortune makes one's life "more blessed"; and if "blessed" and "happy" are synonyms and happiness is by definition complete (above, section II), how can one become "more blessed"? 20 Aspasius at 30,14—18 sees the problem and answers it by stressing Aristotle's description here of the effects of good fortune as "extra adornment", συνέπικοσμεΐν. One is reminded of the Epicurean doctrine, in a very different context, that, since the limit of pleasure is the

16

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18 19

20

White, indeed, finds the former there by arguing (op. cit. 138 n.53) that in 17,7-8, quoted above in the text, "everything" means something less than "all the goods we could ever have", because if Aspasius had meant the latter he would have written not πάντα but άπαντα. But this is to make a great deal depend on a slight nuance. That Aspasius does not interpret the Aristode passage as implying that happiness can be made better by the addition of other goods is also the interpretation of Lawrence, above n . l l , 33 n.2. Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 415-418. Arius Didymus in Stobaeus, Ed. 2.7.18, p. 133,7-134,1 Wachsmuth. Annas (above, n.17) 420 (cf. 383), rejects this interpretation of Aristode; Clark (above n.12) 155, endorses it. - At 24,24 Aspasius refers to critics who regard the view that misfortune diminishes blessedness (which he equates with happiness) as "soft" (μαλακός); this charge was brought against Theophrastus by Cicero, De finibus 5.12 (mollis). Aspasius replies (25,7) that Aristode praises those who compensate for their disadvantages, but does not regard them as happy (25,11 — 12). It should be noted that one reason given (2,1) is that misfortunes such as being the child of a prostitute may severely restrict one's opportunities for virtuous action; cf. Moraux [25] 278 - 9 and above n.7. For degrees of happiness in Aspasius see also 25,7 — 8.

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removal of pain, eating one sort of food rather than another cannot increase pleasure but can only vary it. At 29,8 Aspasius claims that Aristotle shows that happiness is not dependent on chance (1100b7) from the very presence of "well" and "badly", εύ- and κακο-, in the words εύδαιμονία and κακοδαιμονία: the point seems to be that "well" and "badly" have to do with action rather than with the effects of fortune. But it hardly seems right to say that Aristotle uses etymology to prove his point; far from the claim that "well" and "badly" are not located in chance being proved by the presence of these terms in the words for happiness and unhappiness, as Aspasius implies, the significance of "well" and "badly" in those words itself needs to be interpreted in terms of a prior claim about what good and bad consist in. Aspasius seems to be in danger of making Aristotle argue in a circle. At 1100b21-22 Aristotle refers to the virtuous man as τετράγωνος άνευ ψόγου, "four-square, without blame", quoting the well-known poem of Simonides discussed in Plato's Protagoras.21 Oddly, Aspasius at 29,29 interprets this as implying that there are also people who are "four-square" in a blameworthy way, by being too compliant and accommodating themselves to the character of their associates even when these are wicked. I have not been able to find any parallels to τετράγωνος used in this sense, either in passages that recall Simonides' poem 2 2 or elsewhere; I do not know whether it ever was actually so used, or whether Aspasius has simply misunderstood Aristode's text. Aspasius' interpretation seems worthy of Socrates' own misrepresentations of Simonides in Plato's Protagoras, but is not actually found there. Aspasius continues by explaining the good sense of "four-square": square stones stay upright however they land (30,2). Perhaps the implication is that those who are "four-square" in the bad sense can adapt themselves equally well to different postures. The virtuous, Aspasius implies at 30,3, are "four-square" because they can bear both ill fortune and good fortune well, and both of these are difficult. The claim that good fortune may not be easy to bear well does not seem to be in the text of Aristotle at this 21 22

Simonides, fr.37 Page (Poetae Melici Graeci). Plato, Protagoras 339b, 344a; Aristotle, EN 1100b21 ; "Heliodorus", in EN 20,25; Eustratius, in EN 97,32; Julianus Imperator, Symposium 34.11; Damascius, Vita Isidori fr.332.4; Eustathius in Badem Δ 306 ff. (vol. 1 p. 753,11 van der Valk), Ω 3 3 6 - 3 3 8 (vol.4, p. 914,1 van der Valk); Suda s. v. τετράγωνος, no. 386 Adler. I am grateful to my colleague Walter Cockle for these references.

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point, though it could have been suggested to Aspasius by the claim at 1100b23 that minor cases of good and bad fortune alike do not have major effects.

4. When can a person safelj be called "happy"? At 28,7 Aspasius takes up, with Aristotle at llOOalO, the question whether it is only appropriate to call people happy once they are dead. 23 At 28,32 Aspasius makes more explicit than does Aristotle (1100a34) the logical problem of the past tense statement "he was happy" being true though the present-tense one "he is happy" was not; Aristode simply makes the point that it is strange if a person cannot be called happy at the time when he actually is. At 29,3 — 5 Aspasius argues that it is as absurd to refuse to call a person happy because his happiness may not last as it would be to refuse to say that a person is wealthy on the grounds that he might lose his money; but this parallel — not in Aristotle — is hardly appropriate, because it has not ever been claimed that being wealthy must be considered in the context of a complete life. The question whether the fortunes of one's descendants affect one's happiness has already been raised at 16,23 ff. There is clearly something wrong with the transmitted text, which should perhaps be emended to give the following: Someone might raise a question about this, asking what the limit is in what was said, e. g. whether (a person would be happy) if (la) just his parents fared well, or whether, if (lb) his parents' parents and all those back upwards and his children fall just short (= μόνον ούκ) 2 4 of faring well, his happiness will not be hindered. 25 Otherwise, (2) it will be hindered also if (καί εν) his children's children and in general his descendants do not fare well, and after his death he will often change between happiness and misfortune... 2 6 23 24

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Cf. also Aspasius 31,3 ff. This is, as David Sedley points out to me, the natural sense of μόνον ούκ, that they are "all but" fortunate, rather than that any falling short is as serious as any other - "a miss is as good as a mile". The latter would also be incompatible with ούκ έμποδισθήσεται following. The presence in (lb) but not in (la) of the concession that these people's falling just short of happiness does not remove one's own is awkward. So too is the need to take the μόνον in 16,24 as qualifying the subject γόνεις but that in 25 closely with ούκ. ίσως δ' άμφισβητήσειεν αν τις προς ταύτα ζητών τίς δρος των είρημένων, οίον εί γονείς μόνον εύπραγοϊεν, ή ει καί γονέων γονείς καί οί έπί τό ανω πάντες καί τέκνα μόνον ούκ εύπραγουσιν ούκ έμποδισθήσεται αύτοΰ ή ευδαιμονία· εί δέ μή, έμποδισθήσεται καί τέκνα τέκνων καί όλως οι εκγονοι