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Two Attributions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Jaap Mansfeld
Jaap Mansfeld
Affiliation:
University of Utrecht
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Extract

The short treatise On the Cosmos, which most scholars believe to be not by Aristotle, has confidently been attributed to Aristotle by G. Reale and A. P. Bos. I do not wish to enter into their arguments for this attribution, because I believe it can be proved to be untenable.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , December 1991 , pp. 541 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 I use the ed. and transl. by Furley, D. J., Pseudo-Aristotle De Mundo, Loeb Cl. Libr. Vol. 400 (London and Cambridge, MA, 1965 and later repr.), pp. 331ff.Google Scholar

2 Aristotele: Trattato sul cosmo per Alessandro, ed., Italian transl., introd. and comm. by Reale, G., Filosofi antichi 5 (Naples, 1974)Google Scholar. Bos's latest publication on the topic is a Dutch transl. with introd. and notes, Aristoteles: Over de kosmos (Meppel and Amsterdam, 1989)Google Scholar; see also Bos, A. P., ‘Greek Philosophical Theology and the De mundo’, in On and Off the Beaten Track. Studies in the History of Platonism (Nijmegen, 1986), pp. 1ff.Google Scholar

3 E.g. the Strangford copy of the shield in the British Museum and the shield of the Lenormant statuette in the National Museum at Athens. See Leipen, N., Athena Parthenos: A Reconstruction (Royal Ontario Museum, 1971)Google Scholar, figs. 23, 26–7 and fig. 83 for reconstructions of the Amazonomachy.

4 The issue is whether portraits are feasible in the fifth century b.c.e. Richter, G. M. A., The Portraits of the Greeks, i (London, 1965) pp. 103f., 150Google Scholar, accepts the portraits, or at least that of Pheidias. Philipp, H., Tektonon daidala (Berlin, 1968), p. 113Google Scholar, calls them in doubt. For further references and discussion see Mansfeld, J., ‘The Chronology of Anaxagoras' Athenian Period and the Date of his Trial’Google Scholar, Pt. II. ‘The Plot against Pericles and his Associates’, Mnem. 33 (1980), 29f.Google Scholar

5 See the references in Overbeck, J., Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste in der Antike (Leipzig, 1868; repr. Hildesheim, 1959), pp. 122fGoogle Scholar. The passage from the De mundo is Overbeck nr. 669, its translation by Apuleius nr. 671.

6 Some items are certainly of later provenance than others, so either the whole collection is late, or it was added to in the course of its transmission.

7 Flashar, H., Aristoteles, Mirabilia. Aristoteles: Werke in deutscher Übersetzung Bd. XVIII 22 (Berlin and Darmstadt, 1981), p. 147Google Scholar argues that De mundo must be the source because it would be the source of the preceding paragraph too, but this argument also holds the other way round.

8 Reale, op. cit. (n. 2), p. 265 nn. 76 and 77. The parallel in the De mirab. ausc. 155 which he cites with due caution fails to prove that Aristotle wrote the De mundo for Alexander.

9 Whom we may call a Platonist or even an early Middle Platonist, see e.g. Dillon, J. M., The Middle Platonists (London, 1977), pp. 115ff.Google Scholar

10 Tarrant, H., ‘The Date of Anon. in Theaetetum’, CQ 33 (1983), 161ff., esp. pp. 180ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; less confidently Tarrant, H., Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 66ff.Google Scholar

11 Mazzarelli, C., ‘Raccolta e interpretazione delle testimonianze e dei frammenti del medioplatonico Eudoro di Alessandria’, Pt. I, Riv. Filos. Neosc. 11 (1985), pp. 197ff.Google Scholar – Pt. II, ibid., pp. 535ff. On Eudorus and other Platonists on the categories see Dörrie, H., ‘Der Platoniker Eudoros von Alexandreia’, in Id., Platonica minora (Munich, 1976), pp. 300fGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Dillon, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 134f.

12 But note that elsewhere, in less full listings of the categories, he rather often has ποιν before ποιν; see the table in Oehler, K., Aristoteles, Kategorien. Aristoteles: Werke in deutscher Übersetzung, Bd. I 12 (Berlin and Darmstadt, 1986), pp. 352ffGoogle Scholar. Eudorus may have appealed to such passages.

13 See Szlezák, T. A., Pseudo-Archytas: Über die Kategorien, Peripatoi 4 (Berlin and New York, 1973)Google Scholar, ad loc. Simpl., In Cat. 206.8ff. points out the parallel between Eudorus and (ps.-)Archytas.

14 Cf. Theiler, W., ‘Philo von Alexandria und der Beginn des kaiserzeitlichen Platonismus’, in Parusia. Festschr. J. Hirschberger (Frankfurt a. M., 1965), pp. 204fGoogle Scholar., repr. in Id., Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur (Berlin, 1970), pp. 489f.Google Scholar

15 See Moraux, P., Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, II: Der Aristotelismus im I. und II. Jh. n. Chr., Peripatoi 6 (Berlin and New York, 1983), pp. 485ff.Google Scholar