It has become increasingly clear that debates among Peripatetics in our period are significant not only as the background against which later Platonists were subsequently to read Aristotle's works, but also in highlighting issues in the interpretation of Aristotle for contemporary scholarship. Aristotle's immediate colleagues and successors in the Lyceum in the fourth and third centuries BCE were 'Peripatetics' in the sense that they contributed to and continued Aristotle's approach to inquiry, without accepting all of Aristotle's views or devoting attention equally to all the areas with which he himself was concerned. The new interest in Aristotle's esoteric works from Andronicus onwards was expressed in the form of debates about the details of their interpretation. It is only very recently in the history of Aristotelian studies that attention has focused on the zoological works and the type of reading adopted by Alexander has been challenged.

The acting profession came to depend and to thrive on a circuit of musical and dramatic festivals among which Athens was only one of several centres. This chapter looks at the importance of the theatrical traditions of South Italy and Sicily. Andronicus is a major figure in the history of literature as the first to tackle the problems of literary translation. His approach was crucial for the subsequent development of Latin literature. All kinds of Roman drama were far more musical and operatic than Greek. Grammarians drew a distinction between tragoediae, modelled on Greek tragedy, and fabulae praetextae 'Hem-' or 'Robe-plays ', on Roman themes, ancient and modern. This is parallel to the distinction of comoediae and fabulae togatae. Accius, the polemical scholar, the Pergamene rhetorician, the authority on orthography, the head of the college of poets, the historian of the Greek and Roman theatre, and the Hellenistic tragedian evinces a new self-confidence and artistic awareness.