Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/342

Rh 2. That the fate which befel the literary remains of Aristotle and Theophrastus was prejudicial to individual writings, e. g. to the Metaphysics (see Glaser, die Arist. Metaph. p. 8, &c.): or 3. That through the discovery of Apellicon several writings, as e. g. the Problems, and other hypomnematic works, as the Poetics, which we now possess, may have come to light for the first time.

Meantime, after the first two successors of Aristotle, the Peripatetic school gradually declined. The heads of the school, who followed Theophrastus and Straton, viz. Lycon, Ariston of Ceos, Critolaus, &c., were of less importance, and seem to have occupied themselves more in carrying out some separate dogmas, and commenting on the works of Aristotle. Attention was especially directed to a popular, rhetorical system of Ethics. The school declined in splendour and influence; the more abstruse writings of Aristotle were neglected, because their form was not sufficiently pleasing, and the easy superficiality of the school was deterred by the difficulty of unfolding them. Thus the expression of the master himself respecting his writings might have been repeated, "that they had been published and yet not published." Extracts and anthologies arose, and satisfied the superficial wants of the school, while the works of Aristotle himself were thrust into the background.

In Rome, before the time of Cicero, we find only slender traces of an acquaintance with the writings and philosophical system of Aristotle. They only came there with the library of Apellicon, which Sulla had carried off from Greece. Here Tyrannion, a learned freedman, and still more the philosopher and literary antiquary, Andronicus of Rhodes, gained great credit by the pains they bestowed on them. Indeed, the labours of Andronicus form an epoch in the history of the Aristotelian writings. [ p. 176, b.]

With Andronicus of Rhodes the age of commentators begins, who no longer, like the first Peripatetics, treated of separate branches of philosophy in works of their own, following the principles of their master, but united in regular commentaries explanations of the meaning with critical observations on the text of individual passages. The popular and often prolix style of these commentaries probably arises from their having been originally lectures. Here must be mentioned, in the first century after Christ,, a scholar of Andronicus; , Nero's instructor: in the second century, (Eth. Nic. ii. and iv.); , the author of a work περὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν  ̓Αριστοτέλους BiBiwv;  of Aphrodisias in Caria. [See p. 112.] In the third and fourth centuries, the new-Platonists engaged zealously in the task of explaining Aristotle: among these we must mention, the author of the introduction to the Categories, and his pupil, ; ; and. In the fifth century, ; the Armenian. In the sixth century,, bishop of Tralles; , a pupil of Ammonius. was one of the teachers of philosophy who, in the reign of Justinian, emigrated to the emperor Coeroes of Persia. (Jourdain, Recherches critiques sur l'age et l'origine des Traduc tions lutines d'Arist., Paris, 1819.) His commentaries are of incalculable value for the history of the Ionian, Pythagorean, and Eleatic philosophy. Indeed, in every point of view, they are, together with those of , the most distinguished of all the works of Greek commentators which have been preserved to us. Almost contemporaneously with them the Roman consular, the last support of philosophical literature in Italy (A. D. 524), translated some of the writings of Aristotle.

The series of the more profound commentators ends with these writers; and after a long interval, the works of Aristotle became a subject of study and explanation among the Arabians and in the West, while among the Greeks scarcely any one else is to be mentioned than and  in the eighth and ninth centuries;   in the eleventh century; and   in the twelfth;  in the fourteenth; and  and  of Trapezus in the fifteenth. These borrow all that they have of any value from the older commentators. (Comp. Labbeus, Graecor. Aristotelis Commentator. Conspectus, Par. 1758.) The older editions of these commentators were published in the most complete form at Göttingen, in 30 vols. The best edition is by Chr. Aug. Brandis, ''Scholia in Arist. collegit'', &c., Berl. 1836, 4to., in two volumes, of which as yet only the first has appeared.

2. "History of the writings of Aristotle in the East and among the schoolmen of the West in the middle ages.''— While the study of the writings and philosophy of Aristotle was promoted in the West by Boethius, the emperor Justinian abolished the philosophical schools at Athens and in all the cities of his empire, where they had hitherto enjoyed the protection and support of the state. At that time also the two Peripatetics, Damascius and Simplicius, left Athens and emigrated to Persia, where they met with a kind reception at the court of Cosroes Nushirwan, and by means of translations diffused the knowledge of Greek literature. Soon afterwards the Arabians appeared as a conquering people, under the Ommaïades; and though at first they had no taste for art and science, they were soon led to appreciate them under the Abbassides, who ascended the throne of the khalifs in the middle of the eighth century. The khalifs Al-Mansur, Harun-al-Raschid, Mamun, Motasem (753-842), favoured the Graeco-Christian sect of the Nestorians, who were intimately acquainted with the Aristotelian philosophy; invited Greek scholars to the court at Bagdad, and caused the philosophical works of Greek literature, as well as the medical and astronomical ones, to be rendered into Arabic, chiefly from Greek originals, by translators appointed expressly for the task.

Through the last of the Ommaïades, Abd-alrahman, who escaped to Spain on the downfall of his house in the East, this taste for Greek literature and philosophy was introduced into the West also. Schools and academies, like those at Bagdad, arose in the Spanish cities subject to the Arabs, which continued in constant connexion with the East. Abd-alrahman III. (about A. D. 912) and Hakem established and supported schools and founded libraries; and Cordova became for Europe what