Aristotle's Lost Homeric Problems


Book Description

This volume takes as its focus an oft-neglected work of ancient philosophy: Aristotle's lost Homeric Problems. The evidence for this lost work consists mostly of 'fragments' surviving in the Homeric scholia - comments in the margins of the medieval manuscripts of the Homeric epics, mostly coming from lost commentaries on these epics - though the series of studies presented here puts forward a persuasive case that other sources have been overlooked. These studies focus on various aspects of the Homeric Problems and are grouped into three parts. The first deals with preliminary issues: the relationship of this lost work to the Homeric scholarship that came before it, and to Aristotle's comments on Homeric scholarship in his extant Poetics; the evidence concerning the possible titles of this work; and a neglected early edition of the fragments. Following on from this, the second part attempts to expand our knowledge of the Homeric Problems through an examination in context of quotations from (or allusions to) Homer in Aristotle's extant works, and specifically in the History of Animals, the Rhetoric, and Poetics 21, while Part Three consists of four studies on select (and in most cases disregarded) fragments. Collectively the chapters support the conclusion that Aristotle in the Homeric Problems aimed to defend Homer against his critics, but not slavishly and without employing allegorical interpretation; within the context of a renewed interest in Aristotle's lost works, the volume as a whole brings much needed illumination to a virtually unknown ancient work involving not one but two giants of the classical world.




Aristotle's Lost Homeric Problems


Book Description

This volume takes as its focus an oft-neglected work of ancient philosophy: Aristotle's lost Homeric Problems. The evidence for this lost work consists mostly of 'fragments' surviving in the Homeric scholia - comments in the margins of the medieval manuscripts of the Homeric epics, mostly coming from lost commentaries on these epics - though the series of studies presented here puts forward a persuasive case that other sources have been overlooked. These studies focus on various aspects of the Homeric Problems and are grouped into three parts. The first deals with preliminary issues: the relationship of this lost work to the Homeric scholarship that came before it, and to Aristotle's comments on Homeric scholarship in his extant Poetics; the evidence concerning the possible titles of this work; and a neglected early edition of the fragments. Following on from this, the second part attempts to expand our knowledge of the Homeric Problems through an examination in context of quotations from (or allusions to) Homer in Aristotle's extant works, and specifically in the History of Animals, the Rhetoric, and Poetics 21, while Part Three consists of four studies on select (and in most cases disregarded) fragments. Collectively the chapters support the conclusion that Aristotle in the Homeric Problems aimed to defend Homer against his critics, but not slavishly and without employing allegorical interpretation; within the context of a renewed interest in Aristotle's lost works, the volume as a whole brings much needed illumination to a virtually unknown ancient work involving not one but two giants of the classical world.




Revisiting Aristotle’s Fragments


Book Description

The philosophical and philological study of Aristotle fragments and lost works has fallen somewhat into the background since the 1960’s. This is regrettable considering the different and innovative directions the study of Aristotle has taken in the last decades. This collection of new peer-reviewed essays applies the latest developments and trends of analysis, criticism, and methodology to the study of Aristotle’s fragments. The individual essays use the fragments as tools of interpretation, shed new light on different areas of Aristotle philosophy, and lay bridges between Aristotle’s lost and extant works. The first part shows how Aristotle frames parts of his own understanding of Philosophy in his published, 'popular' work. The second part deals with issues of philosophical interpretation in Aristotle’s extant works which can be illuminated by fragments of his lost works. The philosophical issues treated in this section range from Theology to Natural Science, Psychology, Politics, and Poetics. As a whole, the book articulates a new approach to Aristotle’s lost works, by providing a reassessment and new methodological explorations of the fragments.




Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia


Book Description

This is the first full-length volume in English that focuses on the historiographical section of the Mirabilia or De mirabilibus auscultationibus (On Marvelous Things Heard), attributed to Aristotle but not in fact by him. The central section of the Mirabilia, namely §§ 78–151, for the most part deals with historiographical material, with many of its entries having some relationship to ancient Greek historians of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. The chapters in this volume discuss various aspects of this portion of the text, including textual issues involving toponyms; possible structural principles behind the organization of this section; the passages on Theopompus and Timaeus; mythography; the philosopher Heracleides of Pontos; Homeric exegesis; and the interrelationship between pseudo-Plutarch’s On Rivers, a section of the historian Stobaeus’ Geography, and the Mirabilia. Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of this text, and of Greek philosophy, historiography, and literature more broadly.




Essays on Aristotle's Poetics


Book Description

This collection of essays locates Aristotle's analysis of tragedy in its larger philosophical context. Philosophers, classicists, and literary critics connect the Poetics to Taristoltle's psychology and history, ethics an politics. There are discussions of plot and the unity of action, character and fictional necessity, catharsis, pity and fear, and aesthetic pleasure.




Coping with Versnel: A Roundtable on Religion and Magic


Book Description

Henk Versnel’s work on ancient religion has been seminal. For his 80th birthday, a group of scholars assembled to celebrate and analyze his oeuvre. What have been his most important insights? What will he bequeath to the 21st century? Specialists hold up to the light the main strands of Versnel’s scholarship, and he reacts to their praise and critique. An introduction that seeks to contextualize this oeuvre, and a bibliography of Versnel’s publications, round out the picture of a scholar who has put his stamp on the study of ancient religions and magical practices, and who has promoted the field in many ways, especially as the driving force behind Brill’s flagship series Religion in the Graeco-Roman World, of which this fittingly is the 200th volume.




Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism


Book Description

This volume is a detailed study of the concept of the nutritive capacity of the soul and its actual manifestation in living bodies (plants, animals, humans) in Aristotle and Aristotelianism. Aristotle’s innovative analysis of the nutritive faculty has laid the intellectual foundation for the increasing appreciation of nutrition as a prerequisite for the maintenance of life and health that can be observed in the history of Greek thought. According to Aristotle, apart from nutrition, the nutritive part of the soul is also responsible for or interacts with many other bodily functions or mechanisms, such as digestion, growth, reproduction, sleep, and the innate heat. After Aristotle, these concepts were used and further developed by a great number of Peripatetic philosophers, commentators on Aristotle and Arabic thinkers until early modern times. This volume is the first of its kind to provide an in-depth survey of the development of this rather philosophical concept from Aristotle to early modern thinkers. It is of key interest to scholars working on classical, medieval and early modern psycho-physiological accounts of living things, historians and philosophers of science, biologists with interests in the history of science, and, generally, students of the history of philosophy and science.




The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science


Book Description

This is the first volume devoted to the sections of the Aristotelian Mirabilia on natural science, filling a significant gap in the history of the Aristotelian study of nature and especially of animals. The chapters in this volume explore the Mirabilia, or De mirabilibus auscultationibus (On Marvelous Things Heard), and its engagement with the natural sciences. The first two chapters deliver an introduction to this work: one a discussion of the history of the text; the other a discussion of Aristotelian epistemology and methodology, and the role of the Mirabilia in that context. This is followed by eight chapters that, together, are effectively a commentary on those sections of the Mirabilia with close connections to Aristotle’s Historia animalium and to a number of Theophrastus’ scientific treatises. Finally, the volume ends with two chapters on thematic topics connected to natural science running throughout the work, namely color and disease. The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science should prove invaluable to scholars and students interested in the ancient Greek study of nature, ancient philosophy, and Aristotelian science in particular.




Antisthenes of Athens


Book Description

Antisthenes was famous in antiquity for his studies of Homer's poems, his affiliation with Gorgias and the sophistic movement, his pure Attic writing style, and his inspiration of Diogenes of Sinope, who founded the Cynic philosophical movement. Antisthenes stands at two of the greatest turning points in ancient intellectual history: from pre-Socraticism to Socraticism, and from classical Athens to the Hellenistic period. Antisthenes' works form the path to a better understanding of the intellectual culture of Athens that shaped Plato and laid the foundations for Hellenistic philosophy and literature. Antisthenes of Athens keeps in mind the goals and polemics framing each philosophical and textual discussion. The volume considers the ancient traditions about Antisthenes' rejection of Plato's "Theory of Forms," his assertion of the paradox, "It is impossible to gainsay," and his denial that definition of essence is possible, as well as the plausible intentions of Antisthenes. In cases where these questions are not easily settled, and where modern interpretation has varied, Susan H. Prince identifies the roots of the disagreements. The goal and meaning of Antisthenes' other famous ancient paradox, "I would rather go mad than have pleasure," is illuminated by comparison with other evidence showing that pleasure does have a place in his ideology. Evidence for his relationship to Diogenes of Sinope, and for his receptions by the Cynics, Stoics, Skeptics, Christians, and Neo-Pagans is examined for both its historical value and its distorting tendencies.




More than Homer Knew – Studies on Homer and His Ancient Commentators


Book Description

This book contains a collection of twenty-one essays in honour of Professor Franco Montanari by eminent specialists on Homer, ancient Homeric scholarship, and the reception of the Homeric Epics in both ancient and modern times. It covers a wide range of important subjects, including neoanalysis and oral poetry, the Doloneia, the Homeric scholia, the theoretical premises of Aristarchean scholarship, and Homer in Sappho, Pindar, Comedy, Plato, and Hellenistic Poetry. As a whole, the contributions demonstrate the vitality of modern scholarship on Homeric poetry.