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18 Ἕρμιππος ὁ Καλλιμάχειος ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ περὶ Ἀριστοτέλους, is cited by Athenćus, xv. 696; also v. 213.

Among the Tables prepared by Kallimachus, one was Παντοδάπων Συγγραμμάτων Πίναξ; and in it were included the Πλακουντοποιϊκὰ συγγράμματα Αἰγιμίου, καὶ Ἡγησίππου, καὶ Μητροβίου, ἔτι δὲ Φαίτου (Athenćus, xiv. 644). If Kallimachus carried down his catalogue of the contents of the library to works so unimportant as these, we may surely believe that he would not omit to catalogue such works of Aristotle as were in it. He appears to have made a list of the works of Demokritus (i.e. such as were in the library) with a glossary. See Brandis (Aristoteles, Berlin, 1853, p. 74); also Suidas v. Καλλίμαχος, Diogen. Laert. viii. 86; Dionys. Hal. De Dinarcho, pp. 630, 652 R.; Athenćus, viii. 336, xv. 669.

19 Heitz, Die Verl. Schr. des Aristot. pp. 45–48.

Patricius, in his Discuss. Peripatetic. (t. i. pp. 13–18), had previously considered Hermippus as having prepared a Catalogue of the works of Aristotle, partly on the authority of the Scholion annexed to the conclusion of the Metaphysica of Theophrastus. Hermippus recited the testament of Aristotle (Athenćus, xiii. 589).

Both Valentine Rose and Bernays regard Andronikus as author of the Catalogue of Aristotle in Diogenes. But I think that very sufficient reasons to refute this supposition have been shown by Heitz, pp. 49–52.

The opinion given by Christ, respecting the Catalogue which we find in Diogenes Laertius illum catalogum non Alexandrinć bibliothecć, sed exemplarium Aristotelis ab Apelliconte Athenas translatorum fuisse equidem censeo is in substance the same as that of Rose and Bernays. I do not concur in it. (Christ, Studia in Aristotelis Libros Metaphysicos, Berlin, 1853, p. 105).

It seems thus probable that the Catalogue given by Diogenes derives its origin from Hermippus or Kallimachus, enumerating the titles of such works of Aristotle as were contained in the Alexandrine library. But the aggregate of works composing our Aristotle is noway in harmony with that Catalogue. It proceeds from a source independent and totally different, viz., the edition and classification first published by the Rhodian Andronikus, in the generation between the death of Cicero and the Christian era. To explain the existence of these two distinct and independent sources and channels, we must have recourse to the remarkable narrative (already noticed in my chapter on the Platonic Canon), delivered mainly by Strabo and less fully by Plutarch, respecting the fate of the Aristotelian library after Aristotles death.

At the decease of Aristotle, his library and MSS. came to Theophrastus, who continued chief of the Peripatetic school at Athens for thirty-five years, until his death in 287 B.C. Both Aristotle and Theophrastus not only composed many works of their own, but also laid out much money in purchasing or copying the works of others;20 especially we are told that Aristotle, after the death of Speusippus, expended three talents in purchasing his books. The entire library of Theophrastus, thus enriched from two sources, was bequeathed by his testament to a philosophical friend and pupil, Neleus;21 who left Athens, and carried away the library with him to his residence at the town of Skępsis, in the Asiatic region known as Ćolis, near Troad. At Skępsis the library remained for the greater part of two centuries, in possession of the descendants of Neleus, men of no accomplishments and no taste for philosophy. It was about thirty or forty years after the death of Theophrastus that the kings of Pergamus began to occupy themselves in collecting their royal library, which presently reached a magnitude second only to that of Alexandria. Now Skępsis was under their dominion, and it would seem that the kings seized the books belonging to their subjects for the use of the royal library; for we are told that the heirs of Neleus were forced to conceal their literary treasures in a cellar, subject to great injury, partly from damp, partly from worms. In this ruinous hiding-place the manuscripts remained for nearly a century and a half blattarum ac tinearum epulć, until the Attalid dynasty at Pergamus became extinct. The last of these kings, Attalus, died in 133 B.C., bequeathing his kingdom to the Romans. All fear of requisitions for the royal library being thus at end, the manuscripts were in course of time withdrawn by their proprietors from concealment, and sold for a large sum to Apellikon, a native of Teos, a very rich resident at Athens, and attached to the Peripatetic sect. Probably this wealthy Peripatetic already possessed a library of his own, with some Aristotelian works; but the new acquisitions from Skępsis, though not his whole stock, formed the most rare and precious ingredients in it. Here, then, the manuscripts and library both of Aristotle and Theophrastus became, for the first time since 287 B.C., open to the inspection of the Athenian Peripatetics of the time (about 100 B.C.), as well as of other learned men. Among the stock were contained many compositions which the Scholarchs, successors of Theophrastus at Athens, had neither possessed nor known.22 But the manuscripts were found imperfect, seriously damaged, and in a state of disorder. Apellikon did his best to remedy that mischief, by causing new copies to be taken, correcting what had become worm-eaten, and supplying what was defective or illegible. He appears to have been an erudite man, and had published a biography of Aristotle, refuting various calumnies advanced by other biographers; but being (in the words of Strabo) a lover of books rather than a philosopher, he performed the work of correction so unskilfully, that the copies which he published were found full of errors.23 In the year 86 B.C., Sylla besieged Athens, and captured it by storm; not long after which he took to himself as a perquisite the library of Apellikon, and transported it to Rome.24 It was there preserved under custody of a librarian, and various literary Greeks resident at Rome obtained access to it, especially Tyrannion, the friend of Cicero and a warm admirer of Aristotle, who took peculiar pains to gain the favour of the librarian.25 It was there also that the Rhodian Andronikus obtained access to the Aristotelian works.26 He classified them to a great degree anew, putting in juxtaposition the treatises most analogous in subject;27 moreover, he corrected the text, and published a new edition of the manuscripts, with a tabulated list. This was all the more necessary, because some booksellers at Rome, aiming only at sale and profit, had employed bad writers, and circulated inaccurate copies, not collated with the originals.28 These originals, however, were so damaged, and the restitutions made by Apellikon were so injudicious, that the more careful critics who now studied them were often driven to proceed on mere probable evidence.

20 Diog. L. iv. 5; Aulus Gellius, N. A. iii. 17.

21 From a passage of Lucian (De Parasito, c. xxxv.) we learn that Aristoxenus spoke of himself as friend and guest of Neleus: καὶ τίς περὶ τούτου λέγει; Πολλοὶ μὲν καὶ ἄλλοι, Ἀριστόξενος δὲ ὁ μουσικός, πολλοῦ λόγου ἄξιος καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ παράσιτος Νήλεως ἦν.

22 Strabo, xiii. 608, 609; Athenćus, v. 214. The narrative of Strabo has been often misunderstood and impugned, as if he had asserted that none of the main works of Aristotle had ever been published until they were thus exhumed by Apellikon. This is the supposed allegation which Stahr, Zeller, and others have taken so much pains to refute. But in reality Strabo says no such thing. His words affirm or imply the direct contrary, viz., that many works of Aristotle, not merely the exoteric works but others besides, had been published earlier than the purchase made by Apellikon. What Strabo says is, that few of these works were in possession of the Peripatetic Scholarchs at Athens before the time of that purchase; and he explains thus how it was that these Scholarchs, during the century intervening, had paid little attention to the profound and abstruse speculations of Aristotle; how it was that they had confined themselves to dialectic and rhetorical debate on special problems. I see no ground for calling in question the fact affirmed by Strabo the poverty of the Peripatetic school-library at Athens; though he may perhaps have assigned a greater importance to that fact than it deserves, as a means of explaining the intellectual working of the Peripatetic Scholarchs from Lykon to Kritolaus. The philosophical impulse of that intervening century seems to have turned chiefly towards ethics and the Summum Bonum, with the conflicting theories of Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epikureans thereupon.

23 Strabo, xiii. 609. ἦν δὲ ὁ Ἀπελλικῶν φιλόβιβλος μᾶλλον ἢ φιλόσοφος, διὸ καὶ ζητῶν ἐπανόοθωσιν τῶν διαβρωμάτων, εἰς ἀντίγραφα καινὰ μετήνεγκε τὴν γραφὴν ἀναπληρῶν οὐκ εὖ, καὶ ἐξέδωκεν ἁμαρτάδων πλήρη τὰ βίβλια.

24 Strabo, xiii. 609; Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi.

25 Strabo, xiii. 609. Τυραννίων, ὁ γραμματικὸς διεχειρίσατο φιλαριστοτέλης ὤν, θεραπεύσας τὸν ἐπὶ τῆς βιβλοθήκης. Tyrannion had been the preceptor of Strabo (xii. 548); and Boęthus, who studied Aristotle along with Strabo, was a disciple of the Rhodian Andronikus. See Ammonius ad Categorias, f. 8; and Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique dAristote, Introduction, p. 10.

26 Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi.

27 The testimony of Porphyry in respect to Andronikus, and to the real service performed by Andronikus, is highly valuable. Porphyry was the devoted disciple and friend, as well as the literary executor, of Plotinus; whose writings were left in an incorrect and disorderly condition. Porphyry undertook to put them in order and publish them; and he tells us that, in fulfilling this promise, he followed the example of what Andronikus had done for the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus. Ἐπεὶ δὲ αὐτὸς (Plotinus) τὴν διόρθωσιν καὶ τὴν διάταξιν τῶν βιβλίων ποιεῖσθαι ἡμῖν ἐπέτρεψεν, ἐγὼ δὲ ἐκείνῳ ζῶντι ὑπεσχόμην καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἑταίροις ἐπηγγειλάμην ποιῆσαι τοῦτο, πρῶτον μὲν τὰ βίβλια οὐ κατὰ χρόνους ἐᾶσαι φύρδην ἐκδεδομένα ἐδικαίωσα, μιμησάμενος δ Ἀπολλόδωρον τὸν Ἀθηναῖον καὶ Ἀνδρόνικον τὸν Περιπατητικόν, ὧν ὁ μὲν Ἐπίχαρμον τὸν κωμῳδιογράφον εἰς δέκα τόμους φέρων συνήγαγεν, ὁ δὲ τὰ Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ Θεοφράστου εἰς πραγματείας διεῖλε, τὰς οἰκείας ὑποθέσεις εἰς ταὐτὸν συναγαγών, οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ πεντήκοντα τέσσαραὔντα ἔχων τὰ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίβλια διεῖλον μὲν εἰς ἓξ ἐννεάδας, τῇ τελειότητι τοῦ ἓξ ἀριθμοῦ καὶ ταῖς ἐννεάσιν ἀσμένως ἐπιτυχών, ἑκάστῃ δὲ ἐννεάδι τὰ οἰκεῖα φέρων συνεφόρησα, δοὺς καὶ τάξιν πρώτην τοῖς ἐλαφροτέροις προβλήμασιν. (Porphyry, Vita Plotini, p. 117, Didot.) Porphyry here distinctly affirms that Andronikus rendered this valuable service not merely to the works of Aristotle, but also to those of Theophrastus. This is important, as connecting him with the library conveyed by Sylla to Rome; which library we know to have contained the manuscripts of both these philosophers. And in the Scholion appended to the Metaphysica of Theophrastus (p. 323, Brandis) we are told that Andronikus and Hermippus had made a catalogue of the works of Theophrastus, in which the Metaphysics was not included.

28 Strabo, xiii. 609: βιβλιοπῶλαί τινες γραφεῦσι φαύλοις χρώμενοι καὶ οὐκ ἀντιβάλλοντες, &c.

This interesting narrative delivered by Strabo, the junior contemporary of Andronikus, and probably derived by him either from Tyrannion his preceptor or from the Sidonian Boęthus29 and other philosophical companions jointly, with whom he had prosecuted the study of Aristotle appears fully worthy of trust. The proceedings both of Apellikon and of Sylla prove, what indeed we might have presumed without proof, that the recovery of these long-lost original manuscripts of Aristotle and Theophrastus excited great sensation in the philosophical world of Athens and of Rome. With such newly-acquired materials, a new epoch began for the study of these authors. The more abstruse philosophical works of Aristotle now came into the foreground under the auspices of a new Scholarch; whereas Aristotle had hitherto been chiefly known by his more popular and readable compositions. Of these last, probably, copies may have been acquired to a certain extent by the previous Peripatetic Scholarchs or School at Athens; but the School had been irreparably impoverished, so far as regarded the deeper speculations of philosophy, by the loss of those original manuscripts which had been transported from Athens to Skępsis. What Aristotelian Scholarchs, prior to Andronikus, chiefly possessed and studied, of the productions of their illustrious founder, were chiefly the exoteric or extra-philosophical and comparatively popular: such as the dialogues; the legendary and historical collections; the facts respecting constitutional history of various Hellenic cities; the variety of miscellaneous problems respecting Homer and a number of diverse matters; the treatises on animals and on anatomy, &c.30 In the Alexandrine library (as we see by the Catalogue of Diogenes) there existed all these and several philosophical works also; but that library was not easily available for the use of the Scholarchs at Athens, who worked upon their own stock, confining themselves mainly to smooth and elegant discourses on particular questions, and especially to discussions, with the Platonists, Stoics, and Epikureans, on the principia of Ethics, without any attempt either to follow up or to elucidate the more profound speculations (logical, physical, metaphysical, cosmical) of Aristotle himself. A material change took place when the library of Apellikon came to be laid open and studied, not merely by lecturers in the professorial chair at Athens, but also by critics like Tyrannion and Andronikus at Rome. These critics found therein the most profound and difficult philosophical works of Aristotle in the handwriting of the philosopher himself; some probably, of which copies may have already existed in the Alexandrine library, but some also as yet unpublished. The purpose of Andronikus, who is described as Peripatetic Scholarch, eleventh in succession from Aristotle, was not simply to make a Catalogue (as Hermippus had made at Alexandria), but to render a much greater service, which no critic could render without having access to original MSS., namely, to obtain a correct text of the books actually before him, to arrange these books in proper order, and then to publish and explain them,31 but to take no account of other Aristotelian works in the Alexandrine library or elsewhere. The Aristotelian philosophy thus passed into a new phase. Our editions of Aristotle may be considered as taking their date from this critical effort of Andronikus, with or without subsequent modifications by others, as the case may be.

29 Strabo, xvi. 757. Stahr, in his minor work, Aristoteles unter den Römern, p. 32, considers that this circumstance lessens the credibility of Strabo. I think the contrary. No one was so likely to have studied the previous history of the MSS. as the editors of a new edition.

30 Strabo, xiii. 609: συνέβη δὲ τοῖς ἐκ τῶν περιπάτων τοῖς μὲν πάλαι τοῖς μετὰ Θεόφραστον, ὅλως οὐκ ἔχουσι τὰ βίβλια πλὴν ὀλίγων καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἐξωτερικῶν, μηδὲν ἔχειν φιλοσοφεῖν πραγματικῶς, ἀλλὰ θέσεις ληκυθίζεινˇ τοῖς δ ὕστερον, ἀφ οὖ τὰ βίβλια ταῦτα προῆλθεν, ἄμεινον μὲν ἐκείνων φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ ἀριστοτελίζειν, ἀναγκάζεσθαι μέντοι τὰ πολλὰ εἰκότα λέγειν διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν. Also Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi.

The passage of Strabo is so perspicuous and detailed, that it has all the air of having been derived from the best critics who frequented the library at Rome, where Strabo was when he wrote (καὶ ἔνθαδε καὶ ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ, xiii. 609). The Peripatetic Andronikus, whom he names among the celebrated Rhodians (xiv. 655), may have been among his informants. His statements about the bad state of the manuscripts; the unskilful emendations of Apellikon; the contrast between the vein of Peripatetic study, as it had stood before the revelation of the manuscripts, and as it came to stand afterwards; the uncertain evidences upon which careful students, even with the manuscripts before them, were compelled to proceed; the tone of depreciation in which he speaks of the carelessness of booksellers who sought only for profit, all these points of information appear to me to indicate that Strabos informants were acute and diligent critics, familiar with the library, and anxious both for the real understanding of these documents, and for philosophy as an end.

31 Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi. Spengel (Ueber die Reihenfolge der naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften des Aristoteles, München. philol. Abhandl. 1848,) remarks justly that the critical arrangement of Aristotles writings, for collective publication, begins from the library of Apellikon at Rome, not from that of Alexandria. See p. 146: Mehr als zweihundert Jahre lang fehlt uns alle nähere Kunde über die peripatetische Schule. Erst mit der viel besprochenen Auffindung der Bibliothek des Aristoteles in Athen und deren Wegführung nach Rom durch Sulla wird ein regeres Studium für die Schriften des Philosophen bemerkbar und zwar jetzt eigentlich der Schriften, weniger der Lehre und Philosophie im Allgemeinen, welche früher allein beachtet worden ist. Wir möchten sagen, von jetzt an beginne das philologische Studium mit den Werken des Aristoteles, die kritische und exegetische Behandlung dieser durch Tyrannion, Andronikus, Adrastus und viele andre nachlfolgende, &c.

The explanation just given, coinciding on many points with Brandis and Heitz, affords the most probable elucidation of that obscurity which arises about the Aristotelian Canon, when we compare our Aristotle with the Catalogue of Diogenes the partial likeness, but still greater discrepancy, between the two. It is certain that neither Cicero32 nor the great Alexandrine literati, anterior to and contemporary with him, knew Aristotle from most of the works which we now possess. They knew him chiefly from the dialogues, the matters of history and legend, some zoological books, and the problems; the dialogues, and the historical collections respecting the constitutions of Hellenic cities,33 being more popular and better known than any other works. While the Republic of Plato is familiar to them, they exhibit no knowledge of our Aristotelian Politica, in which treatise the criticism upon the Platonic Republic is among the most interesting parts. When we look through the contents of our editions of Aristotle the style and manner of handling is indeed pretty much the same throughout, but the subjects will appear extremely diverse and multifarious; and the encyclopedical character of the author, as to science and its applications, will strike us forcibly. The entire and real Aristotle, however, was not only more encyclopedical as to subjects handled, but also more variable as to style and manner of handling; passing from the smooth, sweet, and flowing style which Cicero extols as characterizing the Aristotelian dialogues to the elliptical brevity and obscurity which we now find so puzzling in the De Animâ and the Metaphysica.34

32 This is certain, from the remarks addressed by Cicero to Trebatius at the beginning of the Ciceronian Topica, that in his time Aristotle was little known and little studied at Rome, even by philosophical students. Trebatius knew nothing of the Topica, until he saw the work by chance in Ciceros library, and asked information about the contents. The reply of Cicero illustrates the little notice taken of Aristotle by Roman readers. Cum autem ego te, non tam vitandi laboris mei causâ, quam quia tua id interesse arbitrarer, vel ut eos per te ipse legeres, vel ut totam rationem a doctissimo quodam rhetore acciperes, hortatus essem, utrumque ut ex te audiebam, es expertus. Sed a libris te obscuritas rejecit: rhetor autem ille magnus, ut opinor, Aristotelia se ignorare respondit. Quod quidem minime sum admiratus, eum philosophum rhetori non esse cognitum, qui ab ipsis philosophis, prćter admodum paucos, ignoraretur. Compare also Cicero, Academ. Post. i. 3, 10.

33 Even the philosophical commentators on Aristotle, such as David the Armenian, seem to have known the lost work of Aristotle called Πολιτεῖαι (the history of the constitutions of 250 Hellenic cities), better than the theoretical work which we possess, called the Politica; though they doubtless knew both. (See Scholia ad Categorias, Brandis, p. 16, b. 20; p. 24, a. 25; p. 25, b. 5.) We read in Schneiders Preface to the Aristotelian Politica (p. x.): Altum et mirabile silentium est apud antiquitatem Grćcam et Romanam de novâ Aristotelis Republicâ, cum omnes ferč scriptores Grćci et Romani, mentione Reipublicć Platonicć pleni, vel laudibus vel vituperiis ejus abundant. There is no clear reference to the Aristotelian Politica earlier than Alexander of Aphrodisias. Both Hildenbrand (Geschichte der Staats- und Rechts-Philosophen, t. i. pp. 358–361), and Oncken (Staatslehre des Aristot. pp. 65–66), think that the Aristotelian Politica was not published until after the purchase of the library by Apellikon.

34 What Strabo asserts about the Peripatetic Scholarchs succeeding Theophrastus (viz., μηδὲν ἔχειν φιλοσοφεῖν πραγματικῶς, ἀλλὰ θέσεις ληκυθίζειν: that they could not handle philosophy in a businesslike way with those high generalities and that subtle analysis which was supposed to belong to philosophy but gave smooth and ornate discourses on set problems or theses) is fully borne out by what we read in Cicero about these same Peripatetics. The Stoics (immediate successors and rivals) accused their Peripatetic contemporaries even of being ignorant of Dialectic: which their founder, Aristotle, in his works that we now possess, had been the first to raise into something like a science. Cicero says (De Finibus, iii. 12, 41): His igitur ita positis (inquit Cato) sequitur magna contentio: quam tractatam ŕ Peripateticis mollius (est enim eorum consuetudo dicendi non satis acuta, propter ignorationem Dialecticć), Carneades tuus, egregiâ quâdam exercitatione in dialecticis summâque eloquentiâ, rem in summum discrimen adduxit. Also Cicero, in Tuscul. Disput. iv. 5. 9: Quia Chrysippus et Stoici, quum de animi perturbationibus disputant, magnam partem in iis partiendis et definiendis occupati sunt, illa eorum perexigua oratio est, quâ medeantur animis nec eos turbulentos esse patiantur. Peripatetici autem ad placandos animos multa afferunt, spinas partiendi et definiendi prćtermittunt. This last sentence is almost an exact equivalent of the words of Strabo: μηδὲν ἔχειν φιλοσοφεῖν πραγματικῶς, ἀλλὰ θέσεις ληκυθίζειν. Aristotle himself, in the works which we possess, might pass as father of the Stoics rather than of the Peripatetics; for he abounds in classification and subdivision (spinas partiendi et dividendi), and is even derided on this very ground by opponents (see Atticus ap. Euseb. Prćp. Ev. xv. 4); but he has nothing of the polished amplification ascribed to the later Peripatetics by Strabo and Cicero. Compare, about the Peripatetics from Lykon to Kritolaus, Cicero, De Finibus, v. 5: Lyco, oratione locuples, rebus ipsis jejunior. Plutarch (Sylla, c. xxvi.) calls these later Peripatetics χαριέντες καὶ φιλόλογοι, &c.

I shall assume this variety, both of subject and of handling, as a feature to be admitted and allowed for in Aristotle, when I come to discuss the objections of some critics against the authenticity of certain treatises among the forty-six which now pass under his name. But in canvassing the Aristotelian Canon I am unable to take the same ground as I took in my former work, when reviewing the Platonic Canon. In regard to Plato, I pointed out a strong antecedent presumption in favour of the Canon of Thrasyllus a canon derived originally from the Alexandrine librarians, and sustained by the unanimous adhesion of antiquity. In regard to Aristotle, there are no similar grounds of presumption to stand upon. We have good reason for believing that the works both of Plato and Aristotle if not all the works, at least many of them, and those the most generally interesting were copied and transmitted early to the Alexandrine library. Now our Plato represents that which was possessed and accredited as Platonic by the Byzantine Aristophanes and the other Alexandrine librarians; but our Aristotle does not, in my judgment, represent what these librarians possessed and accredited as Aristotelian. That which they thus accredited stands recorded in the Catalogue given by Diogenes, probably the work of Hermippus, as I have already stated; while our Aristotle is traceable to the collection at Athens, including that of Apellikon, with that which he bought from the heirs of Neleus, and to the sifting, correction, and classification, applied thereto by able critics of the first century B.C. and subsequently; among whom Andronikus is best known. We may easily believe that the library of Apellikon contained various compositions of Aristotle, which had never been copied for the Alexandrine library perhaps never prepared for publication at all, so that the task of arranging detached sections or morsels into a whole, with one separate title, still remained to be performed. This was most likely to be the case with abstruser speculations, like the component books of the Metaphysica, which Theophrastus may not have been forward to tender, and which the library might not be very eager to acquire, having already near four hundred other volumes by the same author. These reserved works would therefore remain in the library of Theophrastus, not copied and circulated (or at least circulated only to a few private philosophical brethren, such as Eudęmus), so that they never became fully published until the days of Apellikon.35

35 The two Peripatetic Scholarchs at Athens, Straton and Lykon, who succeeded (after the death of Theophrastus and the transfer of his library to Skępsis) in the conduct of the school, left at their decease collections of books, of which each disposes by his will (Diogen. L. v. 62; v. 73). The library of Apellikon, when sent by Sylla to Rome, contained probably many other Aristotelian MSS., besides those purchased from Skępsis.

Michelet, in his Commentary on the Nikomachean Ethica, advances a theory somewhat analogous but bolder, respecting the relation between the Catalogue given by Diogenes, and the works contained in our Aristotle. Comm. p. 2. Id solum addam, hoc Aristotelis opus (the Nikomachean Ethica), ut reliqua omnia, ex brevioribus commentationibus consarcinatum fuisse, quć quidem vivo Aristotele in lucem prodierint, cum unaqućque disciplina, e quâ excerpta fuerint in admirabilem illum quem habemus ordinem jam ab ipso Aristotele sive quodam ejus discipulo redacta, in libris Aristotelis manu scriptis latitaverit, qui hereditate ad Nelei prolem, ut notum est, transmissi, in cellâ illâ subterraneâ Scepsiâ absconditi fuerunt, donec Apellicon Teius et Rhodius Andronicus eos ediderint. Leguntur autem commentationum illarum de Moribus tituli in elencho librorum Aristotelis apud Diogenem (v. 22–26): περὶ ἀρετῶν (Lib. ii., iii. c. 6-fin. iv. nostrorum Ethicorum); περὶ ἑκουσίου (Lib. iii. c. 1–5); &c. Plerumque enim non integra volumina, sed singulos libros vel singula volumina diversarum disciplinarum, Diogenes in elencho suo enumeravit.

In his other work (Essai sur la Métaphysique dAristote, pp. 202, 205, 225) Michelet has carried this theory still farther, and has endeavoured to identify separate fragments of the Aristotelian works now extant, with various titles in the Catalogue given by Diogenes. The identification is not convincing.

But though the edition published by Andronikus would thus contain many genuine works of Aristotle not previously known or edited, we cannot be sure that it would not also include some which were spurious. Reflect what the library of Apellikon, transported to Rome by Sylla, really was. There was in it the entire library of Theophrastus; probably, also, that of Neleus, who must have had some books of his own, besides what he inherited from Theophrastus. It included all the numerous manuscript works composed by Aristotle and Theophrastus, and many other manuscript works purchased or acquired by them, but composed by others the whole in very bad order and condition; and, moreover, the books which Apellikon possessed before, doubtless as many Aristotelian books as he could purchase. To distinguish, among this heterogeneous mass of manuscripts, which of them were the manuscripts composed by Aristotle; to separate these from the writings of Theophrastus, Eudęmus, or other authors, who composed various works of their own upon the same subjects and with the same titles as those of Aristotle required extreme critical discernment and caution; the rather, since there was no living companion of Aristotle or Theophrastus to guide or advise, more than a century and a half having elapsed since the death of Theophrastus, and two centuries since that of Aristotle. Such were the difficulties amidst which Apellikon, Tyrannion, and Andronikus had to decide, when they singled out the manuscripts of Aristotle to be published. I will not say that they decided wrongly; yet neither can I contend (as I argued in the case of the Platonic dialogues) that the presumption is very powerful in favour of that Canon which their decision made legal. The case is much more open to argument, if any grounds against the decision can be urged.

Andronikus put in, arranged, and published the treatises of Aristotle (or those which he regarded as composed by Aristotle) included in the library conveyed by Sylla to Rome. I have already observed, that among these treatises there were some, of which copies existed in the Alexandrine library (as represented by the Catalogue of Diogenes), but a still greater number which cannot be identified with the titles remaining of works there preserved. As to the works common to both libraries, we must remember that Andronikus introduced a classification of his own, analogous to the Enneads applied by Porphyry to the works of Plotinus, and to the Tetralogies adopted by Thrasyllus in regard to the Dialogues of Plato; so that even these works might not be distributed in the same partitions under each of the two arrangements. And this is what we actually see when we compare the Catalogue of Diogenes with our Aristotle. Rhetoric, Ethics, Physics, Problems, &c., appear in both as titles or subjects, but distributed into a different number of books or sections in one and in the other; perhaps, indeed, the compositions are not always the same.

Before I proceed to deal with the preserved works of Aristotle those by which alone he is known to us, and was known to medićval readers, I shall say a few words respecting the import of a distinction which has been much canvassed, conveyed in the word exoteric and its opposite. This term, used on various occasions by Aristotle himself, has been also employed by many ancient critics, from Cicero downwards; while by medićval and modern critics, it has not merely been employed, but also analysed and elucidated. According to Cicero (the earliest writer subsequent to Aristotle in whom we find the term), it designates one among two classes of works composed by Aristotle: exoteric works were those composed in a popular style and intended for a large, indiscriminate circle of readers: being contrasted with other works of elaborated philosophical reasoning, which were not prepared for the public taste, but left in the condition of memorials for the instruction of a more select class of studious men. Two points are to be observed respecting Ciceros declaration. First, he applies it to the writings not of Aristotle exclusively, but also to those of Theophrastus, and even of succeeding Peripatetics; secondly, he applies it directly to such of their writings only as related to the discussion of the Summum Bonum.36 Furthermore, Cicero describes the works which Aristotle called exoteric, as having proems or introductory prefaces.37