Philoponus: On Aristotle Meteorology 1.4-9, 12

207 Pages·2012·0.91 MB·English

by  John Philoponus

PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
Meteorology 1.4-9, 12
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PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
Meteorology 1.4-9, 12
Translated by Inna Kupreeva
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published in 2012
Reprinted 2013
Paperback edition (cid:192) rst published 2014
© Inna Kupreeva 2012
Inna Kupreeva has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identi(cid:192) ed as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN HB: 978-0-7156-3675-6
PB: 978-1-4725-5820-6
ePDF: 978-1-4725-0174-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Acknowledgements
The present translations have been made possible by generous and
imaginative funding from the following sources: the National Endowment
for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, an independent federal
agency of the USA; the Leverhulme Trust; the British Academy; the
Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal Society (UK); Centro Internazionale
A. Beltrame di Storia dello Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci;
Liverpool University; the Leventis Foundation; the Arts and Humanities
Research Council; Gresham College; the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust;
the Henry Brown Trust; Mr and Mrs N. Egon; the Netherlands Organisation
for Scienti(cid:192) c Research (NWO/GW); the Ashdown Trust; Dr Victoria
Solomonides, the Cultural Attaché of the Greek Embassy in London. The
editor wishes to thank Catherine Osborne, Jan Opsomer, Damian Caluori,
and Malcolm Wilson for their comments, Sebastian Gertz and Katharine
O’Reilly for preparing the volume for press, and Deborah Blake, who has
been the publisher responsible for every volume since the (cid:192) rst.
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Conventions vii
Introduction 1
Textual Questions 29
Translation 33
Notes 119
Bibliography 147
English-Greek Glossary 151
Greek-English Index 165
Index of Passages Cited 191
Subject Index 195
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Conventions
[(cid:125)] Square brackets enclose words or phrases that have been added
to the translation or the lemmata for purposes of clarity, as well as
those portions of the lemmata which are not quoted by Philoponus.
<(cid:125)> Angle brackets enclose conjectures relating to the Greek text,
i.e. additions to the transmitted text deriving from parallel sources
and editorial conjecture, and transposition of words or phrases.
Accompanying notes provide further details.
((cid:125)) Round brackets, besides being used for ordinary parentheses,
contain transliterated Greek words and Bekker pages references to
the Aristotelian text.
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Introduction
This volume completes the Ancient Commentators publication of the
translation of John Philoponus’ extant commentary on Aristotle’s
Meteorology I. Philoponus’ extant commentary is incomplete. All we
have is just the commentary on book 1, and even that is not
complete: all the Greek manuscripts that reached us contain the
same lacuna running from the end of chapter 9 and into chapter
12. It is not clear whether Philoponus ever published a complete
commentary of the whole of Meteorology. There is little doubt that
he intended to do so.1
The title of the work in the two Greek MSS used by Michael
Hayduck, the CAG editor, to establish the text, is: ‘Part one of the
commentary on the first book of Aristotle’s Meteorology [being part
of] three by John of Alexandria, the Grammarian.’2 This title is
confirmed by two rubric subtitles in one of the manuscripts (V =
Coislinianus 166) between chapters 3 and 4, and 8 and 9. In both
cases, it is indicated that the completed section belongs to the com-
mentary on book 1 of Philoponus’ commentary.3 The manuscript
rubrics in both cases are well attested by the text of the commentary.4
The division probably serves the purposes of teaching.5 It is not clear
whether Philoponus ever wrote a commentary on book 4, but he
certainly knew it and considered it to be the last book of Meteorology
and preparatory background reading for the biological corpus.6
The extant material covers Aristotle’s discussions of the ‘sky’
phenomena formed from the matter of the two exhalations, the dry
and the humid ones, in the upper layers of the sublunary cosmos, in
the region common to air and fire. Chapters 4-8, treating of related
subjects, form a unit, as indicated by Philoponus himself and by the
manuscript rubrication.7 In chapter 4, Aristotle discusses the so
called ‘shooting stars’, the range of phenomena largely coinciding
with the meteors of modern astronomy. Chapter 5 is devoted to the
discussion of ‘chasms’, ‘trenches’ and phenomena of colouration in the
sky: all these match the phenomena of the aurora borealis. Comets
are the subject in chapters 6 and 7, and here Aristotle’s nomenclature
does not differ from ours. Chapter 8 is about the Milky Way. In
chapter 9, Aristotle begins his discussion of the phenomena whose
matter is moist exhalation. The surviving opening fragment of