Simplicius : on Aristotle on the heavens 3.1-7

191 Pages·2009·1.18 MB·English

by  Simplicius & Ian Mueller

SIMPLICIUS
On Aristotle
On the Heavens 3.1-7
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SIMPLICIUS
On Aristotle
On the Heavens 3.1-7
Translated by
Ian Mueller
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published in 2009 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Paperback edition (cid:192) rst published 2014
© 2009 by Ian Mueller
Ian Mueller has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identi(cid:192) ed as Author of this work.
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ISBN HB: 978-0-7156-3843-9
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ePDF: 978-1-4725-0161-5
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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
General editor’s 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 Han Baltussen, William Charlton, Andrew
Gregory, and Peter Lautner for their comments, Martin Achard and
Fiona Leigh for preparing the volume for press, and Deborah Blake at
Duckworth, 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
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
Translation 23
3.1 The view of Parmenides and Melissus that nothing comes to be; 25
criticism of Plato for generating bodies from planes
3.2 Natural motion and its priority over unnatural motion; 55
heaviness and lightness; the relation of power to motion
3.3 The definition of ‘element’; the existence of elements 76
3.4 There are not infinitely many elements 80
3.5 There is more than one element 92
3.6 The elements come to be from one another, not from what is 105
incorporeal or from another body
3.7-305b28 The elements do not come to be from one another by 111
separation out (ekkrisis)
Appendix: The argument of Cael. 3.5 117
Textual Questions 119
(a) Departures from Heiberg’s text 119
(b) Simplicius’ citations of Cael. 3.1-7, 305b28 120
(c) Simplicius’ citations of other texts 120
(d) Lemmas 121
Notes 123
Bibliography 140
English-Greek Glossary 143
Greek-English Index 151
Index of Passages 172
Index of Names 174
Subject Index 180
Addenda 181
v
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Acknowledgements
The first draft of my translation of Simplicius’ commentary on Books 3 and
4 of Aristotle’s On the Heavens (De Caelo, Cael.) was completed in 2005-6
when I was a Visiting Scholar at Christ’s College, Cambridge. I would like
to record my gratitude to the fellows of the College and particularly to the
then Master, the late Malcolm Bowie, who provided me with an ideal
working place and a most convivial intellectual and social atmosphere in
which to live.
I would also like to thank the Classics Faculty at Cambridge for both
the use of its library and the continuing stimulation of its seminars and
lectures, in which the interventions of Nicholas Denyer, Geoffrey Lloyd,
Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, Robert Wardy, and others reminded me
again and again that no interpretive question can safely be considered
settled.
In making this translation I have constantly had to rely on others for
help with linguistic and substantive issues. I am sure I cannot remember
the names of all of those others, but I would like to mention Elizabeth
Asmis, Benno Artmann, Myles Burnyeat, Alan Code, Stephen Menn, Jan
Opsomer, David Sedley, and James Wilberding, Dirk Baltzly, and Daniel
Graham. Baltzly and Graham are the only official vetters whose names
are known to me, but the suggestions and corrections of the other three
were also extremely helpful. I am especially grateful to the general editor
of the ancient commentators series, Richard Sorabji, whose advice and
encouragement were a sine qua non for my completion of this translation.
The most important mainstay for all my endeavours continues to be my
wife and intellectual partner of almost fifty years, Janel Mueller. How
lucky I have been to be able to have dinner conversations with her on the
translations of both Simplicius’ commentary and the texts of Queen Eliza-
beth I written in foreign languages.
Ian Mueller
Chicago
vii
Abbreviations
Cael. = Aristotle’s On the Heavens.
CAG = Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Berlin: G. Reimer, 1882-1909.
DK = Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz (eds and trans.) (1954), Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edn, Berlin: Weidmann.
DPA = Goulet, Richard (ed.) (1989- ), Dictionnaire des philosophes an-
tiques, Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.
GC = Aristotle’s On Coming to Be and Perishing.
Guthrie = W.K.C. Guthrie (ed. and trans.) (1939), Aristotle, On the Heav-
ens, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, and London: William
Heinemann.
in Phys. = Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (CAG, vols 9 and
10).
Karsten = Simon Karsten (ed.) (1865), Simplicii Commentarius in IV
Libros Aristotelis De Caelo, Utrecht: Kemink and Son.
Metaph. = Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
Moraux = Paul Moraux (ed. and trans.) (1965), Aristote: du Ciel, texte
établi et traduit par Paul Moraux, Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
OED = The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1989.
Phys. = Aristotle’s Physics.
Rivaud = Albert Rivaud (ed. and trans.) (1925), Timée-Critias (Platon,
Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 10), Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Sider = David Sider (ed. and trans.) (2005), The Fragments of Anaxagoras,
2nd edn, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.
Stocks = J.L. Stocks (trans.) (1922), De Caelo, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
also in vol. 2 of W.D. Ross (ed.) (1928-52), The Works of Aristotle, 12 vols,
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Theophrastus: Sources = William W. Fortenbaugh, Pamela M. Huby,
Robert W. Sharples and Dimitri Gutas (eds and trans.) (1992), Theo-
phrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought, and
Influence (Philosophia Antiqua 54), 2 vols, Leiden and New York: E.J.
Brill.
Tim. = Plato’s Timaeus.
TL = Timaeus of Locri, On the Nature of the World and the Soul; cited after
Marg (1972).
viii
Introduction
This volume is a translation of Simplicius’ commentary on book 3 of On the
Heavens from its beginning until 305b28 in chapter 7. The remainder of
the commentary on book 3 and all of book 4 will be published in a separate
volume (Mueller (2009)). Most of Simplicius’ commentary on book 1 has
been translated in Hankinson (2002), (2004), and (2006). Missing from the
translation of the commentary on chapters 1 to 4 are Simplicius’ ex-
changes with John Philoponus on Aristotle’s cosmology. Simplicius’ repre-
sentations of Philoponus’ criticisms of Aristotle are translated in Wildberg
(1987); Simplicius’ responses are for the most part still untranslated. The
commentary on book 2 is translated in Mueller (2004) and (2005).
Simplicius was born in Cilicia (in southeastern Turkey) in the late fifth
century of the Common Era. He studied philosophy with Ammonius of
Alexandria (DPA, vol. 1, pp. 168-9) and with Damascius (DPA, vol. 2, pp.
541-93) in Athens or Alexandria. At the time of the closing of the so-called
Platonic school in Athens (529), Simplicius went with Damascius and five
other philosophers to the court of Chosroes, King of Persia. They did not
stay long but returned in or around 532 to the confines of the Byzantine
Empire under a treaty provision protecting them from persecution. It is
not known where Simplicius went; Athens, Alexandria, and, more re-
cently, Harran in southeastern Turkey east of Cilicia have been
suggested.1 But it is now generally agreed that the three great Aristotelian
commentaries safely attributable to Simplicius, those on the Categories,
Physics, and On the Heavens2 were written after Simplicius departure
from Persia when, one assumes, he had the leisure to write these extensive
works and to do the research and thinking they presuppose.
1. The contents of Cael. 3 and 43
Books 3 and 4 of On the Heavens are not about the heavens, the world
between the fixed stars and the moon. Their subject is, as Simplicius says
(551,13), ‘the sublunary simple bodies’, that is, the ultimate components
of everything in the world beneath the moon, for Aristotle earth, air, fire,
and water, frequently referred to as elements. Here I give a brief summary
of books 3 and 4 to provide the reader with a general orientation.
Toward the beginning of chapter 1 (298b8-12) Aristotle announces that
he is going to raise the question whether anything comes to be. This leads
him into a dichotomous doxography of the views of his predecessors. Three