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SIMPLICIUS On Aristotle On the Heavens 3.7-4.6 This page intentionally left blank SIMPLICIUS On Aristotle On the Heavens 3.7-4.6 Translated by Ian Mueller LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 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. 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: 978-0-7156-3844-6 PB: 978-1-4725-5785-8 ePDF: 978-1-4725-0163-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 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 Dirk Baltzly, Donald Russell, Robert Todd, Andrea Falcon and Alan Lacey for their comments, Fiona Leigh for preparing the volume for press, Sarah Francis for assistance with the indices, 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 25 3.7, 305b28-end. Criticism of Plato’s geometrical chemistry 27 3.8 Criticism of Plato’s geometrical chemistry continued 42 4.1 Absolute and relative heaviness and lightness; criticism of 67 Plato’s claim that there is no above and below in the universe 4.2 Criticism of previous accounts of heaviness and lightness 74 4.3 Heaviness and lightness; natural motion as the attaining of 88 form 4.4 The existence of places between above and below and of 102 elements, water and air, to occupy them 4.5 The four elements differ in their matter 114 4.6 The effect of shape and size on the motion of bodies 127 Appendix 1. On the geometric arguments of 652,9-655,27 131 Appendix 2. On some later discussions of 306b5-8 136 Textual Questions 147 (a) Departures from Heiberg’s text 147 (b) Simplicius’ citations of On the Heaven 3.1-7, 305b28 148 (c) Simplicius’ citations of other texts 148 (d) Lemmas 149 Notes 151 Bibliography 169 English-Greek Glossary 173 Greek-English Index 183 Index of Passages 207 Index of Names 209 Subject Index 213 Addenda 215 This page intentionally left blank 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 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, Myles Burnyeat, Alan Code, Stephen Menn, Jan Opsomer, David Sedley, 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 = Richard Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1989- . 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. LSJ = George Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Metaph. = Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Moraux = Paul Moraux (1965) (ed. and trans.), Aristote: du Ciel, texte établi et traduit par Paul Moraux, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Phys. = Aristotle’s Physics. Rivaud = Albert Rivaud (ed. and trans.), Timée-Critias (Platon, Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 10, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1925). 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 the end of Simplicius’ commentary on On the Heavens (De Caelo or Cael.) starting at 305b28 in book 3, chapter 7.1 Most of Simplicius’ commentary on book 1 has been translated in Hankin- son (2002), (2004), and (2006). Missing from the translation of the com- mentary on chapters 2 to 4 are Simplicius’ exchanges with John Philoponus on Aristotle’s cosmology. Simplicius’ representations of Phi- loponus’ criticisms are translated in Wildberg (1987); Simplicius’ re- sponses are for the most part still untranslated. The commentary on book 2 is translated in Mueller (2004) and (2005), the commentary on the first part of book 3 in Mueller (2009). 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, 168-9) and with Damascius (DPA, vol. 2, 541-93) in Athens or Alexandria. Sometime after 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.2 But it is now generally agreed that the three great Aristotelian commentaries safely attributable to Simplicius, those on the Categories, Physics, and On the Heavens3 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 the last part of Cael.4 In book 3 of Cael. Aristotle turns from the world above the moon to the sublunary world. For Aristotle, it is axiomatic that this world is composed of or from one or more elements, and an important task of book 4 is to prove that there are four such elements (or simple bodies), earth, water, air, and fire. However, Aristotle’s arguments are notoriously opaque, and Sim- plicius is ultimately driven to the conclusion that Aristotle is simply assuming this doctrine in Cael. and will demonstrate it in GC.5 By the beginning of 3.6 Aristotle has established that there is more than one element, but not infinitely many. Rather than proceeding directly to the

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Commenting on the end of Aristotle On the Heavens Book 3, Simplicius examines Aristotle's criticisms of Plato's theory of elemental chemistry in the Timaeus. Plato makes the characteristics of the four elements depend on the shapes of component corpuscles and ultimately on the arrangement of the tri
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