Stephen Menn - Simplicius: On Aristotle Physics 1.12

Ancient Commentators on Aristotle

GENERAL EDITORS: Richard Sorabji, Honorary Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor, Kings College London, UK; and Michael Griffin, Associate Professor, Departments of Philosophy and Classics, University of British Columbia, Canada.

This prestigious series translates the extant ancient Greek philosophical commentaries on Aristotle. Written mostly between 200 and 600 AD , the works represent the classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic schools in a crucial period during which pagan and Christian thought were reacting to each other. The translation in each volume is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index. Making these key philosophical works accessible to the modern scholar, this series fills an important gap in the history of European thought.

A webpage for the Ancient Commentators Project is maintained at ancientcommentators.org.uk and readers are encouraged to consult the site for details about the series as well as for addenda and corrigenda to published volumes.

References beginning with A or B (e.g. A15, B12) are to texts in the relevant chapter of DK.

This translation of Simplicius commentary on Aristotles Physics 1.1-2 was originally planned, and begun, as joint work with Rachel Barney. Rachel unfortunately had to withdraw from the project, and I finished it on my own and take full responsibility for the final product, but it would never have happened without Rachel, and I thank her first and foremost, for her work and initiative and for many hours of puzzling through the text of Simplicius together, trying to reconstruct his meaning and argument and to think of an English approximation. I produced the initial draft of each section of the translation, and then Rachel and I revised it together, except in the mathematical section, which is entirely my work; I then revised the entire draft. The endnotes to the translation are joint work; Rachel composed the paragraph-summaries at the head of each paragraph of Simplicius, some of which we later jointly revised. The reports of manuscript Mo are mine.

Roberto Granieri prepared the extremely helpful first draft of the GreekEnglish Index, which allowed me to see inconsistencies in the translation, and he also gave me a series of notes on translation issues arising from the Index. Henry Mendell generously supplied the diagrams in the mathematical section, as well as giving detailed comments on the translation of that section.

For comments on parts or all of the translation Rachel and I would like to thank our vetters (Fabio Acerbi, Christoph Helmig, Henry Mendell, the late Ian Mueller, Tim Wagner [in an unofficial role], and Robert Wardy), and Pantelis Golitsis, Roberto Granieri, the graduate student participants (Nicholas Aubin, Argyro Lithari, Robert Roreitner) in a workshop in Berlin in July 2017 on commentaries from the school of Ammonius, and Richard Sorabji. I thank Pantelis also for advice about the manuscripts of Simplicius, and for an early draft of his edition of roughly the first third of Simplicius commentary on Physics 1.1-2, although unfortunately I saw it too late to make systematic use of it.

I thank the Aristoteles-Archiv of the Freie Universitt Berlin for giving me access to microfilms of the manuscripts, and the Berlin Graduiertenkolleg Philosophy, Science and the Sciences, based at the Humboldt-Universitt Berlin, for supporting the workshop in July 2017. Support from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung, the Graduiertenkolleg Philosophy, Science and the Sciences, and a James McGill Professorship at McGill University, gave me some time free from teaching and the opportunity to work in an ideal research environment in Berlin. Thanks to support from Brad Inwoods and then Rachel Barneys Canada Research Chairs at the University of Toronto, Rachel and I were able to work together for short periods of time in Toronto, Montreal and Berlin, and to employ Roberto Granieri to prepare the first draft of the GreekEnglish Index.

Finally, I thank Michael Griffin and Dawn Sellars for their help in preparing the manuscript and advising on editorial issues, and Cristalle Watson for providing the line-numbering and the EnglishGreek Glossary.

Thales of Miletus, 6th century BCE

Anaximander of Miletus, 6th century BCE

Anaximenes of Miletus, 6th century BCE

Xenophanes of Colophon, 6th century BCE

Hippasus of Metapontum, 6th5th century BCE Pythagorean

Heraclitus of Ephesus, 6th5th century BCE

Parmenides of Elea, 6th5th century BCE

Melissus of Samos, 5th century BCE

Zeno of Elea, 5th century BCE student of Parmenides

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, 5th century BCE

Empedocles of Acragas, 5th century BCE

Leucippus of Abdera, 5th century BCE

Democritus of Abdera, 5th century BCE , student of Leucippus