John Glucker

The first part of this article deals with two cases of what seems to be Aristotelian reminiscences in the works of Philo of Alexandria. A passage in Quod deterius and a passage in De agricultura show close verbal reminiscences to two passages in Book i of Nicomachean Ethics; and a passage in De migratione Abrahami shows verbal reminiscences to two passages in Book ii. Since it appears from Book v of De finibus that Antiochus of Ascalon had already read at least parts of Nicomachean Ethics; and the first commentator on the Ethics, Aspasius, has clear references to some predecessors who had already read and discussed this work, I argue for the possibility that Philo also read the Nicomachean Ethics. The second part deals with an almost forgotten book review by Jacob Freudenthal, published in 1875, which argues that Philo was familiar with various parts of the Aristotelian corpus as we have it. I examine his detailed arguments and conclude that, with all due respect to a great scholar, they do not seem to prove his point.

This article discusses some methodological issues concerning the nature of the study of ancient philosophy, and especially the relation between the precise historical and philological reading of the ancient texts and the philosophical speculation about what these texts mean, or (as is often the case) what one thinks that they should, or must, mean. I take as a specimen of the ‘more philosophical’ approach two articles by Michael Frede, both from his Essays in Ancient Philosophy. In his Introduction, Frede seems to base what he regards as the proper study of the ancient philosophical texts on the detection in these texts of what he calls “good reasons”, which he identifies with “what we ourselves would regard as good reasons”. This would imply – in this particular case – that the criteria employed by a contemporary analytic philosopher should serve as the acid test of the validity of any historical reconstruction of what an ancient philosopher – who had no idea whatsoever of analytic philosophy (or of any other modern philosophical fashion) – really meant. Purely historical considerations, according to Frede, should only serve in the last resort, in cases where we have failed to detect “good reasons”. To illustrate the consequences of such an approach, I discuss some of the features of the other article, ‘The Original Notion of Cause’, showing that, while it makes some very useful contributions to elucidating Stoic concepts of causality, it sheds no light on the earlier meanings of αἴτιος and αἰτία as two of the main, and original, Greek concepts of causation. This is demonstrated through a brief (and very basic) survey of the development of these two concepts from Homer to the early fourth century.

Στὴν ἀνακοίνωσή μου θ᾿ἀσχοληθῶ μέ μερικὲς ἀσυνέπειες, ἀπορίες καὶ ἄλλες δυσκολίες που ἔχω ἀντιμετωπίσει διαβάζοντας τὸν πλα-τωνικὸ διάλογο Ἴων ὡς διάλογο, δηλ. ὡς μιὰ συζήτηση, φιλοσοφικὴ βεβαίως, ἀλλὰ ἀκόμα συζήτηση μεταξὺ δύο προσώπων. Αὐτὸ πού πα-ρατηρεῖ κανεὶς διαβάζοντας τὸν διάλογο προσεκτικὰ εἶναι ὅτι ὁ Σωκράτης πολὺ συχνὰ ἐκμεταλλεύεται τὴν φιλοσοφικὴ ἀφέλεια τοῦ συνομιλητῆ του, ἀλλάζοντας μέσα στὸ διάλογο τὴ σημασία κεντρικῶν λέξεων, ἀποδίδοντας στὸν Ἴωνα πράγματα καὶ ἰδέες πού ὁ Ἴων ποτὲ δὲν ἐξέφρασε, καί κατηγο-ρώντας αὐτὸν γιὰ κάτι πού δέν ἔκανε αὐτὸς, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τὸ ἔκανε ὁ ἴδιος ὁ Σωκράτης. Δὲν προσφέρω καμμία “μαγικὴ θεραπεία”·φτάνει νὰ δείξω, πολὺ συχνὰ γιὰ πρώτη φορὰ, τὴν ὕπαρξη τέτοιων δυσκολιῶν.

This article treats Plato’s Ion as a test-case. It is widely accepted in literature about Plato that he was a consistent and systematic thinker, whose dialogues express his views and complement each other, and that each dialogue has a main purport which the reader should discover or be told about by the commentator even before reading the dialogue. In the first section of this article, specimen passages from the literature on Plato are cited and discussed. In the second part I point out some serious contradictions, sometimes bordering on dishonesty, in Socrates’ treatment of Ion, in the sequence of his arguments, and in his use of words in different senses without warning his interlocutor. The offshoot of it is that one cannot simply accept the consistent, dogmatic image of Plato the dogmatic preacher, and only reading the dialogue as drama may help us have a guess at what Plato is playing at.

The essays in this volume illustrate the passage and influence of Greek into Latin from the earliest period of Roman history until the end of the period in which Latin was a living literary language. They show how the Romans, however much they were influenced, to begin with, by the Greek literary language and Greek literature and its forms, were conscious of being not mere conquerors and rulers of the Greek world, but active participants in the further development of the culture initiated by the Greeks; how the importance of ancient Greek culture continued to be felt, with greater and lesser emphasis, in the Western Middle Ages, and the reintroduction of the Greek language in Renaissance Europe only made this interest in the Greek heritage more pronounced; and how ancient Greek works were received and transformed into Latin at various stages in the process of the rediscovery of ancient Greek culture in the West.