We have another distinct enumeration of the titles of Aristotle’s works, prepared by an anonymous biographer cited in the notes of Ménage to Diogenes Laertius.[5] This anonymous list contains only one hundred and twenty-seven titles, being nineteen less than the list in Diogenes. The greater number of titles are the same in both; but Anonymus has eight titles which are not found in Diogenes, while Diogenes has twenty-seven titles which are not given by Anonymus. There are therefore thirty-five titles which rest on the evidence of one alone out of the two lists. Anonymus does not specify any total number of lines; nevertheless he gives the total number of books composed by Aristotle as being nearly four hundred — the same as Diogenes. This total number cannot be elicited out of the items enumerated by Anonymus; but it may be made to coincide pretty nearly with the items in Diogenes,[6] provided we understand by books, sections or subdivisions of one and the same title or work.
[5] Ménage ad Diog. tom. ii. p. 201. See the very instructive treatise of Professor Heitz, Die Verlorenen Schriften des Aristoteles, p. 15 (Leipzig, 1865).
[6] Heitz, Die Verl. Schrift. des Aristot. p. 51. Such coincidence assumes that we reckon the Πολιτεῖαι and the Epistles each as one book.
I think it unnecessary to transcribe these catalogues of the titles of works mostly lost. The reader will find them clearly printed in the learned work of Val. Rose, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, pp. 12-20.
The two catalogues just mentioned, agreeing as they do in the total number of books and in the greater part of the items, may probably be considered not as original and copy, but as inaccurate transcripts from the same original authority. Yet neither of the two transcribers tells us what that original authority was. We may, however, be certain that each of them considered his catalogue to comprehend all that Aristotle could be affirmed on good authority to have published; Diogenes plainly signifies thus much, when he gives not only the total number of books, but the total number of lines. Such being the case, we expect to find in it, of course, the titles of the forty-six works composing the Berlin edition of Aristotle now before us. But this expectation is disappointed. The far greater number of the Aristotelian works which we now peruse are not specified either in the list of Diogenes, or in that of Anonymus.[7] Moreover, the lists also fail to specify the titles of various works which are not now extant, but which we know from Aristotle himself that he really composed.[8]
[7] Heitz, Verl. Schr. Aristot. p. 18, remarks that “In diesem Verzeichnisse (that of Diogenes) die bei weitem grösste Zahl derjenigen Schriften fehlt, welche wir heute noch besitzen, und die wir als den eigentlichen Kern der aristotelischen Lehre enthaltend zu betrachten gewohnt sind.� Cf. p. 32. Brandis expresses himself substantially to the same effect (Aristoteles, Berlin, 1853, pp. 77, 78, 96); and Zeller also (Gesch. der Phil. 2nd ed. Aristot. Schriften, p. 43).
[8] Heitz, Verl. Schr. des Aristoteles, p. 56, seq.
The last-mentioned fact is in itself sufficiently strange and difficult to explain, and our difficulty becomes aggravated when we combine it with another fact hardly less surprising. Both Cicero, and other writers of the century subsequent to him (Dionysius Hal., Quintilian, &c.), make reference to Aristotle, and especially to his dialogues, of which none have been preserved, though the titles of several are given in the two catalogues mentioned above. These writers bestow much encomium on the style of Aristotle; but what is remarkable is, that they ascribe to it attributes which even his warmest admirers will hardly find in the Aristotelian works now remaining. Cicero extols the sweetness, the abundance, the variety, the rhetorical force which he discovered in Aristotle’s writings: he even goes so far as to employ the phrase “flumen orationis aureum� (a golden stream of speech), in characterizing the Aristotelian style.[9] Such predicates may have been correct, indeed were doubtless correct, in regard to the dialogues, and perhaps other lost works of Aristotle; but they describe exactly the opposite[10] of what we find in all the works preserved. With most of these (except the History of Animals) Cicero manifests no acquaintance; and some of the best modern critics declare him to have been ignorant of them.[11] Nor do other ancient authors, Plutarch, Athenæus, Diogenes Laertius, &c., give evidence of having been acquainted with the principal works of Aristotle known to us. They make reference only to works enumerated in the Catalogue of Diogenes Laertius.[12]
[9] Cicero, Acad. Prior. ii. 38, 119: “Quum enim tuus iste Stoicus sapiens syllabatim tibi ista dixerit, veniet flumen orationis aureum fundens Aristoteles, qui illum desipere dicat.â€� Also Topica, i. 3. “Quibus (i.e. those who were ignorant of Aristotle) eo minus ignoscendum est, quod non modo rebus iis, quæ ab illo dictæ et inventæ sunt, adlici debuerunt, sed dicendi quoque incredibili quâdam quum copiâ, tum suavitate.â€� Also De Oratore, i. 11, 49; Brutus, 31, 121; De Nat. Deor. ii. 37; De Inventione, ii. 2; De Finibus, i. 5, 14; Epistol. ad Atticum, ii. 1, where he speaks of the “Aristotelia pigmenta,â€� along with the μυροθήκιον of Isokrates. Dionysius Hal. recommends the style of Aristotle in equal terms of admiration: παραληπτέον δὲ καὶ Ἀριστοτέλη εἰς μίμησιν τῆς τε περὶ τὴν ἑρμηνείαν δεινότητος καὶ τῆς σαφηνείας, καὶ τοῦ ἡδέος καὶ πολυμαθοῦς (De Veter. Script. Censurâ, p. 430, R.; De Verb. Copiâ, p. 187). Quintilian extols the “eloquendi suavitasâ€� among Aristotle’s excellences (Inst. Or. X. i. p. 510). Demetrius Phalereus (or the author who bears that title), De Eloquentiâ, s. 128, commends αἱ Ἀριστοτέλους χάριτες. David the Armenian, who speaks of him (having reference to the dialogue) as Ἀφροδίτης ἐννόμου γέμων (the correction of Bernays, Dial. des Arist. p. 137) καὶ χαρίτων ἀνάμεστος, probably copies the judgment of predecessors (Scholia ad Categor. p. 26, b. 36, Brandis).
Bernays (Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, pp. 3-5) points out how little justice has been done by modern critics to the literary merits, exhibited in the dialogues and other works now lost, of one whom we know only as a “dornichten und wortkargen Systematiker.�