The opinion given by Christ, respecting the Catalogue which we find in Diogenes Laertius — “illum catalogum non Alexandrinæ bibliothecæ, sed exemplarium Aristotelis ab Apelliconte Athenas translatorum fuisse equidem censeo� — is in substance the same as that of Rose and Bernays. I do not concur in it. (Christ, Studia in Aristotelis Libros Metaphysicos, Berlin, 1853, p. 105).
It seems thus probable that the Catalogue given by Diogenes derives its origin from Hermippus or Kallimachus, enumerating the titles of such works of Aristotle as were contained in the Alexandrine library. But the aggregate of works composing our Aristotle is noway in harmony with that Catalogue. It proceeds from a source independent and totally different, viz., the edition and classification first published by the Rhodian Andronikus, in the generation between the death of Cicero and the Christian era. To explain the existence of these two distinct and independent sources and channels, we must have recourse to the remarkable narrative (already noticed in my [chapter] on the Platonic Canon), delivered mainly by Strabo and less fully by Plutarch, respecting the fate of the Aristotelian library after Aristotle’s death.
At the decease of Aristotle, his library and MSS. came to Theophrastus, who continued chief of the Peripatetic school at Athens for thirty-five years, until his death in 287 B.C. Both Aristotle and Theophrastus not only composed many works of their own, but also laid out much money in purchasing or copying the works of others;[20] especially we are told that Aristotle, after the death of Speusippus, expended three talents in purchasing his books. The entire library of Theophrastus, thus enriched from two sources, was bequeathed by his testament to a philosophical friend and pupil, Neleus;[21] who left Athens, and carried away the library with him to his residence at the town of Skêpsis, in the Asiatic region known as Æolis, near Troad. At Skêpsis the library remained for the greater part of two centuries, in possession of the descendants of Neleus, men of no accomplishments and no taste for philosophy. It was about thirty or forty years after the death of Theophrastus that the kings of Pergamus began to occupy themselves in collecting their royal library, which presently reached a magnitude second only to that of Alexandria. Now Skêpsis was under their dominion, and it would seem that the kings seized the books belonging to their subjects for the use of the royal library; for we are told that the heirs of Neleus were forced to conceal their literary treasures in a cellar, subject to great injury, partly from damp, partly from worms. In this ruinous hiding-place the manuscripts remained for nearly a century and a half — “blattarum ac tinearum epulæ,� — until the Attalid dynasty at Pergamus became extinct. The last of these kings, Attalus, died in 133 B.C., bequeathing his kingdom to the Romans. All fear of requisitions for the royal library being thus at end, the manuscripts were in course of time withdrawn by their proprietors from concealment, and sold for a large sum to Apellikon, a native of Teos, a very rich resident at Athens, and attached to the Peripatetic sect. Probably this wealthy Peripatetic already possessed a library of his own, with some Aristotelian works; but the new acquisitions from Skêpsis, though not his whole stock, formed the most rare and precious ingredients in it. Here, then, the manuscripts and library both of Aristotle and Theophrastus became, for the first time since 287 B.C., open to the inspection of the Athenian Peripatetics of the time (about 100 B.C.), as well as of other learned men. Among the stock were contained many compositions which the Scholarchs, successors of Theophrastus at Athens, had neither possessed nor known.[22] But the manuscripts were found imperfect, seriously damaged, and in a state of disorder. Apellikon did his best to remedy that mischief, by causing new copies to be taken, correcting what had become worm-eaten, and supplying what was defective or illegible. He appears to have been an erudite man, and had published a biography of Aristotle, refuting various calumnies advanced by other biographers; but being (in the words of Strabo) a lover of books rather than a philosopher, he performed the work of correction so unskilfully, that the copies which he published were found full of errors.[23] In the year 86 B.C., Sylla besieged Athens, and captured it by storm; not long after which he took to himself as a perquisite the library of Apellikon, and transported it to Rome.[24] It was there preserved under custody of a librarian, and various literary Greeks resident at Rome obtained access to it, especially Tyrannion, the friend of Cicero and a warm admirer of Aristotle, who took peculiar pains to gain the favour of the librarian.[25] It was there also that the Rhodian Andronikus obtained access to the Aristotelian works.[26] He classified them to a great degree anew, putting in juxtaposition the treatises most analogous in subject;[27] moreover, he corrected the text, and published a new edition of the manuscripts, with a tabulated list. This was all the more necessary, because some booksellers at Rome, aiming only at sale and profit, had employed bad writers, and circulated inaccurate copies, not collated with the originals.[28] These originals, however, were so damaged, and the restitutions made by Apellikon were so injudicious, that the more careful critics who now studied them were often driven to proceed on mere probable evidence.
[20] Diog. L. iv. 5; Aulus Gellius, N. A. iii. 17.
[21] From a passage of Lucian (De Parasito, c. xxxv.) we learn that Aristoxenus spoke of himself as friend and guest of Neleus: καὶ τίς περὶ τούτου λέγει; Πολλοὶ μὲν καὶ ἄλλοι, Ἀριστόξενος δὲ ὁ μουσικός, πολλοῦ λόγου ἄξιος καὶ αὐτὸς δὲ παράσιτος Νήλεως ἦν.
[22] Strabo, xiii. 608, 609; Athenæus, v. 214. The narrative of Strabo has been often misunderstood and impugned, as if he had asserted that none of the main works of Aristotle had ever been published until they were thus exhumed by Apellikon. This is the supposed allegation which Stahr, Zeller, and others have taken so much pains to refute. But in reality Strabo says no such thing. His words affirm or imply the direct contrary, viz., that many works of Aristotle, not merely the exoteric works but others besides, had been published earlier than the purchase made by Apellikon. What Strabo says is, that few of these works were in possession of the Peripatetic Scholarchs at Athens before the time of that purchase; and he explains thus how it was that these Scholarchs, during the century intervening, had paid little attention to the profound and abstruse speculations of Aristotle; how it was that they had confined themselves to dialectic and rhetorical debate on special problems. I see no ground for calling in question the fact affirmed by Strabo — the poverty of the Peripatetic school-library at Athens; though he may perhaps have assigned a greater importance to that fact than it deserves, as a means of explaining the intellectual working of the Peripatetic Scholarchs from Lykon to Kritolaus. The philosophical impulse of that intervening century seems to have turned chiefly towards ethics and the Summum Bonum, with the conflicting theories of Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epikureans thereupon.
[23] Strabo, xiii. 609. ἦν δὲ ὁ Ἀπελλικῶν φιλόβιβλος μᾶλλον ἢ φιλόσοφος, διὸ καὶ ζητῶν ἐπανόοθωσιν τῶν διαβρωμάτων, εἰς ἀντίγραφα καινὰ μετήνεγκε τὴν γραφὴν ἀναπληρῶν οὐκ εὖ, καὶ ἐξέδωκεν ἁμαρτάδων πλήρη τὰ βίβλια.
[24] Strabo, xiii. 609; Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi.
[25] Strabo, xiii. 609. Τυραννίων, ὁ γραμματικὸς διεχειρίσατο φιλαριστοτέλης ὤν, θεραπεύσας τὸν ἐπὶ τῆς βιβλοθήκης. Tyrannion had been the preceptor of Strabo (xii. 548); and Boêthus, who studied Aristotle along with Strabo, was a disciple of the Rhodian Andronikus. See Ammonius ad Categorias, f. 8; and Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, Introduction, p. 10.
[26] Plutarch, Sylla, c. xxvi.