152 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



^ ur rea( * ers have here tne whole authority 1 which is to be found in 

 story. the writers of antiquity for this celebrated story, which has been 



transmitted from one mouth to another in modern times without the 

 least question of its truth until very lately. And not only has it been 

 accepted as a satisfactory reason for an extraordinary and most im- 

 portant fact, the decay of philosophy for the two centuries preceding 

 the time of Cicero, but editors and commentators of the works of 

 Aristotle have resorted to it without scruple for a solution of all the 

 difficulties which they might encounter. They have allowed them- 

 selves the most arbitrary transpositions of the several parts of the 

 same work, and acknowledged no limit to the number or magnitude 

 of gaps which might be assumed as due to the damp or worms of the 

 cellar at Scepsis. 2 Of late years, however, as the critical study of the 

 Greek language has increased, and the attention of scholars been 

 more drawn towards the philosophical department of antiquity, the 

 inadequacy of this story to account for the state in which Aristotle's 

 writings have come down to us has become more and more apparent ; 

 notices have been found which are quite incompatible with it ; and at 

 the present time it may safely be said that the falsity of the account 

 Unwarranted in the main is completely proved. We will endeavour to give our 

 readers some idea of the laborious researches which have led to this 

 result. They have been carried on chiefly, if not entirely, by German 

 philologers, the pioneers in this as in almost every other uncleared 

 region of antiquity. 3 But we must first call their attention to some 

 other circumstances which would, antecedently to the investigations of 

 which we speak, dispose us to look with some suspicion on the tale, 

 unless very considerably qualified. 



The work of Athenaeus, to which we are indebted for so much 

 fragmentary information on matters of antiquity, is cast in a form 

 which had particular attractions for the readers of the time in which 

 the author lived the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. A 

 wealthy Roman is represented as hospitably entertaining several 

 persons eminent for their acquaintance with literature and philosophy ; 

 and the most curious notices imaginable from a multitude of writers, 



1 The account of Suidas (v. 2vAA.os) is obviously extracted from the passage in 

 Plutarch. 



2 Thus Antonius Scainus interpolated the seventh and eighth books of the 

 Politics between the third and fourth. Conringe, who followed him, made up for 

 a scrupulous abstinence from this course by indulging himself freely in hypothe- 

 sized lacunae j to such an extent that Goettling somewhat facetiously observes, 

 Asteriscis suis interpositis noctem Aristoteliam quasi stellis illustrare sategit. 

 Pref. ad Arist. Polit. p. 6. 



a Brandis, Ueber die Schicksale der Aristotelischen Buecher, und einige Kriterien 

 ihrer Aechtheit, in Niebuhr's Rheinisches Museum, vol. i. Kopp, Nachtrag zur 

 Brandisischen Untersuchung, &c. in the same work, vol. iii. Fabricius (Biblioth. 

 Grseca, iii. c. v.) mentions a French author who, in a work entitled Les Amenites 

 de la Critique, published at Paris in 1717, impugns the story of Strabo. Of the 

 two German writers, the former has contributed by far the more important investi- 

 gations of this subject. Stahr (Aristotelia, Zweiter Theil) has availed himself of 

 both, but has added little of his own. 



statement, 



