H. B. Gottschalk-Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs

Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic ScholarchsAuthor(s): H. B. GottschalkReviewed work(s):Source: Hermes, 100. Bd., H. 3 (1972), pp. 314-342Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4475745 .

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NOTES ON THE WILLS OF THE PERIPATETIC SCHOLARCHS

I The documents

Among the more important documents preserved by Diogenes Laertius are the wills of six leading philosophers, Plato (3, 4I-3), Epicurus (io, I6-2I), and the first four heads of the Aristotelian school, Aristotle himself (5, II-i6), Theophrastus (5, 5I-7), Strato (5, 6I-4 = fr. IO WEHRLI) and Lyco (5, 69 to 74 = fr. I5 WEHRLI); Aristotle's will has also been preserved in two Arabic versions containing some variant readings '. While those of Plato and Aristotle are purely personal, the remaining wills contain more or less detailed provisions for the continuation and endowment of the Epicurean and Peripatetic schools, which throw a good deal of light on their organisation and the conditions in which they operated. The Peripatetic wills are particularly instruc- tive, forming as they do a continuous series dating from 322 to 228/5 BC. Yet there has been no comprehensive study of these documents since the eighties of the last century, and the discussions published then concentrated mainly on their legal aspects 2, The aim of this paper is rather to extract as much historical information as possible about the Peripatos and its members. I shall press the evidence hard and some of my conclusions are more speculative than I like. But none of my results conflict with any reliable ancient testimony, and I hope at least to succeed in dispelling some misconceptions and in clarifying the nature of our sources and the limits of our knowledge.

Diogenes tells us that Strato's will came to him (directly or indirectly) from the collection of Ariston of Ceos, an eminent Peripatetic who probably

1 See below, p. 3I5ff- 2 C. G. BRUNS, Die Testamente der gr. Philosophen, Ztschr. d. Savigny-Stiftung, Ro-

manistische Abtlg. i, i88o, 1-52; A. HUG, Zu den Test. d. gr. Philos., Festschr. zur Be- grilf3ung der Vers. deutscher Philologen u. Schulmanner, Zfirich I887, 1-22. WILAMO-

WITZ, Antigonos v. Karystos, Berlin i88i, 263ff., deals with the historical problems. Aris- totle's will has come in for a great deal of individual attention. An English translation of the Arabic version of Usaibia is printed by I. DiURING, Aristotle in the Biographical Tradition, Goteborg 1957, P. 2i9f., and both the Arabic and the Greek text are discussed on pp. 6i ff. and 238 ff.; this work will be referred to as AB. Another edition of the Greek text, with the chief Arabic variants (in a Latin translation) given in an apparatus, is in M. PLEZIA, Arist. Epistulae cum Testamento, Warsaw I96I. Discussions by A. GRANT, Aristotle, London I877, 26ff.; G. GROTE, Aristotle, London 2i880, I7ff.; E. ZELLER, Ph. d. Gr. II 23, I879,

4Iff.; W. W. JAEGER, Aristoteles, Berlin 1923 etc., 343 ff.; C. M. MULVANY, Notes on the

Legend of Ar., Class. Quart. 20, I926, 157ff.; M. PLEZIA, in Meander 2, I947, 215ff. (in

Polish; not available to the present writer); A.-H. CHROUST, Ar. 's Last Will and Testament, Wien. Stud. 8o, I967, 90ff. includes English translations of the Greek and Arabic versions in parallel columns. DURING, PLEZIA and CHROUST break the text up into short numbered sections; in this paper references will be given to Diogenes' paragraphs and sections in the numeration of DURING and PLEZIA, e.g. Diog. 5. I5, ? 2e D.-P. CHROUST'S numeration

differs from that of the other editors and will not be given here.



Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs 3I5

succeeded Lyco as head of the school in 228/5'. It has been plausibly assumed that the remaining Peripatetic wills, together with much of the material for Diogenes' first four Peripatetic lives, were taken from the same source 2. Ari- stotle's will was also quoted by Hermippus and may have been included in his life of Aristotle . It was published again by Andronicus of Rhodos, from whose text the Arabic versions are derived4. The Arabic and Greek texts agree very closely on the whole, except that the Arabic versions omit the final paragraph (Diog. 5, I5-6) and in several places have short sentences not found in the Greek. DURING, who is inclined to regard most of these additions as genuine, has suggested that the text published by Andronicus was more complete than that of Ariston and Hermippus, and was based on a copy he found among Aristotle's papers; the last paragraph, he thinks, was omitted by the Arabs because it contains provisions for setting up statues of some relatives of Aristotle's and cult- statues of Zeus and Athena, which would have offended Muslim sensibilities. This is certainly possible, but it is equally possible that the Arabic writers used an incomplete text 5. A few other small omissions in the Arabic versions are probably the result of ordinary textual corruption, e.g. of the words O'C&

xoca ocaro5 xocal uiiv at the end of the second sentence of ? I2 (i b D- . The words at the end of the following sentence, cG xOl 7rOT-p cOV xal aXOAcp6 , are

1Diog. 5, 64 Koal od8e ,iv etLatv cd alep6[voL ocCroTOi (i.e. Strato's) &LA0xxat, x0co& 7rou

auvisycay xoc 'Aparcov o Ketog. This is the reading of BFP and the modern editions; cf. W. KNOGEL, Der Peripatetiker Ariston v. Keos bei Philodem, Leipzig I933, 75 n. 4. The inferior manuscripts and most of the older editions have 'A. 6o otxeto, but the right reading is found in the FROBEN edition (1533) and was conjectured by CASAUBON and inde- pendently by ZELLER P. 4I n. 4. On the question of Ariston's scholarchate see F. WEHRLI,

Die Schule des Aristoteles 6, Basel 1952 etc., p. 49. 2 See P. MORAUX, Les Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote, Louvain 195I, 244ff.,

with references to earlier literature in n. 138. Since Diogenes also names Ariston as an authority for his life of Epicurus (io, I4 = Ariston fr. 32 WIEHRLI; unfortunately the text is corrupt and Ariston's name has been restored conjecturally), it is not impossible that Epicurus' will was transmitted by him as well. At least one can say that an interest in such documents is characteristically Peripatetic. Whether Ariston wrote a life of Aristotle has been disputed, cf. PLEZIA Eos 5I, 196I, 246.

3 Ap. Ath. 589c = AB T I2C. 4 Vita Ar. Marc. 43, Elias in Categ. 107, 13 = AB T 75 P 3; the intermediate link was

a life of Aristotle by an otherwise unknown Ptolemy. On the relationship of the Arabic to the Greek text and the very small differences between the two Arabic versions, see AB

p. 6i ff., 238 ff., PLEZIA Ar. Epist. p. I53 ff., and CHROUST P. 9I ff.

5 If Andronicus did find a previously unpublished document, it could have been a rough draft; if Aristotle had more than one authorised copy of his will made, we should expect the fact to be mentioned in the will itself, as it is in Theophrastus' will ? 57. Cf. PLEZIA,

Eos 5I, I95I, 247ff. 6 P. 202 lines 4-5 LONG. Perhaps these words underly the phrase *)It is our last will

and testament that... e at the beginning of the following sentence in the Arabic, which does not correspond to anything in the Greek.



3I6 H. B. GOTTSCHALK

found in the text of Usaibia, but not in the Fihrist of Ibn an-Nadim. Of the Ara- bic additions, the words 'equivalent to I25 Roman Librae' after 'one talent' in Diog. 5, I3 ? i e D-P are certainly interpolated'. Other apparent additions are really transpositions due to faulty sentence-division; a clear example oc- curs in Diog. 5, I5, where the words xal To 7a6 ov ocuToi5 have been detached from the end of the second sentence (? 2 e D-P) and joined to the third (? 2 f D-P); another possible instance has been noticed in note i above. Most of the rest are unimportant and could have been inserted by the translator to clarify real or imagined obscurities. Only three add anything of substance. At the beginning of ? Id D-P (Diog. 5, I3) the circumstances in which Theophrastus is to have the option of marrying Pythias are more precisely defined by the clause #If Nicanor dies intestate((; at the beginning of ? 2 a D-P (Diog. 5, I4 med.) the Arabic texts have a sentence about Nicomachus which will be fully discussed later; in ? 2b D-P (Diog. 5, I4 ad fin.) the bequest of five hundred drachmae and a maidservant to Ambracis are made conditional on her remaining in Py- thias' service until her marriage. The third at least could well be genuine, since it improves the sense although Diogenes' text is not difficult enough to tempt an editor or translator to tamper with it. But whatever the truth of this, one thing is clear. While the Arabic text may be better in some instances, there is no fundamental superiority which would make it necessary to suppose that Andronicus had a different and better text than was available to Diogenes' source. Both versions will have suffered a certain amount of damage in the course of transmission, and our choice of which variants to accept must be guided by the merits of each particular case.

In the case of Theophrastus the position is more difficult. Here we have only one complete text, but in addition there are at least two references in later Greek writers purporting to be to Theophrastus' will which do not correspond to anything in the version preserved by Diogenes. Athenaeus (i86a), in a passage in praise of wine as an aid to social intercourse, says that Theophrastus left money for symposia. Harpocration quotes Theophrastus' will as evidence that groups of men meeting to honour dead persons were known as opy?c,v?s2; the implication is that he knew a version of Theophrastus' will in which some kind of 'Commemoration of Benefactors' was instituted and the celebrants, presumably all or some members of the school, were referred to by this title. On the other hand, the text of Diogenes shows no signs of any omissions. Prob- ably Athenaeus and Harpocration are mistaken; they may have been think-

1 If DtRING is right in supposing that they were put in by Andronicus, our faith in his editorial competence would have to be re-examined. In reality they look like an ordinary intrusive gloss.

2 S.v. 6pye&vocq ad fin., copied by Photius and the Suda: 'Tuore 8A 5atepov vev6jitat1L so6 -7r1 =tLt -va tcv & ro0oav6voYTv OuvLkfXL xocl 6pyecooc; 6toocq dvoct&aooL, 5 g auv- L8UtV ?x TYv ?9COp&a'OU axOqXrov.




ing of an endowment made during Theophrastus' lifetime or simply have given a wrong reference. The wills of Strato and Lyco are not mentioned by any writer except Diogenes.

In spite of these complications there can be no doubt about the authenticity of the wills 1. The evidence here is cumulative. There is the plentiful domestic detail, uninfluenced by later scandalous stories like the one that Aristotle's estate included a large amount of expensive plate 2, and the mixture of famous and little-known names among the persons named as beneficiaries or witnesses. One circumstance which might appear to support the opposite view, in fact does nothing of the kind: there is no mention of a school in Aristotle's will because he died in exile and probably did not expect that his former teaching activity would be renewed by his successors, but a forger would probably have inserted some reference to the Peripatos. The language of the wills also favours this conclusion. There are slight but noticeable differences, and the style of Theophrastus' will in particular is close to that of his other writings 3. Such im- pressions are inevitably subjective, but they are confirmed by at least one objective observation: there is a steady increase in number of third person plural imperatives in -coaov in the later wills. This form does not occur at all in the wills of Plato and Aristotle, who use jussive infinitives instead. Theo- phrastus, who died in 288/6, has 6aTXc6aCv twice, but jussive infinitives in all other cases4. Strato, who died c. 270, has six -oaov imperatives, including one instance of "a-ICOGOCv, but no jussive infinitives; his contemporary Epicurus (died 268) has twelve -X6oCv imperatives. Lyco, who died in 226/4, has six, and like Strato uses this form in all cases where he wants to express a third person plural imperative. This progression is exactly what we should expect , but no Hellenistic forger could have reproduced it so precisely.

The form and content of Aristotle's will are quite different from those of Theophrastus, Strato and Lyco. Made when Aristotle was an exile in Chalcis, it contains detailed provisions for the members of his household but says nothing about a school; the books and teaching equipment, maps, anatomical drawings, etc., which we know he must have possessed, are not mentioned. The others were all heads of an established school when they died, and all remained unmarried. So the personal element is less prominent in their wills, but all include more or less detailed provisions for the endowment and continuation of the school. The formal structure of these wills is uniform, except for details.

1 It was last challenged rather tentatively by GRANT l.c, and is generally accepted to- day. 2 Diog. 5, i6.

3 See e.g. the second sentence of ? 54, beginning IIo[ur7iAcXq g? xccl Opfwr. The same holds true of Epicurus' will with its involved periods, e.g. Diog. IO, I7.

' E.g. ? 53 ad fin. 7[Lk;XILov 7rotd1ac tou tpea3ut&tou7 . . . &4aou. a xccl r a,.

5 Cf. KtHNER-BLASS, Gramm. d. gr. Spr. I. 28, p. 5I; BLASS-DEBRUNNER, Gramm. d. neutest. Gr. ? 84, with references to earlier literature.



3I8 H. B. GOTTSCHALK

i. They begin with a clause leaving all the testator's property in his home- town (tc o'Lxot, r' &'v o'L'Xc) to his natural heirs, brothers' in the case of Lyco and probably nephews in the case of Theophrastus and Strato, since in each case one of the heirs has the same name as the testator's father 2. This is the equivalent of the formal heredis institutio of a Roman will3; there is nothing which corresponds in Aristotle's will, presumably because Aristotle left legitimate issue. The later scholarchs each name two heirs, and in the wills of Strato and Lyco the one named last seems to have a certain pre-eminence 4. These features are probably accidental, but it is worth noting that none of the scholarchs left the property he had inherited from his forebears to anyone but the natural heirs. This would have been too great an infringement of the rights of their families.

2. Next come clauses dealing with the testator's obligations and providing for the payment of various expenses, including those of the burial (Thphr. ? 5I fin.-52; Str. ? 6i fin.; Lyco ? 69 fin.-70 init.). In Theophrastus' will, this section includes provisions for repairs and embellishments to the school buildings, while his funeral is only mentioned later (? 53 fin.), almost as an after- thought. In Lyco's will, more provisions of this kind are inserted in ? 7I-72

init., after the clauses dealing with the school. The expenses arising from these provisions are mostly met from the testator's liquid assets in Athens and fall ultimately on the chief heirs".

3. Next come arrangements for the school (Thphr. ? 53, Str. ? 62, Lyco ? 70). Theophrastus and Lyco leave it to a group of ten xoLv&vOUi5-V ('Fel- lows') or yv(pLjioL, Strato to a single man, Lyco; but all include a short exhorta-

I Or perhaps half-brothers? One of them was also named Lyco and was young enough to be described by the scholarch as ulou ai&vl &aix6toc (? 70).

2 Melantes, Diog. 5, 5I and 36; Arcesilaus, Diog. 5, 6i and 58. Leon, the father of Me- lantes and Pancreon, will have been Theophrastus' brother and an Eresian. This is prefer- able to JACOBY'S view (F.Gr.H. I32 T i Comm.) that he was identical with Leon of By- zantium, the historian and pupil of Aristotle.

3There is a complication in Theophrastus' case. Most of his liquid assets seem to have been in the hands of a certain Hipparchus, who was himself financially embarrassed at the time of Theophrastus' death. In order to avoid unprofitable disputes, Theophrastus left the residue of his Athenian property to Hipparchus on condition that he paid all the minor bequests, including certain repairs and improvements to the school buildings, and a talent to each of the two natural heirs, Melantes and Pancreon. On these facts HUG concludes (p. 4f.) that Hipparchus was the chief heir; but in view of the formal parallels in the other wills and Theophrastus' apology for the course he had decided to take (? 55 fin.), this is very questionable.

4 In Strato's will, Arcesilaus is to decide which slave is to be given to Epicrates, to negotiate with the steward Heraios and the chief executor Olympichus, and so on (? 63 f.); in Lyco's, the younger Lyco, described as ULOU t&iv &aXjx6tXoc (? 70), is left the property in Aegina, made responsible for paying sundry debts, and named as a 'fellow' of the school.

5 Cf. HUG P. 7ff. for further details.




tion to all members of the school to co-operate for the good of the whole '. The school property consisted of the school park (x%ptoq) and buildings, including a shrine of the Muses, an altar (presumably in the courtyard outside the shrine), at least two colonnades (atoocL), and several houses adjoining the park; some teaching equipment, such as the wall-maps fixed in one of the stoai, and a certain amount of furniture, including the statues in the shrine, were also included. The library however is treated as a separate item in the wills of Theophrastus and Strato, and evidently was not at that time part of the ordinary school property.

4. Books are mentioned in each of the wills but treated differently each time. Theophrastus gives them only half a sentence at the end of section two (i.e. before he comes to the school property), in which he leaves 'all the books' to Neleus of Scepsis (? 52 ad fin.); his reason will be considered later. Strato deals with them immediately after the school (? 62 fin.); he leaves all the books, except those he had written himself, together with the dining equipment needed for the school's common meals, to Lyco. The books written by Strato are not mentioned again and presumably went with the residuary estate to his nephews. Lyco does not refer to any books except those he himself had written, and these are only mentioned among the miscellaneous bequests near the end of the will (? 73); they are divided into two groups, those previously published (avyvCOa- ,tieov), which are left to Chares, a freed slave, perhaps Lyco's secretary2, and the unpublished manuscripts (xVorX3Toc), which are left to Callinus, one of the Fellows, for editing. The absence of any separate provision concerning the books he had inherited from Strato can only mean that Lyco regarded these as an integral part of the school property.

5. The last part of each will, amounting to more than half the total length, is taken up by bequests to friends and slaves and by technical matters such as lists of witnesses (Ar. ? I4-I6, Thphr. ? 54-7, Str. ? 62 fin.-64, Lyco ? 72 to 74). These minor legacies, like the obligations mentioned under (2) above, are paid from the testator's liquid assets outside his home town; the responsibility for carrying them out is laid on the chief heirs, who inherit the residue, if any. These sections contain little of importance to the historian.

1 See further below, p. 330ff. The members seem to be named roughly in order of seniority; at least the first two on Theophrastus' list, Hipparchus and Neleus, were quite old, while the last on Lyco's list, Lyco o & poi56, was obviously junior to the rest.

2 CAPELLE'S suggestion (RE XIII, 2307) that Chares and Mikros, another slave freed by Lyco's will (? 72), were natural sons of Lyco is quite without foundation. Mikros was a young boy; Lyco junior is made responsible for his education and keep for six years. His mother is freed in the following paragraph, together with several other slaves, but no further provision is made for her. Chares is provided with maintenance for life, which suggests that he had already reached pensionable age. If Lyco senior had had a concubine or concubines among his slaves, we should certainly have heard about it.

Hermes 100,3 21



320 H. B. GOTTSCHALK

In spite of this uniformity the wills reveal something of the character of the testators and the circumstances in which they wrote'. Many scholars have remarked on the nobility of Aristotle's will as a document showing the concern he felt for his family and other dependents; a different aspect will be considered later 2. Solicitude for the welfare of their dependents, including slaves and former slaves, is something we also find in the wills of the later scholarchs, but even more important is their concern for the future of the Peripatetic school. Theo- phrastus, whose will displays the most meticulous draftsmanship of the four , lays down with great precision the terms on which the members of the school were to enjoy its facilities, and gives a detailed list of repairs and other work which were to be paid for out of the estate; he even remembers to confirm the caretaker in his office (? 54). We learn that the school buildings had suffered considerable damage, which had not been fully repaired when the will was drawn Up 4. This was probably a result of the siege of Athens by Demetrius Poliorcetes in 296-4. But the gloomy picture drawn by WILAMOWITZ of the state of the Peripatos at this time needs to be modified. There were ample funds available for repairs, in spite of the losses caused by Hipparchus' bad luck or misman- agement; the chief sufferers from these were Melantes and Pancreon, and even they received a talent apiece in addition to the property in Eresos 5. Theo- phrastus had established the Peripatos physically and overcome the hos- tility which had forced Aristotle to leave the city and had dogged Theophrastus himself in earlier days 6. He seems to have been confident that the school would continue to flourish.

Strato's will is much more concise and contains no details about buildings; it does not even enumerate the new Fellows separately, their names have to be inferred from the list of s?;C?oa which immediately precedes the clause appointing Lyco as head of the school 7. But his words make it clear that he was faced with a new problem, manpower. Student numbers, we know, had been declining 8, and when Strato looked round for a potential successor, he found

1 Cf. HUG I7ff. 2 Below, p. 328. 3 It is the only one of which several copies were made and the only one to specify where

the copies were to be deposited; presumably it was prepared some time before Theophras- tus' death. BRUNS (P. 24) sees in this a reflection of Theophrastus' known interest in the philosophy of law.

4 ? 5I; note especially t& &vocOx-qax 6ao 7rp6pov 6cpX?v and so atot&ov o1xo8o[L- OIVCXL . .. Xp? x OpOV 7tpO6tepov.

5 Cf. WILAMOWITZ 267 n. 4. The rest of the note is equally inaccurate, and WILAMO-

WITZ' assertion that all the philosophical schools abandoned their suburban camp-,ses after the Macedonian invasion of Attica in 200 is disproved by Cicero Fin. 5, 4. In general, An- tigonos is rather a bad book, and it is time historians stopped using it as an authoritative source. 6 Cf. Diog. 5, 37f. 4I.

7 ? 62. ot XoL7m0o in the following sentence must refer to these men. 8 Plut. 472 e 3 Str. fr. 8 WEHRLI.



Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs 32I

that most members of his school were either too old or too busy to undertake this task'. He reacted in what one suspects was a characteristic way by appointing the only candidate who seemed suitable, without awaiting an election by the remaining members of the school. His choice of Lyco has often been criticised and there can be no doubt that his philosophical achievements turned out of be undistinguished and the intellectual vigour of the Peripatos fell off sharply under his scholarchate. But the same symptoms of decline are found at this time in all the schools excepts the Stoic, and Lyco seems to have done at least one of the things expected of him. In a world where students increas- ingly wanted a liberal education and some guidance on moral principles rather than radical thinking, he found a place for his school on the middle ground between the rigid dogmas of Stoics and Epicureans.

Lyco's will is the longest and most personal, as well as the most muddled, of the four. The provisison for his burial is mentioned twice (? 69 and 7I), and in the second place it is not immediately clear who is to be ultimately responsible for the cost2. The residue of the estate in Attica is also disposed of before the minor bequests have been dealt with (? 70 init.). Lyco's fussy good-nature and his egotism are both clearly revealed. At the very outset we are told that the will was made because Lyco was suffering from an illness which he thought he might not survive. Like his predecessors, he urges the surviving members to work together, but his words contain a personal note not found before: they are asked to co-operate zaxpoi5 xcoxd 'ou -corou xZap (? 70). While the school property is only referred to very briefly, the minor bequests are specified in great detail. They range from an endowment to supply oil for students to an- oint themselves after exercise to the gift of a pair of drinking-cups to Callinus' young son; Lyco's fondness for athletics and high living are well attested by other sources3.

II Aristotle's Family

Apart from the ordinary household servants Aristotle left three dependents at his death, a daughter Pythias, a son Nicomachus, and Herpyllis. Pythias is the only one of the three whose status is certain. She was Aristotle's daughter by his wife or, as some authorities say, his first wife, who was also named Py-

1 Diog. 5, 62 O'L &LiV eOL 7rpea6$trpOL, ot ai &axoXoL. This does not mean, as CAPELLE (RE XIII 2307) seems to think, that the younger men were too preoccupied with research, but that they were trying to advance their careers in the outside world, perhaps even that they were too poor; Lyco was certainly a wealthy man. Cf. J. L. STOCKS, EzoB, Class. Quart. 30, I936, I77ff.

2 WILAMOWITZ 263 n. i takes &pipo-rpotq in ? 7I fin. as referring to Boulon and Calli- nus, and inferred that Lyco had made a separate will in his home-town leaving some of his property there to these friends; in reality he left all this property to his brothers (? 69), and &'pupo0poLq must refer to them.

3 Diog. 5, 67; Ath. 547d = Lyco fr. 7 WEHRLI.

21*




thias, the sister, niece or daughter' of Hermias, the ruler of Atarneus at whose court Aristotle spent the years 348-5 and whom he commemorated after his death by a memorial at Delphi and an ode which has survived to the present. No separate financial provision was made for the younger Pythias in the will, but Aristotle appointed a guardian, Nicanor, for her and the other members of the family and arranged that he should marry Pythias when she reached the proper age; he also made various alternative provisions in case Nicanor should die prematurely. Nicanor was probably a relative. Later in the will (Diog. 5, I5 = ? 3 a D-P) his mother is included in a list of relatives whose portrait-statues Aristotle had commissioned, and there is much to be said for MULVANY'S conjecture that he was the son of Aristotle's sister Arimneste and Proxenus2; the further statement of the Vita Marciana (? 3) that Aristotle had adopted Nicanor is very doubtful3. The traditional identification of this Nica- nor with Alexander's general who announced the recall of exiles at the Olympic Games in 324, fought for Cassander against Polyperchon in 3I8 and was subsequently executed by Cassander after a quarrel4, has been doubted by MULVANY

and DtURING (11. cc.). The trouble Aristotle took to provide for the possibility that Nicanor should die before he could marry Pythias suggests that she was still some years below the marriageable age. Since the minimum age of marriage for girls at Athens seems to have been fourteen5, she cannot have been

I See AB T IO and ZELLER P. 20. She is described as Hermias' sister and adopted daughter

by Aristocles, who may be following Apellicon (ap. Euseb. PE I5, I3ff. = AB T 58j, 1);

as his niece by Strabo I3, 57, as his 'daughter or niece' by Demetrius Magnes ap. Diog.

Laert. 5, 3, and as his daughter by Vita Menag. 2. It is not easy to choose between these

variants. If Aristocles' statement goes back to Apellicon, it would represent our most an-

cient authority; but Strabo's authority is almost as good and Aristocles could have mis-

read his source. Two points are in Strabo's favour: it is intrinsically more likely that Her-

mias should have adopted a niece than a sister, and Pythias must have been much younger

than he; she was a good deal younger than Aristotle, who was about fifty years old when

his daughter was born (see below) and who was himself probably some years younger than

Hermias. It is even possible that Pythias was Hermias' daughter, as the Vita Menagiana

says, and that the other stories were a consequence of the invention that Hermias was

a eunuch, on which see MULVANY I55.

2 MULVANY 159, accepted by DtRING AB P. 27I. It is stated as a fact by CHROUST P. 98. 3 It may be based on the words of Aristotle's will (Diog. 5, 12 = ? i b D-P) eL7&VXsECaOGo

a& Ncx&vwp xao '4 7=ALq65 . . . coG xocd wcri]p 'wv xocl &M8eXcp6, but nothing can be in-

ferred from this expression; cf. DtRING, PLEZIA and CHROUST ad loc. 4 GROTE, Arist.2, p. II; ZELLER P. 5f.; BERvE RE XVII 267; PLEZIA P. IS5. On BERVE'S

attempt to identify him with the Nicanor who wrote a Life of Alexander the Great see JA-

COBY, F.Gr.H. I46 Comm. 5 A. R. W. HARRISON, The Law of Athens I, Oxford I968, 2I n. I, combines Demosth.

27, 4 and 29, 43; cf. Arist. Ath. Pol. 56, 7, WILAMOWITZ, Arist. u. Athen I, 334 n. 31. In the

Gortyn Code (Col. I2 line i8) the earliest age at which heiresses (rn'Crpc.oXot) are allowed

to marry is twelve years. CHROUST'S guess that Pythias was born about 338 (p. 103) is quite

unsubstantiated.



Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs 323

more than twelve years old at the time of Aristotle's death. Her later career is known from Pliny and Sextus Empiricus . She was married three times, first to Nicanor, then to a certain Procles by whom she had two sons, Procles and Demaratus, and finally to a physician Metrodorus 2, a pupil of Chrysippus and teacher of Erasistratus, by whom she had one son, Aristotle the younger; thus her last marriage forged a personal link between Aristotle, the Peripatos and the most distinguished medical circles of the period. Two of her sons ultimately joined the Peripatos. Demaratus is included in the list of xotvovOiv-rs4 in Theophrastus' will (? 53) and later in the same paragraph the younger Aris- totle is given the right to join them and commended to the special care of the older members; presumably he was still too young to hold a fellowship.

Nicomachus and Herpyllis will unfortunately have to be considered together. Most of our sources say that Herpyllis became Aristotle's mistress after the death of his wife and that Nicomachus was her son, and this story is embellished in various ways. Sources derived from Hermippus describe her as a oatLpoc (AB T I2c), Timaeus calls her a Oep&1t7rLvm and 7XXocx' (AB T I2b, 9c), and the Vita Menagiana 4 adds that Aristotle obtained her from Hermias after the death of Pythias-a silly invention, for Hermias died shortly after 343 while Pythias was alive to give birth to her daughter around 334. Aristocles ( =AB T 58m) claims that Aristotle married Herpyllis, but this looks like a belated attempt to whitewash his memory 3. Most modem writers have followed the majority tradition4; the exceptions are MULVANY (P. I57f.) and DURING

(AB p. 266, 269f.), who regard Nicomachus as the son of Aristotle and Pythias, but disagree about the position of Herpyllis. According to MULVANY she was a servant who became Aristotle's wife, while DURING concludes that she #managed Aristotle's household as head of his servants<< (AB p. 264). This is certainly on the right lines, but perhaps makes too little allowance for the very large difference in the provision Aristotle made for her and for the ordinary servants. Since DURING'S conclusion has not been universally accepted, a new examina- tion of the evidence may not be superfluous. Three questions have to be de-

1 AB T iia-b. 2 There is a slight doubt about his name. The manuscripts of Diog. Laert. 5, 53 give it

as MeL8LoU or M,8Mou, but it is corrected to M-Tpo&6poiu (from Sextus) in the modern editions. Cf. W. KROLL, RE XV, 1482f. and R. HELM, Hermes 29, I894, i6i ff.

3 While Aristocles' intention was praiseworthy, his methods could be clumsy. Thus he tried to defend Aristotle against the charge of marrying Pythias for unworthy motives by quoting a spurious letter attributed to him by Apellicon; see below, p. 34I f.

4 ZELLER P. 22 n.; WILAMOWITz Antig. 264 n. i, Ar. u. Ath. II, 3I6; HUG 3; JAEGER

341; K. v. FRITZ, RE XVII, 1936, 462f.; H. H. SCHMITT, RE XXIV, I96I, 548f.; PLEZIA,

Class. et Med. 22, I96I, 27 (but in his edition of Aristotle's letters, p. IS6, he accepts DtRING'S view that Nicomachus was Pythias' son); CHROUST Iioof. GROTE P. 17 and BRUNS I7ff.

think it probably that Aristotle married Herpyllis; CHROUST p. io8 argues that he adopted or otherwise legitimised Nicomachus, without marrying Herpyllis.




cided: did Nicomachus rank as Aristotle's legitimate son (and heir) when the will was made? Was he the son of Pythias or Herpyllis? What was Herpyllis' position in Aristotle's household?

Two difficulties have been raised against the view that Nicomachus was legitimate. The very wide powers over Aristotle's estate given to Nicanor, including the provision that any arrangements he might make concerning Pythias and Nicomachus should be binding even if he died before he could marry Py- thias or before any children were born of the marriage, would appear a serious infringement of Nicomachus' rights, if he was the legitimate heir'. Secondly, Theophrastus' guardianship of Aristotle's children and estate in case of Nica- nor's death seems to be made dependent on his marrying Pythias (Diog. 5, I3 = ? id D-P); this would imply that Pythias was the heiress (rctxknpoq) of the estate and Aristotle had no legitimate male descendants. The first objection can be met by the consideration that if the very wide powers granted Ni- canor ever became operative, Nicomachus would still be a minor; in fact these powers amount to no more than the right to continue as Nicomachus' guardian if Pythias died early, or to appoint a new guardian if Nicanor himself should die. As to the second, Pythias' betrothal to Nicanor resulted from a decision of Aristotle, not from the rule of (X&crxaLG x, under which the nearest male agnate on the father's side was entitled, and in some cases obliged, to marry a brotherless heiress 2. Theophrastus later became Nicomachus' guardian without marrying Pythias3, and in his own will bequeathed an estate in Stagira to a certain Callinus. The suggestion that this was Aristotle's old house, left to Theophrastus by Nicomachus (who was killed in battle as a youth) is a plausible one4; it is not easy to see how else he should have acquired property there".

I Diog. 5, 12 = ? i c D-P. Cf. HUG 3; F. SCHULIN, Das gr. Testament verglichen mit d. rbmischen, Basel I882, 28.

2 This point is made by WILAMOWITz, Antigonos 264 n. i. On the law concerning heiresses, see HARRISON 9ff. 132 if. I58 ff. Similar provisions are found in the Gortyn code 7, 15ff.

(cf. R. F. WILLETS, The Law Code of Gortyn, Berlin I967, 23ff.) and must have existed in most Greek states.

3 Aristocles ap. Euseb. PE I5. I5 = AB T 58m. 4 MULVANY I58; DtRING AB P. 266. 5 The view that he bought it when staying at Stagira with Aristotle at some time after

345 (JAEGER ii6 n. I; REGENBOGEN RE Suppl. VII, 1357) is ill-founded. There is considerable doubt whether Aristotle ever stayed at Stagira except for short visits; Apollodorus F.Gr.H. 244 F 38, reprinted in AB p. 253 f., does not allow for a prolonged stay there in his chronology of Aristotle's life (cf. A. MANSION, Rev. Philos. de Louvain 56, 1958, 628). There is no real evidence that Theophrastus accompanied him, if he did; the slight acquaint- ance with the flora of Stagira implied by HP 3, II, i and 4, I6, 3 could have been gained on a short holiday, or even at second hand from Aristotle's description. And if Theophrastus did join Aristotle at Stagira, it is more likely that Aristotle would have put him up than that he should have gone to the expense of buying a house of his own.




If these arguments are inconclusive, some more general considerations f a- vour Nicomachus' legitimacy. He was named after his paternal grandfather I, and except in the passages referring to Pythias' marriage, the children are always mentioned together in Aristotle's will. No separate financial provision is made for either of them. This can be explained in one of two ways. Either Pythias was the heiress and Nicomachus was cut off with nothing (the money left to Herpyllis would go to the children of any marriage she might subsequently contract), or Nicomachus was the heir and a dowry for Pythias had been arranged before the will was drawn up; this would imply, what is in any case likely, that her betrothal to Nicanor had been agreed some time previously. The second alternative is much the more likely. In DURING'S view it is confirmed by a sentence found only in the Arabic versions of the will; this sentence comes after the section dealing with Herpyllis and runs: >>As to my estate and my son, there is no need for me to be concerned about testamentary provisions<(2. Unfortunately it is certainly spurious. Not only it is in the wrong place-Nico- machus was mentioned several times at the beginning of the will, and any further clauses concerning him should have come before the ones dealing with Herpyl- lis3; it is either redundant or wrong in law. If Nicomachus was legitimate, it is redundant, for legitimate sons were not and did not need to be named in wills, since their right of succession was fixed by law 4. If he was illegitimate it is wrong in law, for where there was legitimate issue, bastards would inherit nothing that had not been bequeathed to them by will5.

While Aristotle's will says little about Nicomachus, its provisions concerning Herpyllis are more detailed than any others (Diog. 5, I3f. -= ? i e D-P). Like the children, she is placed under the protection of Nicanor, and Aristotle enjoins him and the other executors to take good care of her )>in memory of me and because she has been good to mea(6. He then provides for her as follows. (I) If she wants to marry, she is to be married >in a manner not unworthy of mea 7.

' Cf. MULVANY I58, who quotes Demosth. 39, 27. 2 ? 2 a DtRING (AB P. 220), ? I5 CHROUST, n. 3 in PLEZIA'S apparatus; it would stand

in the middle of Diog. 5, I4. DURING P. 239 and CHROUST P. io8 accept it as genuine. 3 DtRING i.c. has seen this point and argues that an interpolator would have been un-

likely to insert it here. But probably the interpolator thought that Nicomachus was the son of Herpyllis.

4 Cf. Isaeus 6. 27f., where the fact of a boy's being mentioned in his putative father's will is treated as evidence of his illegitimacy.

5 Cf. HARRISON p. 67ff. In Athens at least the amount which could be left to v600L was strictly limited.

6 8Ll aL royq etL'rpo6nouq xcxl Ntx&vopa [v7Ja v-rfi &0p o5 xacl 'Ep7uXXE8oq, O'rt oxoukovcx 7rlpL &E? kykvE'ro The Arabic version is slightly different: ))For judging from what I saw of her earnestness in rendering service to me and her zeal for all that was becoming for me, she has deserved well of me<x (tr. DtRING, AB p. 2I9).

7 Reading o>ux &voctcoc 'uv. The Arabic version has )>She shall be given to a man of good repute<(, and COBET altered Diogenes' text to okvocEq.




(2) In addition to what she has already, she is to receive one talent in cash, four maids and a man-servant. (3) She is offered the choice of Aristotle's father's house in Stagira or one of the guest-wings' of his house in Chalcis to inhabit; whichever she chooses, the executors are to furnish it to her satisfaction. The last provision clearly shows that Aristotle expected Herpyllis to have a separate household, even if she should decide to live in the same house as Nicanor and his household (who were presumably going to inhabit the main part of the house in Chalcis). The children, however, were to remain with Nicanor. This is surely decisive. Aristotle would hardly have envisaged such an arrangement if Nico- machus had been Herpyllis' son2.

Of course it does not follow that Herpyllis could not have been Aristotle's mistress or even his wife, but this is unlikely for a number of reasons. In spite of the care Aristotle takes for her welfare, the way in which he speaks of her in his will would appear cold and inappropriate if she had been his wife 3, and his request for his remains to be buried besides those of Pythias suggests that Herpyllis had not supplanted Pythias in his affections. MULVANY has pointed out (p. 158) that it would have been highly indecorous for Aristotle to establish a former mistress in his father's house-it would certainly have been a grave infringement of the rights of his legitimate heirs-while the notion of a woman being married off by her dead lover's executors ))in a manner worthy of the lover# is hardly conceivable outside the world of Feydeau's plays. We must also bear in mind that at the time of Pythias' death Aristotle was in his fifties, in moderate health and engaged in intellectual work of an intensity which most of us can hardly even imagine. In these circumstances he would have needed a sympathetic nurse and housekeeper more than a mistress.

On the other hand, Herpyllis must have been more than a servant. The most that any slaves receive in Aristotle's will, apart from their freedom, is five hundred or a thousand drachmai and one or two young slaves. From Lyco's will we learn that even a century after Aristotle's death five hundred drachmai, together with the remittance of his purchase-money, was enough to enable a

1 These guest-wings are described by Vitruvius 6, 7, 4; they were self-contained and had separate entrances. There is no reason to suppose that the house in Chalcis had come to Aris- totle from his mother (so DfURING, RE Suppl. XI, 173, etc.); she was descended from one of the leaders of the Chalcians who colonised Stagira (Dion. Hal. Amm. I, 5, 527 = AB T I d), but it does not follow that she ever lived at Chalcis or owned property there. Houses with self-contained guest-wings belong to a late period of Greek architecture, cf. FIECHTER,

RE VII, 2546. 2 It is true that a widow might return to her father's house, leaving her children in the

house of their guardian (HARRISON 38, III). But Herpyllis does not seem to have had any living male relatives and remained under Nicanor's tutelage.

3 This would become quite obvious if we could accept the Arabic text as truly representing the original at this point. The Arabic versions also refer to her as 'my servant Her- pyllis' in ? i a DtRING (Diog. 5, I2), but this looks like an interpolation.




freedman to retire in comfort'. Herpyllis however received as much as a very rich man might be expected to provide for a widow or unmarried daughter. Dowries of a talent or more are not unknown, but half that amount was much more usual, and the furniture and slaves she was left (which would not have been regarded as part of the dowry) were also worth more than was normal 2.

These bequests imply the existence of a closer relationship between Aristotle and Herpyllis than that of master and servant. A clue to the correct explanation is contained in Aristocles' statement that Herpyllis came from Stagira3. MULVANY and DURING dismiss it as nothing more than an inference from Aristotle's will, but even if this is so, he may well have hit upon the truth. Sta- gira was a dead-and-alive place on the frontiers of the civilised world, and Aristotle certainly did not expect that Nicanor or any other member of his immediate family would want to live there. Why then did he think that Her- pyllis might? The answer must be that Stagira was her home.

This is not enough, however, to account for her presence in Aristotle's household or the size of his bequests to her; since Aristotle had left Stagira as a boy and probably only returned there for short visits, he would not normally have obtained his staff from there. The simplest explanation is that Herpyllis was a relation of some kind who had come to Aristotle as his ward and managed his household after his wife's death; her relationship to Aristotle would then be similar to that of the boy Myrmex mentioned in the next clause of the will (Diog. 5, I4 = ? 2a D-P), who is to be sent back to his relatives 'in a manner worthy of us', together with the property Aristotle had received with him, the difference being that Herpyllis had no other relatives to go to4. It may be no accident that the passage about Myrmex comes immediately after the ones dealing with Herpyllis and before the clauses dealing with the slaves and freed- men. This suggestion is, of course, speculative, and involves discarding the whole of the ancient tradition concerning Herpyllis; but it does fit in with the only documentary evidence we possess, and the tradition is in any case vitiated by the gross and obvious libels it contains ". There is little profit in trying to dis-

I Diog. 5, 72 A7),0)Tptcp . . . &qPb%tt la )Tpo xal aOat ntvtre tvacq xod 14-tov xodt

XCTCvC, ZVM Tov0iBX6q 7rO?X& p?T' &kio)3 fOV et'Gx7)OCV Mxr 2 Figures of known dowries are most conveniently assembled by WYSE on Isaeus 2, 3,

6; cf. W. S. FERGUSON, Hellenistic Athens, London I9II, 68f., H. J. WOLFF, RE XXXII, 136ff. 139ff., and M. I. FINLEY, Studies in Land and Credit in Athens, London I95I, 79. 266ff. Larger dowries occur in New Comedy, e.g. Menander Dysk. 843f., cf. HANDLEY ad loc. But in this genre wealth was subject to the same inflationary laws as in Hollywood films.

3 Ap. Euseb. PE I, I5 = AB T 58m; Cf. MULVANY P. 157; DURING AB P. 270.

4 At an earlier period of his life Aristotle had been responsible for the upbringing of Callisthenes, the son of his cousin Hero (Plut. Alex. 55 = AB T 28c).

5 To mention only a few examples: we are told that Herpyllis was a concubine whom Aristotle took over from Hermias, that Aristotle was Hermias' 7trLCLx&, that Hermias was a eunuch but begot a daughter in spite of his disability (Vit. Menag. 2-4; Diog. 5, 3 says




cover the origin of this legend'; probably Herpyllis' presence in Aristotle's house and the provision he made for her were enough. One possible objection remains to be considered: it has been held that Herpyllis' name indicates a servile origin 2. But as MULVANY admits this argument is by no means conclusive. While the majority of names of this type known to-day belonged to slaves or prostitutes, there are many exceptions. In Aristotle's own circle one could point to Myrmex and even to Aristotle's mother Phaestis. Chamaileon the Peri- patetic was a prominent citizen of Heraclea. In assessing the significance of these names, we must bear in mind that we are dealing with bourgeois from provincial towns, not with Athenian Eupatrids 3.

Much has been written about the nobility of this will as a human document 4.

While this is perfectly true, it should not be allowed to obscure another characteristic: its pessimism. This is not only a feeling of loneliness, as JAEGER suggests, but a deep-seated fear of what the future held in store for Aristotle's family and friends. Nicanor was on a journey, and Aristotle felt some doubt about his safe return (Diog. 5, i6 = ? 3d D-P). He made elaborate provision for Py- thias, not only in case of his own death, but in case of Nicanor's (he even suggested Theophrastus, then about fifty years old, as a possible alternative husband for her), and for the estate in case of Pythias' death. He apparently did not expect his family to return to Athens and must have despaired of the continuation of the school he had started during his stay there. In part this mood was no doubt due to ill-health and the shock of his sudden exile. But it was not completely unjustified. Nicanor in fact died quite soon after his marriage to Pythias. Theophrastus became the guardian of Nicomachus and succeeded in restarting the school at Athens, but its activity was interrupted by political disturbances several times in the following decades.

III The Ozwnership of the School

Who was the legal owner of the Peripatetic school, its buildings and equipment? The problem can be stated as follows: Theophrastus (and later Lyco) left the school to a group of men to hold jointly, and Theophrastus expressly forbade its alienation (? 52 f., cf. 70); nevertheless it figures in the wills of Strato

that Aristotle married a former concubine of Hermias, but seems to be thinking of Pythias); Athenaeus 589 c includes Aristotle in a list of philosophers who loved concubines, in company with Socrates, Plato and Antisthenes; the Suda (=AB T gb) claims that Nicomachus became the 7cCLLIXO& of Theophrastus. For more of the same kind see AB pp. 352 and 373ff.

1 MULVANY'S explanation (p. 18f.), accepted by DtURING AB P. 266f., could be right, but is rather complicated.

2 MULVANY P. I57; cf. FICK-BECHTEL, Die gr. Personennamen 2i894, pp. 321 f. 327ff.

3 Parallels can be found in Athens. The Prosopographia Attica lists four women called Melitta, one at least (no. 9838) the sister of a knight, Dexileos. Conversely Alcibiades had a slave called Andromachus (Andoc. Myst. I2). Epicurus had a girl-slave called Phaedrion, and male slaves named Mys, Nicias and Lycon (Diog. IO, 2I).

4 See especially JAEGER 34I ff.; most recently CHROUST I 3 f.




and Lyco as if it were their personal property. To say that it belonged to the scholarchs, without further qualification1, is clearly too simple. But WILAMO- WITZ' other assertion, that the Peripatos and other philosophical schools were organised as O'xoL in honour of the Muses2, also needs to be qualified, for the property of such bodies belonged to the oLvo6v; its officers administered it for a limited period, but could not dispose of it unilaterally, by will or in any other way. In fact, the situation of the Peripatos does not exactly match any of the typical forms of common ownership which modern historical scholarship has recognised. If it differed from a oca6oq, neither was it an ordinary case of the joint ownership and use of assets by individuals, inasmuch as the rights of members could only be enjoyed under specified conditions and ex- pired at death; they were not a property which they could pass to their heirs or anyone else3.

The problem does not arise until Theophrastus' death. There can be no doubt that during his lifetime Theophrastus was the sole legal owner of the Peripatos. As a metic, Aristotle was debarred from owning real property in Athens, and although the group of students and fellow-teachers which gathered around him functioned like a school for most purposes, legally it had no corporate existence and it met in public halls or hired rooms. Theophrastus too was a metic, but with the help of Demetrius of Phalerum, another follower of Aristotle, he was granted the right of `yxz-r6mq and acquired a 'garden' of his own as the site of his school4; probably this happened fairly soon after 3I7, when Demetrius was appointed governor of Athens by Cassander. Thus Theophrastus became the founder of the Peripatos as an institution. He must have paid for the site and the erection of the school buildings out of his own resources, with perhaps some help from friends, and his will (? 5If.) provides for the cost of repairs and improvements to be met from his estate. After his death, however, the

1 As do WILAMOWITZ, Antigonos 268, and BRINK, RE Suppl. VII, 907. 2 Antigonos 263ff., followed by BRINK 9o6f. and most other writers on the subject.

The inconsistency of WILAMOWITZ' assertions seems to have gone unnoticed. On the organisation of 4oaooL see E. ZIEBARTH, Das gr. Vereinswesen, Leipzig I896, 33ff. I44 ff., and F. POLAND, Das gr. Vereinswesen, Leipzig I909, 330ff.

3 Cf. A. BIsCARDI, Vber die Regelung d. Miteigentums im attischen Recht, in E. BER- NEKER, Zur gr. Rechtsgeschichte, Darmstadt I968, 564ff. 571ff. 590 (original publication in Studi Paoli, Florence I955); HARRISON 239ff. BIsCARDI distinguishes six main types of common ownership, MxocaoL being type 4, while the Peripatos and other XOLVCOVEOL of the same kind are grouped under type 2; this class is, according to BIsCARDI, modelled on the case where brothers left their paternal inheritance undivided and held it in common, the most ancient and archetypal form of joint ownership in Greece. But as BISCARDI has shown (6o8ff.), in these xo0VCOcxvL the share of each owner not only passed to his heirs at death, but was subject to distraint to meet the owner's liabilities, whether to the state or to other individuals.

4 Diog. 5, 39 ?iye'raL 8' Oczi6v xcx' i&oV x o xv C tvr' TA v 'ApLta-o X09oug reX?u'V,

ATh%t.ptou 'ro5 DopX%o . . . to5to autpcaro




situation changed. Theophrastus did not leave the school to an individual but to several of his associates jointly as a place of study; the relevant passage of his will runs (? 52f.):

TOV 8'? XTMOV XOal '0 TVe=p'LTCOTOV XOaL '70t OLXLCaG TOq 7'POq TX X-7OTWX Na6aG

atacopu '76V yeypac..lwVCdv YDLX(V &?L TO0L rozq X PoQVOLq Ouaz:X0o? LV xocl aucptt-

XOCO(p?V ?V OUT04, ??L81?p OV 3UVCVTV 7ZaLV OVOp&)7roLq &eL VrLapLVV, IT'

?EXXO',pLO5aL 'Et cilLo4tLVou pBa?v64, RX? &4 av 'LpoV XOLVf XeXTJVkVOL4,

xoal sa Tpo a &?XoUo O'Xe'LW xOl ?C0q xpo vo, 6a7rcp 7rpo6XOV xal XO -

XOCLOV. &a6t&aoxv a OL XOLV6VOVrq4 ITrmapZoq, NI)?k, Xrp&'rcv, KocXXtvoq,

6Tp0Lp0OA, A^&popoq4, KocALa60?Vn, M?)&Vr, Ioyxp?'wv, Nx' ,oc. ?LVaXL

8? PouAoVlvy ? pX oao9eLv xal 'ApLcrTOT?XeL -Co Mnrpoac'pou xcA HuOLa0to'8oq ut

XOaL [??X?LV TOVTI)V, XOCL OCTOU ThXav ?V 70L6LaOt TOU P ep?6YVTaOU4,

67Mq OTL LOXCLaT 79MA XX (pL? ?LXaO0?pV. The legatees are the group of ten 'fellows' (XOLvwvo5vTre) who are to hold the

property as a joint trust for the benefit of all resident members of the group. The enjoyment-obviously-and probably the right to a voice in the control of the property was limited to those who were resident at any time1; a fellow who went away and subsequently came back to Athens would resume his rights on his return. Theophrastus says nothing about the future organisation of the school and does not choose a new head. The emphasis is entirely on the group and when Strato later became its head, it was as a result of a free election by his colleagues. The same tendency is found in Lyco's will, where the bequest is accompanied by a strongly-worded appeal to the members of the school to co-operate for the common good (? 70):

TOV r?eptlnoc'rov X0tC? L7CG)V XYVCOPL0tUoV TOL4 f3OUXo[LeVOL4, Bo6Xcovt, KacX-

X'vo, 'ApLarWvt, 'A,ucovL, Ai5xCv, HluOovL, 'APLaTO,l Xy, 'lHpoczX?;Lt, Auxo-

MeL, A'X&VL BeX X?pL? . 7rPOaTa0'Ca&a% V 8'OCUTO7 OV XV '7OrX0C[v66 &LOC,UZVLV e7r0L TOU 7pOky~toc-TOq Xal auvocuiLv ti.LSTac 3UV7aeaOC0L. GuyxxoXasu- M(,eCMaCV a? XOCL OL XOL7MO' YV)PLV.OL XOC.LOU xoiL TOV TOi U 6 XPoV.

Unlike the other scholarchs, Strato did not bequeath the Peripatos to its senior members jointly but to one man, Lyco, who thereby became his successor as head of the school. This undoubtedly infringed the collegiate principle. But Strato added a rider in which he explained the reason for his decision and, like Lyco, appealed to the other members to support their new head; in fact the wording used by both is so similar that it looks as if Lyco was deliberately echo- ing Strato 2. The explanation he gives, that the other men who might have been

I This would accord with the principle stated by Seneca Rhetor Controv. 7, 4, 4, which probably reflects Greek legal thinking (cf. BIsCARDI 592; HARRISON 24I): an quotiens duo- bus communio esset, potestas eius totafieret qui praeseits esset.

1 ? 62 X0tr-LXXe1L7r 8 r'V 1ALv 8&ocpLfrnV AU'xcwL, b7reL&8? t5v &XXov oL ,UV r?LC 7rpCaG$-

TIPOL, OL 8ACxoxot XOC(?45q 8' asV 7OLOLCV XO( ot ?Otooi ayx tacxCovt sout.

The word auyxotmaxeuauo, used by both Strato and Lyco, implies active help in building up the school.




considered were too old or too preoccupied with affairs outside the school, correspond to the instruction Lyco left for the choice of his successor: the Fellows were to elect the man who, in their opinion, would give his full attention to his duties and best be able to build up the school. Evidently Strato and Lyco had the same attitude to the government of the school and the same inten- tions, and only differed in the means they used to realise them. Although Strato overrode the collegiate principle in his will, he did not mean to abrogate it altogether.

This is not easy to reconcile with the scholarch's right to dispose of the school by testamentary provision. BRUNS (P. 3I) and HUG (p. i6) try to overcome the difficulty by supposing that as the original Fellows left Athens or died, the ownership of the school was concentrated in the hands of those who remained, until Strato was left as the sole proprietor; but their view is open to fundamental objections. It would imply that when the last of the original Fellows was dead, there would be no recognisable body to which ownership of the Peripatos could revert; this would in effect nullify Theophrastus' provision making the school property inalienable. At a more practical level it would mean that any members of the Peripatos other than those named in Theophrastus' will, however great a share they might take in the teaching and administration of the school, were excluded from its government as long as any of the original Fellows were present; as their number was reduced by death or withdrawal from Athens, all power would be concentrated in the hands of those who remained. While such a constitution might have won the approval of Richard Bentley, it would not have been conducive to the smooth running of the school, and HUG, who saw the difficulty, suggests that this may have been what induced Strato to choose his own successor and leave the school to him alone. But the difficulty is more fundamental. If any organisation is to have a permanent existence independent of the individuals comprising it at any time, it is essential that its member- ship should be more or less constant and that all full members should have much the same rights and obligations1; an institution which must die out in order to renew itself is a monstrosity. It is not likely that Theophrastus, with the example of the Academy before his eyes, should have intended to create such a thing.

The alternative is to suppose that the Fellows themselves vested the legal ownership of the school in the head whom they had appointed. This would have secured the administrative advantages of one-man control without de- stroying the principle of ultimate collective responsibility. There were many reasons which would have made such a step desirable. The times were difficult and most of Theophrastus' Fellows were unable or unwilling to remain as active members of the Peripatos. Hipparchus was a businessman who had a position analogous to that of the Bursar in a College to-day, but his affairs seem

1 This principle was generally recognised in Greek MLxaoL and clubs, cf. POLAND 277.




to have been in a parlous state. Melantes and Pancreon are not known to have had any philosophical ambitions and probably returned to their native place quite soon'. Demaratus and the younger Aristotle, and perhaps Callisthenes, who owed their fellowships to their family connection with Aristotle, probably only stayed long enough to complete their education. Neleus was elderly and is said by our sources to have returned to his home town, Scepsis, soon after Theophrastus' death 2. The rest, except for Strato, are unknown. Furthermore the school had no endowments providing a cash income, and its maintenance seems to have been paid for by the scholarch3. That this was so during Theo- phrastus' lifetime is proved by a clause in his will which says that the fee charged by the sculptor who was making the statue of Nicomachus had already been paid (? 52). The scholarch for his part might receive help from outside sources, in the Hellenistic age especially from kings and their ministers, and this would depend very much on his personality and skill. The usual practice was to make gifts to the scholarch personally, sometimes in payment for services rendered, and not to the school as such-a significant difference from mediaeval and modern practice, which seems to reflect the difficulty the Greeks had in con- ceiving of a legal personality4. The importance of such patronage can be judged by the frequency of Diogenes' references to it. Theophrastus, as we have seen, acquired his 'garden' with the help of Demetrius; in this case the assistance will have been legal rather than financial, but the latter is not necessarily excluded. Strato spent some years at Alexandria as tutor to the young Ptolemy Philadelphos and according to Diogenes (5, 58) received eighty talents from him in return; even if the figure is exaggerated it must still have been a substantial sum of money. Lyco was helped by Eumenes and Attalus of Pergamum, who also supported Arcesilaus5; and so on.

Greek notions of ownership were more differentiated, and in many cases more restricted, than modern ones. In particular, there was a widespread feeling, often embodied in legislation, limiting the right of individuals to bequeath inherited property outside their family; a husband's ownership of his wife's dowry was subject to even greater restrictions6. The scholarch's relation to

1 Their appointment may have been partly motivated by Theophrastus' desire to secure their acquiescence in his substantial bequests to the school.

2 But see below, p. 342.

3 In Lyco's time the students paid a contribution of nine obols to the monthly common meals (Ath. 547d = Lyco fr. 7 WEHRLI), but this barely covered the cost and we do not hear of any charge being made for attendance at lectures. Even the dinner-contributions could be remitted to the poorer students, and the excess cost was borne by the brl r~q euxoasdmoc who presided over the feast. Not surprisingly, this office rotated every month.

4 Cf. BRUNS P. 32 ff. Another factor may have been that mediaeval teachers were usually monks who had taken a vow of property.

5 Diog. 5, 67 = Lyco fr. II WEHRLI; Diog. 4, 38. 6 Cf. HARRISON I25, 52ff., and above, p. 318.




the school property seems to have been analogous. Although he exercised full control over it during his lifetime, he was bound by the terms of Theophrastus' will to make it available to students of Peripatetic philosophy, and morally, if not legally, obliged to ensure that it remained with the school after his death. Assets newly acquired by the scholarch, however, were in a different category: he could dispose of them as he liked and leave them to the school or to his natural heirs according to his own sense of fitness. If he bequeathed them to the Fellows jointly or to the new scholarch in his official capacity, they became part of the recognised school property from that time. This is what happened with the school library. Theophrastus separated his books, including probably most of Aris- totle's, from the school and bequeathed them to Neleus, leaving Strato with the task of building up a new collection for the school I. Strato in turn left all his books, except those he had written himself, to Lyco. Lyco's will only refers to books written by Lyco himself, which are left to Chares and Callinus; the collection he had inherited from Strato is not mentioned at all, but simply included in the school property. If this procedure seems odd, it was in fact the only way in which a scholarch could make anything over to the school. Since he was its legal owner, a gift by a living scholarch to the school would legally have been a gift to himself. Only at his death did it become possible to distinguish formally between school and personal property in his estate.

Before we leave these clauses it is worth while to note the use of the word -rrpMo04 in the wills of Theophrastus (? 52) and Lyco (? 70). In Lyco's will it simply designates the school, being virtually synonymous with 8La-pLf in the corresponding passage of Strato (? 62), and this seems to be its earliest certain occurrence in this sense; it is not entirely clear whether it is used as a common noun or proper name, but the former seems more likely 2. Theophrastus has the phrase -ov Xipov xac XLv TGpV 7 orEov xoO0 X-X& oCxqoo LXcX - pCMq tov xrO - 11ov to designate the whole of the school property; here TcpXroq must de- note some particular feature which later gave its name to the Peripatetic school. Most historians believe that a building of some kind is meant, and those willing to commit themselves further describe it as a covered walk or colonnade3. To

1 See below p. 342, where I shall argue that Strato succeeded in acquiring most of Theophrastus' books from Neleus.

2 Antigonus Carystius ap. Ath. 547d (=Lyco fr. 7 WEHRLI) uses it as a proper name; this instance could be slightly earlier, if the word was really used by Antigonus and not inserted by Athenaeus. 7rpt7orcog and 8L&opLP1 also appear as synonyms in Philochorus ap. Index Acad. Herc. 6, 4o and 7, 9 (=AB T 3), were they refer to the Academy, not the Aristotelian school, as DURING (AB P. 405) says; other passages where nepLvrov'o means 'school' are given in AB T 68. In all these passages Hellenistic authors are quoted by much later writers, and there is a real doubt whether the word 7rpbtoqog occurred in the original texts. On the origin of the name Peripatetic, see BRINK goof., DURING AB P. 404 ff. and A. BUSSE, Hermes 6I, I926, 335ff.

a #Hallen, die als Peripatos bezeichnet sindx WILAMOWITZ 267; ))Wandelhalle oder jeden gr6l3eren hallenartigen Raum# BRINK 899; WProbably a colonnade,, R. E. WYCHERLEY,




this there is a major objection: the regular Greek word for 'colonnade' was al.o1 We know that the buildings of Theophrastus' school included at least two of these; it could be argued that a peripatos might be a series of stoai grouped round a square, but the stoai mentioned in Theophrastus' will seem to have been detached buildings. The literary occurrences of 7rpL'4cToq sug- gest that the word was associated with parks rather than buildings 2. Hesychius glosses it by xiTcoq 3, and his view is supported by a good deal of earlier evidence. Peripatoi are mentioned in connection with gymnasia by Xenophon (Mem. i, i, io) and Cimon is said to have turned the Academy into a #grove adorned with clean paths and shady peripatoi<(; even WYCHERLEY does not think that this refers to colonnades . Elsewhere Plutarch (Alex. 7) speaks of the X xLO7rLp-

oWaroL of the Nymphaeum at Mieza where Aristotle taught the young Alex- ander. Later the Museum at Alexandria had a peripatos, as did Lucullus' park in Romer. One of the few passages where peripatoi are mentioned in a defi- nitely urban context is Plutarch's Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae (8i8d), where we are told that Cimon &x6'apa -sv &xyop&v 7Zotr0v&V yu-etacu xox

7rpl7roCToL; excavations have yielded no trace of any buildings to which this remark can refer, and it seems clear that the eptortoL were avenues of trees 6.

One piece of archaeological evidence points in the same direction: a mosaic from Pompeii representing seven philosophers discussing a problem of astronomy shows them seated under a tree; in the background are a sun-dial and two columns bearing an epistyle topped by four cauldron-like objects whose function is unclear, but which are certainly not part of a colonnade 7. The evidence is

Greece and Rome n.s. 9, I962, IO; o)Covered walk4( DURING AB P. 404; on P. 405 he says that )>The house Theophrastus built was an ordinary nepo7rcr0o<. But ZELLER 29 speaks of 'Baumgange' and J. DELORME, Gymnasion, Paris 1960, 334f. of 'allees' and 'planta- tions'. I Cf. DELORME 335.

2 I am here only concerned with the connotations of the word when it functions as a concrete noun meaning s)a place to walk in#. It is also used as an abstract noun meaning >a walk taken for pleasure or exercise<, German 'Spaziergang'. Used thus it carries no im- plications about where the walking takes place; it can be in a stoa (Dicaearchus fr. 29

WEHRLI), a garden (P1. Epist. 7, 348c) or simply in the open country (PI. Phaedr. 227a.

228b). 3 Vita Ar. (Menagiana) = Suda A 3929 ? 5 jpie (Aristoteles) . . . 'I eptxrtxcx

XX kCLrq CpLOsOcagE 8L& T6 'V 71rpL7rCX %T0L X'7rC W ta.

4 Plut. Cimon 13 fin., WYCHERLEY P. 3. Later (p. 2I, n. 2) WYCHERLEY says in critic- ism of DELORME that ))Any place where people walk about is in fact a peripatos4. True, but this is beside the point. The question at issue is whether a statement of the form *X established a peripatos(( means >X built a colonnade(( or ))X planted an avenue of trees*.

5 Strabo I3, 793, Plut. Luc. 39. 6 I am indebted to Prof. H. A. THOMPSON for this information. 7 See G. W. ELDERKIN, AJA 39, I935, 92 ff. and pI. 22, who believes that it is derived

from a painting of 3I7-07 BC which hung in Theophrastus' school and shows a group of Peripatetics, including Theophrastus, Demetrius of Phalerum and Menander. WVhether we accept this or not makes no difference to my present argument.




not entirely conclusive and there is some which would support a different conclusion; e.g. in Plato's Euthydemus the sophists and their pupils take their walk on the covered track of the Lyceum 1. But on balance it is probable that Peripatos meant a formal garden-walk rather than a building.

IV Aristotle's Library

When Theophrastus left the school and most of its equipment to the ten Fellows jointly, one important item was excepted. His collection of books was bequeathed to Neleus of Scepsis, whose name stands second in the list of Fel- lows, immediately after that of Hipparchus. This gave rise to one of the strangest stories in the history of Greek Literature2. Neleus is said to have returned to his home town soon after Theophrastus' death, taking with him the books he had inherited which, if our authorities are to be believed, included all the writings of Aristotle as well as those of Theophrastus himself. After Neleus' death they passed to his heirs, uneducated people who neglected them; later when the Attalid kings established the Pergamene library they were hidden in a cellar in order to escape the attention of their agents. There they remained, a prey to damp and worms, until Apellicon of Teos, a rich bibliophile educated in the Peripatos, bought them and took them back to Athens. He had fresh copies made and tried to fill in some of the gaps in the damaged originals, but since he was more bibliophile than philosopher, with little success; the edition he published was full of mistakes. Apellicon died shortly after the Mithridatic war and Sulla's conquest of Athens (86 BC); his library was seized by Sulla and taken to Rome, probably in 84. There various booksellers had copies made for sale, but the scribes they employed were incompetent. In 7I Tyrannio, a famous grammarian of Amisos, was brought to Rome as a prisoner after the cap- ture of his home-town; he was soon freed and settled in Rome. An admirer of Aristotle, he at last succeeded in putting the papers in order and making

1 P1. Euthyd. 273a ae5X66vte TrepL ?torv &v 'rep xcxrmat&ycp 8p6Fcq; note that the noun 7rpE7toc'oq is not used. The gymnasium described by Vitruvius 5, ii has covered and open-air tracks, the latter lined with trees. But these elaborate structures belong to a later age than the one with which we are concerned, cf. J. JU1THNER, SBA Wien 249, I, I965, I59.

2 Strabo I3, 6o8, Plut. Sulla 26 = AB T 66b-c; for other relevant material see AB pp. 383f, 4I2ff. The modern literature on this question is vast and my quotations very selective. See further ZELLER Ph. d. Gr. II 23, I879, I39ff.; Kleine Schr. I, igiff.; F. Su- SEMIHL, Gesch. d. gr. Lit. i. d. Alexandrinerzeit II, I892, 296ff., all these with references to earlier discussions. GERCKE, RE II, I027ff.; BRINK, RE Suppl. VII, 939ff.; REGENBOGEN

ibid. I370ff.; DtRING, RE Suppl. XI, I93ff.; P. MORAUX, Les Listes anciennes des Ouvra- ges d'Ar., Louvain I951, iff.; F. LITTIG, Andronikos v. Rhodos I, Muinchen I890, 8ff.; M. PLEZIA, De Andronici Rhodii Studiis Aristotelicis, Cracow I946, 46ff. H. USENER, KI. Schr. III, Iso ff. builds a far-reaching hypothesis on this story; contra C. WENDEL RE VII A, I948, I8I3.

Hermes 100,3 22




proper copies; these he passed to Andronicus of Rhodes to use as the basis of a new edition of Aristotle's works which became the standard edition for later times. Meanwhile the remaining Peripatetics, being deprived of Aristotle's writings, except for a few mainly 'exoteric' works, and so unable to continue serious philosophical studies, were reduced to composing rhetorical essays 1, and this is the reason for the decline of the school after Theophrastus' death.

Several attempts have been made to explain Theophrastus' action. It has been suggested that he disliked some of the tendencies which had appeared in the thinking of the younger Peripatetics, or that he wanted Aristotle's books removed from war-torn Athens to a safer place2. But the situation in Athens during the third century was not desperate enough to justify wholesale evacua- tion-in fact, the philosophical schools flourished and there was a good deal of public building-and the solicitude for the school shown in the other provisions of Theophrastus' will gives no support to the idea that he disapproved of the way things were going or wished to chastise his followers. If he was dis- satisfied with their work or philosophical attitude, depriving them of Aristotle's writings would have been unlikely to improve matters. A more plausible view is that he wanted Neleus to succeed him and left the books to him as a strong hint to the others3. But if Theophrastus had really wanted this, it would have been simpler and safer to bequeath the school to Neleus directly; Theophrastus was its undisputed legal owner and there would have been sufficient precedents for such a course 4. Nor is it easy to believe that Theophrastus was blind to Stra- to's claims to the succession, by reason both of his intellectual pre-eminence and his earlier career as tutor to Ptolemy, with its financial rewards and prom- ise of future patronage. Neleus could claim greater seniority. He was the son of Coriscus, Aristotle's companion at Assos, a pupil of Aristotle and a founder- member of the Peripatos, the only one, as far as we can tell, still remaining at Athens. But in thirty-five or more years at the school he had not uttered a single word, in speech or writing, which posterity thought worthy of preserva- tion; he was growing old and does not appear to have had any connections which could have been of benefit to the school. It would be at least equally plausible to argue that Theophrastus' motive for not choosing the new scholarch himself was to avoid the need to pass an adverse judgment on an old friend. He must have had a different reason for leaving his books to Neleus, and Lyco's will makes it possible to see what it was.

Both Strato and Lyco, as we have seen, excluded the books they themselves had written from their bequests to the school. Strato says nothing more about

1 OkazLq kqxuO'L7etv; for the expression cf. Plut. Alex. Fort. 328 a, with WYTTENBACH'S

note, and J. G. BUHLE, Arist. Opera I, Biponti 179I, I17n. 2 WILAMOWITZ, Glaube der Hellenen II3, 1959, 28If.; REGENBOGEN I363. 3 H. v. ARNIM, Hermes 63, I928, I05; BRINK 931. 4 Cf. ZELLER., Ph. d. Gr. II. I4, i889, 986f.




them and we neither know his reason nor who was to have them. Lyco left his books to Chares and Callinus. The bequest to Chares is of no further interest to us. It consisted of the personal copies of his published works, of which other copies will have been freely available to all members of the school who wanted them, and was probably nothing more than a token of appreciation to the slave who had written them out. But the case of Callinus is different. Like Neleus, he was a senior Fellow of the Peripatos-his name stands second in the list given in Lyco's will-and an old personal friend of the scholarch; among his miscellaneous bequests are two Thericlean cups to Callinus' son, and two Rho- dian cups, two rugs, a coverlet and two cushions to his wife (? 72). Callinus himself was given Lyco's unpublished papers, with instructions to prepare them carefully for publication'. It is reasonable to conclude that Theophrastus too intended Neleus to be his literary executor. His lack of originality would have been no serious handicap, and he had shared with Theophrastus the experience of Aristotle's lectures and knew the development of his ideas as no-one else could. Unlike the later scholarchs, Theophrastus left Neleus all the books he had, including those he had obtained from Aristotle, but the reason is not far to seek. Theophrastus' work was so closely linked with Aristotle's that the authorship of many books was later disputed between them. At the time of Theophrastus' death their papers must have formed a single mass which it would have been impossible to divide quickly-indeed, this would have been Neleus' first task-and even if Theophrastus' work could have been separated, it would have been impossible to edit without constant reference to his copies of Aristotle's writings.

In making this arrangement Theophrastus presumably did not feel that he was depriving the other members of the school of material they needed for their studies. Yet Strabo and Plutarch claim he did precisely this. There can be no doubt that their claim is at best wildly exaggerated. This has been demon- strated over and over again by the writers already mentioned and many others, who have shown that most if not all of Aristotle's works were known and used in the Hellenistic period, although probably only the dialogues, which alone were finished literary works, were available in commercial editions for the general reader2. The only question remaining is how much or how little we should believe. Only one fact is corroborated, that Theophrastus bequeathed his books to Neleus. Tyrannio is often mentioned in Cicero's letters and was employed

1 07CO; V4SUXq acxs "rX84 ? 73. From the list of witnesses in ? 74 we learn that Cal- linus came from Hermione in the Argolid. He may have been the grandson of the Callinus who is named in fourth place (after Neleus and Strato) in Theophrastus' list of Fellows (? 53). Of WILAMOWITZ' identification with the f3LPXLoyp&cpoq mentioned in Lucian. Adv. Indoct. 2 and 24 (Einl. i. d. gr. Trag. 149 n. 47), the less said the better.

2 USENER, Kl. Schr. III, I5I was the last scholar of note to accept Strabo's tale more or less in its entirety. Of more recent scholars REGENBOGEN I.C. is willing to accept the most.

22*




by Cicero to arrange his library, and his lectures were attended by Strabo at some period. But Cicero says nothing about Tyrannio's working on Aristote- lian manuscripts, and this is all the more surprising because he had access to Sulla's library'. Of Andronicus we know that he made a catalogue of the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus and edited at least some of Aristotle's works 2.

The rest is unconfirmed. Strabo and Plutarch agree on the facts which both report, but Strabo only

takes the story down to Tyrannio; we hear of Andronicus' edition from Plu- tarch alone, and it is an open question whether his information came from Stra- bo 3. It has been suggested that both drew on Andronicus' book about Aristotle's writings4, but if this were true, Strabo's failure to mention Andronicus' edition would be very strange. Perhaps Plutarch alone used this work. Strabo could have obtained his information at first hand; he had attended Tyrannio's lectures, presumably on grammar and literary subjects, and had studied Peripatetic philosophy with Boethus of Sidon, himself a pupil of Andronicus 5. Since Strabo knew Tyrannio personally and Plutarch should have been able to find out the facts, it is reasonable to accept their account of what happened to Apellicon's library at Rome, in spite of Cicero's silence. It is important, therefore, to be quite clear about what they really say. This is (a) that when Tyrannio came to Rome, he gained access to Apellicon's (now Sulla's) library by cultivating the librarian, and put Aristotle's papers in order 6; (b) that certain booksellers made poor copies of the Aristotle papers for sale; and (c) that Tyrannio made copies (good ones, presumably) which he gave to Andronicus, who published them and wrote the cata- logues (of Aristotle's and Theophrastus' works) current in Plutarch's day 7.

L See the texts quoted in AB T 74c-d, and add Epist. ad Att. 4, IO, I; there seem to be no grounds for SHACKLETON BAILEY's assertion (ad loc.) that Cicero bought the library off the Dictator's son. 2 AB T 75 a-g.

Not the Geogyaphy, of course, but the tatoptx& UTo[M[Lovaoa. A fragment of this work, dealing with Sulla's gout, comes immediately after the story of Apellicon's library in Plutarch's work = F. gr. H. 9I F 8. That Plutarch owed his account to Strabo has often been asserted (e.g. ZELLER I39 n. 2, DtRING AB p. 394 f.), but denied by HEITZ, Die verl. Schr. d. Ar., Leipzig I865, Io, and JACOBY ad loc.

4 USENER, KI. Schr. III, ISO; PLEZIA I4ff.; DtRING AB P. 383f. 5 Strabo I2, 548. i6, 757 = AB T 74d, 75b; cf. ZELLER III, I4, I909, 6o8n. For Boe-

thus, see ibid. 646ff.; note that (a) it is not certain that Strabo was his pupil, as BRINK

(939 line 63) and others say; his own words are B6-Ooq 46 mvep9ioaoc?aouVe "%, to&

'ApLatoti?Lx; (b) Strabo says nothing about Andronicus being of their company, as Du- RING claims (on AB T 74d).

6 Tupovvov -'s 0 yp'[L,Cxo &LeZXLpla'ro (?LXpLaTOTNXs 6v, ?hp(7cc'UaCqT &sd 'ris

PtLMo&x7q (Strabo l.c.). Anybody who has used Italian libraries will know what the last expression means.

7 Plutarch b.c. X6yvrou ... Tupovvovoc TOMV YPa, TX6V 6VaXeU&aGa4XL t 2XTOXM , xocl iCOap'

ocu'roG r6v 'P6Lov 'Av8p6vtxov emopasvo T&v &VTLypcayC)V k Fa0ov 41LiVOC xOaL &vocypcJoct

ro6q vt5v popdvouq 7rLvocxq. Plutarch does not say that Andronicus used Apellicon's




And that is all. Everything else that modern historians have said or written about Tyrannio is pure fabrication, interesting only as illustrations of how learned myths increase and multiply 1.

So far we have dealt with matters about which Strabo could have had first- hand information, but the same is no longer true of events before Apellicon's library was brought to Rome. This point is vital, for the story about Aristotle's books owes what credibility it has to the authoritative names of Strabo and Plut- arch. It makes no difference whether Strabo's information goes back to Tyran- nio or Andronicus; Tyrannio came to Rome at least fifteen years after the seizure of the library and can have known no more about the provenance of the books than any of his contemporaries. The only person who knew that was Apellicon, who died before his library was seized. If the story of the books being found in a cellar at Scepsis was not concocted by Sulla's librarian or someone else at Rome 2, its source must have been Apellicon; we cannot tell, and it makes no difference, whether it was transmitted orally (by library-slaves, perhaps) or came from a book or a note found among Apellicon's papers after his death. Our acceptance of it will therefore depend on our view of Apellicon's credibility, but before examining his character it will be best to consider the inherent likelihood of his story and any other relevant evidence.

Athenaeus gives a different account of what happened to Theophrastus' books after Neleus took them to Scepsis. According to his version Ptolemy bought them off Neleus for the library at Alexandria, together with others from Athens and Rhodes 3. His story is much less circumstantial than its rival, partly no doubt because it comes from the first book, of which only an epitome has survived, but it is reasonably clear that Athenaeus knew Strabo's story and deliberately contradicted it. He also knew an alternative tradition, according to which Ptolemy Philadelphos bought books by Aristotle and Theophrastus at Athens and Rhodes, and combined the two. What he says is corroborated by the known fact that there was a large body of Aristotelian and Theophra- stean writings at Alexandria in the third century BC, when Hermippus com-

library himself. This means that he could have done his part of the work in Athens, and there is no need to reject the Neoplatonist tradition that he was scholarch there (AB T 75j,p); although it is unconfirmed, the writer of the original Neoplatonist Life (Ptolemy- el-Garib) used Andronicus' catalogue, and the information may have come from the pref- ace of that work.

1 The most important casualty is the edition of Aristotle's works often ascribed to Ty- rannio, e.g. by BRINK 939; cf. DURING AB P. 394. Note also that Tyrannio never had charge of Sulla's library, as DtRING suggests (AB p. 421).

2 F. GRAYEFF, Phronesis I, 1956, io6f., argues that it was invented by Andronicus to support his claim for the superior authenticity of his own edition.

3 Ath. I, 3a = AB T 42d 7ap' o? (sc. N-)Xkcoq) 7rTvrX 7tpL&l9VO; 0 7?8eg05 PocaL

fIlroXetL&o5, pL?&8??4oq 8' InExX2v, j.r& 'Cv 'AO'v-qOev xad 'rCv &ObC TP6ou ?t5 Av XmXTv

'A? b&v8petmv ?rtymye. Note the 7rv'ro.




piled a catalogue of their works'. The usual way of reconciling these accounts is to suppose that Neleus sold the greater part of the library he had inherited to Alexandria, retaining only the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus themselves, or perhaps only their unpublished works, notes and personal drafts 2.

If this means that Neleus kept those papers which did not interest Ptolemy's agents because they were too unimportant or duplicated material already at Alexandria3, that is enough to falsify most of Strabo's claims. But if Neleus or his heirs were willing to sell the larger part of the collection, why not the whole? Is it likely that the agents sent out to buy books for Alexandria would have been satisfied with a part, if they had reason to believe that they had come upon something important, or that they would have stopped to sort the valu- able pieces from the rest at Scepsis? From what we know of their methods, they were quite omnivorous, buying all the material they could find and leaving it to the librarians at Alexandria to separate the wheat from the chaff. However we look at it, the reports of Athenaeus and Strabo-Plutarch are mutu- ally exclusive.

The story is implausible enough; let us now turn to the man who originated it 4. Though a native of Teos, Apellicon had obtained Athenian citizenship and been adopted into a distinguished Athenian family5; he was rich, and while we do not hear of his holding any magistracy, his name has been found on two series of coins, dating from around IOO BC, as that of the epimeletes in charge of the mint. He was a member of the Peripatos and a bibliophile, with a special interest in Aristotelia-Poseidonius says that he had bought Aristotle's library, but nothing about Scepsis-and in public records; this last is something char-

1 Cf. AB T 75 c-d and p. 466; REGENBOGEN I366ff.; MORAUX, Listes, passim. The relationship of Hermippus' catalogue to the lists preserved by Diogenes Laertius is a difficult question which fortunately does not have to be decided here.

2 E.g. DURING, in Classica et Medievalia I7, 1956, I3. 3 Cf. REGENBOGEN I377. Such a view derives some support from the Arabic catalogue

of Aristotle's writings, which includes a heading )>His books found in the library of Apelli- cont among the miscellaneous items at the end of the list (AB p. 230 no. 92; cf. ibid. p. 245; MORAUX P. 303); but this heading may only have included items found in Apellicon's library and nowhere else.

4 Sources: Poseidonius ap. Ath. 5, 2I4d = F. gr. H. 87 F 36; other passages under AB T 66; CIA II, I049; J. KIRCHNER, Prosopogr. Att. no. 1343. Coins: B. HEAD, Historia Nummorum2, Oxford 19II, P. 384 and fig. 2I6. M. THOMPSON, The New-Style Silver Coinage of Athens (New York I96I) I 364, 389, 55I; II 125f, I4i. THOMPSON dates the issues bearing Apellicon's name to I2I/0 and 94/3, but this has been challenged by D. M. LEWIS, Numism. Chr. 7, 2, I962, 275 ff and H. B. MATTINGLY, ibid. 9, I969, 327ff.

and JHS 9I, 1971, 85ff., who date the first issue to 88/7 or 89/8 respectively and agree in dating the later issue after the Sullan period and giving it to different Apellicon.

5 Oddly enough his adoptive father, Apolexis of Oion, was the son of a man named Ari- stotle; cf. Prosopogr. Att. no. I36I (with family tree) and 2066.




acteristically Peripatetic'. Unfortunately he tried to satisfy it by stealing documents from the city archives at Athens and elsewhere, was found out and had to leave Athens; this must have happened in the late nineties. After his return he joined Athenion, another former student of the Peripatos, who made himself ruler of Athens in 88, and was put in command of an expedition against Delos which ended in disaster, largely owing to his own negligence; he lost his army and saved himself by precipitate flight. We hear no more of Apellicon except for his death (probably between 86 and 84) and the seizure of his library.

This colourful and unstable character is the source of the story about Aris- totle's books being found at Scepsis. As a witness he looks unpromising, and what we know of his historical methods does little to restore our confidence. One of his books dealt with Aristotle's relationship with Hermias; in it he tried to defend Aristotle against the charge of having married Pythias for unworthy motives by quoting an alleged letter of Aristotle to Antipater in which Aristotle was supposed to have explained that he only married her after Hermias' death because she was in distress and out of regard for her modest and noble character 2.

It is not easy to believe that Aristotle, whose will gives proof of genuine love for his wife, should have paid her such a back-handed compliment3 , and in fact the letter is a clumsy forgery, based on some sentences in the (possibly spurious) Aristotelian dialogue 7rcp' uyeveox, where the same explanation served to excuse Socrates' alleged bigamous marriage to Myrto; in a later age it was used by Porphyry to justify his own marriage . We cannot be certain that Apellicon forged the letter himself 5, but at any rate his background was not one of severe historical scholarship.

1 Cf. R. PFEIFFER, Hist. of Class. Scholarship I, Oxford I968, pp. 67f. 8i ff., on the different bias of Peripatetic and Alexandrian scholarship.

2 Quoted by Aristocles ap. Euseb. PE I5. 2. 14 = AB T 581 = Arist. Epist. fr. 12 PLEZIA. 3 Cf. WILAMOWITZ, Arist. u. Athen I, 328, who argues that this would have been less

offensive to Greek feeling than to ours, but does not consider the evidence available for the particular case of Aristotle; he accepts the letter as genuine, as do DtRING and PLEZIA.

It is rejected by SCHMITT RE XXIV, 548. PLEZIA (Arist. Epist. p. 89) suggests that the quotation came from a collection of Aristotle's letters made by Artemon about 306 as a reply to the attack of Demochares and his associates, but it is difficult to see how anybody in Athens could have obtained genuine copies of private letters to Antipater at this time.

4 Arist. Epist. fr. I2 PLEZIA Te4Ve0TO4 Y&p 'Ep.iLou 8t&C 'ri)v rnp6 RXeLVOV e'U'VOLOCV gyT?v

OusTv, &?ow [V adoqpovoc sct a&yc0orsV okmnv, 'rXiUXUC;0Cv tLivTOL && tok xvCorCXCaPv0UsC

aupLp(opa t6v &o8e)6V mou'6-. Hept &yeveLocx fr. 3 WALZER-Ross (93 RosE3) taropo5at MupTr CuyctxLav 'ApLat'rrou

@XpAlEt cc aocpcp a0UVOLXwaocL, yuvozxc pEV erpav gXzovL, txcunv a, &VoX50C6V'L 7pE60UM 8L6 rEv(ocv XOOt tCv XvoxyxcxLwv evaeopkv-v; fr. 2 (92) ML& y&p Av 'Aptard8ou &peHqv xoct 'r v &uyocrkpm oc&roi5 yevvwataov ?voc(. Cf. Porph. ad Marc. 3. On Socrates' marriage see now J. W. FITTON, Class. Quart. 64, I970, 56ff.

5 PLEZIA (Arist. Epist. p. I29) suggests that Apellicon forged the spurious letters of Aristotle and Alexander quoted by Aulus Gellius 20, 5 = AB T 76f.




Taking all the known facts into account, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Apellicon's story is pure invention. If he bought any books at Scep- sis, they must have been quite unimportant, but probably he did not get any from there at all. It is even possible to guess that he may have had a motive for lying other than the book-collector's love for a tall story. While a deter- mined man with enough money would have been able to amass a large number of the more popular works of Aristotle through normal trade channels, the more technical writings would only have been accessible in a few libraries. If Apelli- con possessed any of these unusual tracts he must either have had copies made to order-something not very exciting to a bibliophile-or he had stolen them, and the tale of his find at Scepsis would have been a cover for his theft. The most obvious place to steal them from would have been the Peripatos.

Whether this be accepted or not, there are sufficient grounds for rejecting Apellicon's claim and none for believing that the books Neleus inherited from Theophrastus were ever taken to Scepsis. They must have remained at Athens to form the nucleus of the collection Strato later bequeathed to Lyco; we must suppose that when Neleus returned to Scepsis-if he really did; this is part of Apellicon's story-he came to an arrangement with Strato similar to the one by which Theophrastus had acquired Aristotle's books from Nicomachus. We do not know when this happened, or how long Neleus lived. All we can say with certainty is that he was unable to complete the task of arranging and editing the papers entrusted to him, although he presumably began the work which was completed two centuries later by Andronicus. At some time during Strato's scholarchate copies of some of the books were made for the Alexandrian library, and perhaps some older manuscripts were sold as well; Ptolemy was worth cultivating. He may also have bought up the books taken to Rhodes by Eude- mus, mostly no doubt duplicates of books in the Athenian school library, when his school came to an end at his death. In the meantime, however, the main current of Peripatetic thought was taking a new direction, and when Theo- phrastus' papers, still in considerable disorder, reverted to the school, few or none of its members showed much interest. No doubt the works they required for their own use were still copied, either from these exemplars or from others stemming from the private collections of other early Peripatetics, but by and large the books once owned by Theophrastus lay neglected until Apellicon rescued them from oblivion. For all his impudence, he may have done a real service to philosophy.

Leeds University H. B. GOTTSCHALK



Documents

H. B. Gottschalk-Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs