EXEGETICAL CULTURES 1 | 139Qurʾān was vouchsafed, and whose divisions it vigorously condemned
(below, p. 188).
Aristotle in Latin, Armenian, and Syriac
While Justinian’s closing the Athens schools in 529 reflected Christian suspi-
cion of their Platonic philosophy, two scholars at opposite ends of the Roman
world, Boethius in Italy and Sergius of Reshʿaina east of Harrān in Syria, had
recently produced work which helped guarantee Aristotle’s hold on both
Christian and—eventually—Muslim minds for centuries to come. Histori-
ans lavish attention on Justinian’s ordinance of 529, but leave the rise of Ar-
istotelian scholarship outside—or for that matter inside—the Greek world
to historians of philosophy. The clash of paganism and Christianity, espe-
cially with an emperor involved, seems like real history. The less spectacular
yet more durable dissemination and working out of ideas is harder to drama-
tize and evaluate, even though the particular ideas we are interested in here
still mattered, and at the very heart of power. A stray text, recently recog-
nized, apparently reveals that Menas, praetorian prefect in 528 to 529, was
prepared to admire Plato for his literary style, but deemed Aristotle the mas-
ter of thought. Nor was he alone.^57
In Ostrogothic Italy the senatorial scholar Boethius, consul in 510 but
imprisoned and executed by King Theodoric c. 525, planned to translate as
much as he could find of both Plato and Aristotle,^58 hitherto known in Latin
only for—respectively—half the Timaeus plus parts of the Organon, though
there had been a well- established school tradition in logic since the mid-
fourth- century translations by Marius Victorinus. What Boethius actually
managed to finish before his premature death was translations of and com-
mentaries on Porphyry’s Introduction and Aristotle’s Categories and On inter-
pretation; translations of the Prior analytics, Posterior analytics, Topics and
Sophistical refutations; several original works on Aristotelian logic; and some
in philosophy outside the Greek schools of Alexandria, it was in the cosmopolitan monasteries around
the city, with their substantial contingent of learned Syrian monks. Cf. T. Orlandi, “Traduzioni dal greco
al copto,” in G. Fiaccadori (ed.), Autori classici in lingue del vicino e medio oriente (Rome 1990) 93–104; J.
Gascou, “The Enaton,” and K. H. Kuhn, “Philosophy,” in A. S. Atiya (ed.), The Coptic encyclopedia (New
york 1991) 954–58, 1958.
57 M. Rashed, L’héritage aristotélicien (Paris 2007) 293–302, editing verses found in ms. Paris gr.
1116, f.128r. Compare Agathias, History [5:2] 2.28.2–3 (Plato), 2.28.6–29.1 (Aristotle). Also Gibbon
42: 2.707: “If the reason of the Stag yrite might be equally dark, or equally intelligible in every tongue, the
dramatic art and verbal argumentation of the disciple of Socrates, appear to be indissolubly mingled with
the grace and perfection of his Attic style.”
58 Chadwick, Boethius [5:42] 108–73, esp. 135–36 and 140 on Boethius’s plan of work and trans-
lation style (also S. Ebbesen, “Boethius as a translator and Aristotelian commentator,” IBALA 121–33),
and 115–18 on Marius Victorinus; S. Gersh, “Boethius,” D PA 2.117–22.