MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

AristotleOn Sterility 275

% +which is mentioned in the same ancient catalogues that also list

History of Animalsas having nine books – a detail that need not carry much

weight but fits the argument nicely. How the work came to be added to

History of Animalsin the later tradition is not difficult to imagine, seeing

that it provides a more or less smooth continuation of the subject matter

of book 9 ( 7 ). The work known as ‘History of Animalsbook 10 ’ constitutes

one of the several ‘medical’ works attributed to Aristotle in the indirect

tradition. Thanks to its erroneous inclusion inHistory of Animalsin the

later transmission, it is the only one of these works to have survived.

Postscript

Since the original publication of this chapter, vol.i of Balme’s critical

edition of theHistoria animaliumhas come out (Cambridge, 2002 ), which

also contains a new text of ‘Book 10 ’. A commentary on ‘Book 10 ’isin

preparation by Lesley Dean-Jones and Jim Hankinson.