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ready occurred in literary studies, and a fresh engagement with the texts of
Plato and Aristotle themselves.^8
Aristotle had for the intervening two centuries been mainly known
through his so- called exoteric compositions, a number of them cast in acces-
sible dialogue form in the style of Plato. But in the first century BCE re-
newed interest in Aristotle led to the rediscovery of his “esoteric” writings
too, the works by which he has mainly or exclusively been known ever since.
These were treatises rather than dialogues, often in sketch or note form or
even unfinished, and much closer to the original viva voce “prophetic” per-
formance. A colorful but not demonstrably untrue story told how Aristotle’s
heirs hid his books at Scepsis in the Troad, “in a sort of tunnel, where they
were damaged by mildew and worms,” to stop the kings of Pergamum grab-
bing the collection for their library.^9 The manuscripts were discovered and
taken to Athens, and thence to Rome by Sulla after his sack of the city in 86
BCE. Probably some decades later, they provided the basis for an edition of
Aristotle’s works devised by Andronicus of Rhodes. The importance of this
edition is hard to judge: some of Aristotle’s works had remained in circula-
tion before it, and attracted at least a few readers.^10 Nonetheless Plutarch (d.
c. 120) asserts that, before Andronicus, Aristotle’s works had not been widely
or accurately familiar, and implies that the new edition gave Peripateticism
fresh impetus.^11 Another Platonist philosopher, Porphyry (d. c. 305), saw
Andronicus as an important predecessor to, and paradigm for, his edition of
the works of his teacher Plotinus, and says he undertook a serious remodel-
ing of the damaged materials he worked with.^12 So Andronicus was to some
degree responsible for the texture, perhaps even the shape, of the Aristotelian
corpus as we have it today—still often indistinguishable from lecture notes,
yet now of “scriptural” status.
8 M. Frede, “Epilogue,” in K. Algra and others (eds), The Cambridge history of Hellenistic philosophy
(Cambridge 1999) 772–76, 784; R. W. Sharples, Peripatetic philosophy 200 BC to AD 200 (Cambridge
2010) viii; A. Falcon, Aristotelianism in the first century BCE: Xenarchus of Seleucia (Cambridge 2012)
17–21.
9 Strabo, Geography [ed. and (German) tr. S. Radt (Göttingen 2002–9)] 13.1.54; tr. and discussion
by J. Barnes, “Roman Aristotle,” in J. Barnes and M. Griffin (eds), Philosophia togata 2 (Oxford 1997) 1–8.
For some reasons to believe Strabo, see J. Irigoin, “Les éditions de textes,” in F. Montanari (ed.), La philolo-
gie grecque à l’époque hellénistique et romaine (Geneva 1994) 50–53.
10 For the thin evidence and divergent interpretations, see R. Goulet, “Andronicus de Rhodes,”
“Apellicon de Téos,” “L’oeuvre d’Aristote,” D PA 1.200–202, 266–67, 434–35; H. B. Gottschalk, “The
earliest Aristotelian commentators,” in Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle transformed [5:5] 55–81; Barnes, in Barnes
and Griffin (eds), Philosophia togata 2 [5:9] 8–66 (“dispiritingly sceptical” by his own admission); M.
Frede, in Algra and others (eds), Hellenistic philosophy [5:8] 772–76; G. Anagnostopoulos, “Aristotle’s
works and the development of his thought,” in id. (ed.), A companion to Aristotle (Chichester 2009)
14–20.
11 Plutarch, Sulla [ed. and tr. (Italian) M. Manfredini and others (Milan 1997)] 26.1–3.
12 Porphyry, Life of Plotinus [ed. P. Henry and H.- R. Schwyzer, Plotini opera (editio minor Oxford
1964–83) 1.1–38; tr. A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus (London 1966–88) 1.3–85] 24.