EXEGETICAL CULTURES 1 | 133One might put it another way: that Aristotle conveyed the “lesser mysteries,”
which opened the way to Plato’s “mystagog y.”^25 The upshot of reading Plato
and Aristotle in this complementary spirit was a strong statement of the
Greek philosophical world view, which left less room for damaging contro-
versy than in earlier periods, when philosophers had been much mocked for
their inability to agree. Simplicius argued for the harmony of virtually all
Greek philosophers, against not only their own dissensions but also those
Christians who gloated over them. Hence his habit of quoting extensively
even from the pre- Socratics. Without Simplicius’s eleventh- hour attempt to
remold the more- than- millennial tradition of Greek thought, the earliest
representatives of the tradition would be far less known to us.^26
Which of Aristotle’s treatises were most read, and how? There is a genre of
introductions to philosophy in general and in particular to Plato or much more
commonly Aristotle, several specimens of which survive from the time of the
Alexandrian philosopher (and Simplicius’s teacher) Ammonius son of Herme-
ias (d. c. 517/26) onward. The introductions to Aristotle strongly resemble each
other.^27 They start by enumerating the schools of philosophy and the works of
Aristotle. Then they divide philosophy into logic, ethics (and/or politics), phys-
ics, mathematics, and finally theolog y, since the goal is knowledge of the First
Principle, God.^28 After animadverting on the qualities required in a student, the
harmony of Aristotle with Plato, and Aristotle’s use of obscurity to exclude the
unworthy, the introductions then move on to the Categories, which were re-
garded as the portal to not only logic, but the whole of philosophy and indeed
all human knowledge. Often the Categories, being hard to grasp, were prefaced
by Porphyry’s famous Introduction (Isagoge) to logic; and there were even intro-
ductions (Prolegomena) to the Isagoge and philosophy in general. After the Cat-
egories the next works to be read were On interpretation, Prior analytics, Poste-
rior analytics, Topics, Sophistical refutations, Rhetoric, and Poetics.^29 These
together made up the Organon, whose title underlined the strictly instrumental
role of logic in the overall pursuit of philosophy.^30 Without logic under one’s
belt—Prolegomena, Isagoge, Organon—there was no progress to be had in eth-
ics (except of the most practical sort), physics, mathematics, or theolog y.
25 Marinus, Proclus, or On happiness [ed. and tr. (French) H. D. Saffrey and A.- P. Segonds (Paris
2001)] 13.
26 H. Baltussen, Philosophy and exegesis in Simplicius (London 2008) 9–10, 62–64, 137–38, 203,
211–15.
27 L. G. Westerink and J. Trouillard, Prolégomènes à la philosophie de Platon (Paris 1990) XLIII–
LVI; P. Hoffmann, “La fonction des prologues exégétiques dans la pensée pédagogique néoplatonici-
enne,” in J.- D. Dubois and B. Roussel (eds), Entrer en matière: Les prologues (Paris 1998) 215–22.
28 See also Marinus, Proclus [5:25] 13, with n. 1 in the Saffrey- Segonds edition.
29 P. Hoffmann, “What was commentary in late Antiquity?,” in M. L. Gill and P. Pellegrin (eds), A
companion to ancient philosophy (Oxford 2006) 605–6.
30 J. Brunschwig, “L’Organon. Tradition grecque,” D PA 1.482–91.