Audibilibus proposes instead that the impacts which constitute a sound are transmitted from
the point of origin to the point of perception through the stationary, yet flexible, medium of
the air. (Examples of bronze statues resonating under the file, and ships’ masts being tapped
to detect cracks, though not adduced in defense of this pulsation-theory, show a concern to
account for the transmission of sound through solid objects as well as through the air.)
Impacts, thus transmitted, are diffused widely, each portion of the air conveying to the next
by its movement the timbre, as well as the pitch, of the sound. This is effected not by the air
being “shaped” (skhe ̄matizesthai), but by each portion of the air being identically moved
(kineisthai) by a neighboring portion of air. Each of these portions is momentarily contracted
and expanded by the pulse of sound which travels through it, but is not pushed or shunted
to a new position, as in the acoustic theory of the A P (11.6).
While this theory of the propagation and transmission of sound attempts to improve on
earlier ones, it does not, in the De Audibilibus, underpin a thesis that higher pitch is caused by
a greater frequency of impacts. The author makes an important improvement on Arkhutan
acoustics by separating force and speed as distinct variables which cause different qualities
in a sound (73.23–24). But by maintaining the view that velocity of transmission is the
determinant of pitch, the author falls short of a theory in which differences between fre-
quencies of impact are directly responsible for differences between pitches. Greater fre-
quency of impact at the point of perception will be a consequence of greater velocity of
travel, and so, accidentally, higher pitches will be constituted by a greater number of
impacts in an equal amount of time; but this higher frequency is a consequence rather than
a cause. Aristotle’s own objections to the pitch-velocity theory (De Sensu 448a) are therefore
not avoided in the present text, as they are in the E S C.
Düring (1932); Idem, Ptolemaios und Porphyrios über die Musik (1934); H.B. Gottschalk, “The De Audibilibus
and Peripatetic acoustics,” Hermes 96 (1968) 435–460; Barker (1989); Mathiesen (1999).
David Creese
Aristotelian Corpus Situations and Names of Winds (ca 300 – 200 BCE?)
This brief and fragmentary text (973a1–b25) lists 11 winds with various local names in the
Mediterranean region and some brief etymological explanations: the name of one wind
(north) is missing. The list agrees almost exactly with T’ system of winds. A
(now lost) drawing of a “wind rose” (illustrating the situations of the winds) is promised at
the end of the text. According to the MSS, the text is an excerpt of A On Signs, an
attribution accepted by Sider and Brunschön but doubted by other modern scholars, who
suggest T’ On Signs or another unknown Peripatetic author as source of
the excerpt. Regenbogen assumed that the text was possibly the mutilated end of
Theophrastos’ On Winds, whereas Rehm denied a Peripatetic origin.
Ed.: W.S. Hett, Aristotle, Minor Works (Loeb, 1936); V. D’Avella, “[Aristotle] On the Locations and
Names of the Winds,” in D. Sider and C.W. Brunschön, Theophrastus On Weather Signs = Philosophia
Antiqua 104 (2007), 221–225.
A. Rehm, Griechische Windrosen (1916) 94–103; RE S.7 (1940) 1412, O. Regenbogen; RE 8A.2 (1958)
2350 – 2351, R. Böker; J.F. Masselink, De Grieks-romeinse Windroos (1956).
Oliver Hellmann
ARISTOTELIAN CORPUS SITUATIONS AND NAMES OF WINDS