Critical and Explanatory Notes on some passages assigned to Aristotle's Protrepticus

Abstract

1. Rose, Arist. fr. 57, Ross, Protr. fr. 3. As is well known, this passage is quoted by Stobaeus, who assigns it to Aristotle, and by Maximus Monachus in his Gnomologium. A papyrus probably of the 2nd. century A.D. preserves the same text, giving also a few lines before the part quoted by Stobaeus, and a sentence in the middle which he has omitted (CopL 8i LaXLa-roV, Ross fr. 3 lines 13-16). There are critical notes in Walzer's Aristotelis Dialogorunt Fragmenta (1934) 24-26 and During's Aristotle's Protrepticus (1961). The papyrus text was edited by Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri IV no. 666. Bernays (Die Dialoge des Arist. 161-64) accepted the attribution of the passage to Aristotle, while leaving it uncertain to which of his lost works it belonged. Subsequently the discovery of the papyrus, which includes itg YLXoaopTYeov, made it probable that the Protrepticus is the work in question. If so, the papyrus, which is now in the Bodleian Library, is the only surviving manuscript of any part of that work. I believe that we can add a little to the reconstruction by editors of the fragmentary opening sentence. And the sentence in the middle which, as said above, is preserved by the papyrus alone, has in my opinion been wrongly emended and falsely translated. I propose to discuss these two matters and consider tentatively the position which this passage occupied in the whole work. The papyrus is written in three narrow columns each of 57 lines, but of the first (left-hand) column nothing remains except the ends of lines at the top and bottom. Here is what is preserved according to Grenfell and Hunt: