David And The Greek Tradition

Abstract

The four logico-philosophical works which are ascribed to David the Invincible the Prolegomena to Philosophy , the commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge , and the commentaries on Aristotle's Categories and Prior Analytics have at least two things in common: they are all Alexandrian, and they all travelled to Armenia. The surviving writings from the Alexandrian school are all versions of lectures; and since the professors lectured on classical texts, those writings are, almost all of them, in the form of commentaries. Most commentaries are uneven in their coverage, some parts of the text being examined in minute detail while others are rapidly passed over and it is a familiar phenomenon that the earlier parts of a text receive more attention than the later. As for David's own Alexandrian pupils, and the readers of his Greek commentaries, they will surely have profited and may even have been grateful. Keywords: classical texts; David; Greek commentaries; logico-philosophical works; Porphyry's Isagoge