Reading Aristotle at Rome

Abstract

Abstract There is no reason to doubt that, after Sulla’s sack of Athens, a large collection of Aristotelian manuscripts was brought to Rome. They attracted commercial as well as scholarly attention from Tyrannio, a grammarian who was also active in Cicero’s library. It is far less likely that there was a “Roman edition” by Andronicus of Rhodes. Cicero himself must have been acquainted with a wide range of Aristotelian works; he deploys some of Aristotle’s teleological explanations in De natura deorum, and discusses the semidivine life of contemplation in De finibus. There is evidence for Cicero’s closer engagement with Aristotle’s views on rhetoric, in terms of dialectical training, the construction of arguments, and prose rhythm. In the Neronian period, Cornutus engaged critically and in detail with Aristotle’s Categories, a work that, on Quintilian’s evidence, appears to have been influential in rhetorical circles. Seneca also made use of Aristotle’s ideas about emotions, causes, and meteorology, often accessed through the lens of a long-standing and ongoing interpretative tradition. In the Antonine period, alongside Apuleius’s engagement with logic and science, Gellius offers evidence for the process by which the “esoteric” works were privileged as Aristotle’s “true” teaching, while the “exoteric” ones gradually fell to neglect.