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Chapter 14 - The Early Reception of Aristotle’s Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2021

Sophia M. Connell
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
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Summary

This chapter examines the reception of Aristotle’s biological work from his immediate successors to Roman intellectuals in the late Republic and early Empire. The Peripatetics, notably Theophrastus and Eudemus, endorsed many hallmarks of Aristotelian biology (e.g. classification by differentiae in Theophrastus’ Researches into Plants), and their works on animals focused mainly on areas that were relatively underexplored by Aristotle, such as animal behavior and “character.” Readers and users of Aristotle’s biological works outside philosophical circles were mainly interested in the wealth of facts collected in the Historia Animalium especially, and much less in Aristotle’s causal investigations. The main product of this scholarly engagement with Aristotle’s biology was the Epitome by Aristophanes of Byzantium, librarian at Alexandria around 200 BCE: it does aim to collect facts arranged by individual animals, but it also shows an interest in the main problems raised in GA. In Rome, Lucretius and Cicero were able to draw on Aristotelian biology to bolster arguments for Epicurean materialism and Stoic providentialism respectively. Finally, it is noteworthy that the now-lost Dissections played an important role in the early reception of Aristotle’s biology, at least until Apuleius in the second century CE.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Guide to Further Reading

Sharples, R. W. 1995. Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence. Commentary . Vol. 5: Biology (Leiden: Brill).Google Scholar
White, S. 2002. “Eudemus the Naturalist,” in Fortenbaugh, W. W. and Bodnar, I. (eds.), Eudemus of Rhodes (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books), 207241.Google Scholar
Hellmann, O. 2006. “Peripatetic Biology and the Epitome of Aristophanes of Byzantium,” in Fortenbaugh, W. W. and White, S. A. (eds.), Aristo of Ceos. Text, Translation and Discussion (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books), 329359.Google Scholar
Edwards, G. F. 2018. “Reincarnation, Rationality, and Temperance. Platonists on Not Eating Animals,” in Adamson, P. and Edwards, G. F. (eds.), Animals: A History (Oxford University Press), 2756.Google Scholar
Newmyer, S. T. 1999. “Speaking of Beasts: The Stoics and Plutarch on Animal Reason and the Modern Case Against Animals,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 63: 99110.Google Scholar
Sorabji, R. 1993. Animal Minds and Human Morals (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
von Staden, H. 1997. “Teleology and Mechanism: Aristotelian Biology and Early Hellenistic Medicine,” in Kullmann, W. and Föllinger, S. (eds.), Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methode, Ergebnisse (Stuttgart: Steiner), 183208.Google Scholar
Cerami, C. and Falcon, A. 2014. “Continuity and Discontinuity in the Greek and Arabic Reception of Aristotle’s Study of Animals,” Antiquorum Philosophia 8: 3556.Google Scholar
Lennox, J. G. 2001f. “The Disappearance of Aristotle’s Biology: a Hellenistic Mystery,” in Lennox, J. G., Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge University Press), 110125.Google Scholar
Sassi, M. M., Coda, E., and Feola, G. (eds.) 2017. La zoologia di Aristotele e la sua ricezione dall’età ellenistica e romana alle culture medievali (Pisa University Press).Google Scholar

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