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.

This study seeks to analyse Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica in terms of a fourfold taxonomy of modes textual violence: the relationship of the text’s composition to historical acts of violence, its narration of acts of violence, its adoption of violent language for otherwise not (necessarily) violent actions or practices, and its violence against the integrity of its opponents’ identities, thought, and writings. While the first two modes are more limited, the latter two modes of textual violence are exquisitely expressed – and yet simultaneously deeply complicated – by Eusebius’ apologetic work. De Certeau’s notion of a tactics of textual poaching, in particular, prompts a cautious reconsideration of how quotation of one’s opponents might (or might not) work as a mode of textual violence.