Philosophy, in general, moves in a sphere of abstraction, and its statements claim to be necessary and of universal validity. The reader therefore expects them to appeal directly to his reason, and he does not normally reflect much on the time and historical conditions that determined what the philosopher took for granted. It is only in this age of historical consciousness that we have come to appreciate these factors more readily, and the great thinkers of the past appear to us more or less closely related to the culture of their age. The writings of Plato and Aristotle in particular are for us an inexhaustible source of information about Greek society and civilisation. This is true also in regard to the relation of Greek philosophy to the science of its time, and this is of special importance for our understanding. That relation can be traced throughout Aristotle's logical, physical, and metaphysical works; but the influence of other sciences and arts is no less evident in his ethics. In this paper I propose to examine the numerous references to medicine that occur in the Nicomachean Ethics. They are mostly concerned with the question of the best method of treating this subject. The problem of the right method is always of the utmost importance for Aristotle. The discussion of it begins on the first page of the Ethics, where he tries to give a definition of the subject of this course of lectures and attributes it to a philosophical discipline that he calls ‘politics’. He does so in agreement with the Platonic tradition. We can trace it back to one of the dialogues of Plato's first period, the Gorgias, in which the Platonic Socrates for the first time pronounces his postulate of a new kind of philosophy, the object of which ought to be the care of the human soul (φυχῆς θεραπεία). He assigns this supreme task to ‘political art’, even though it does not fulfil this function at present.

The editorial introduction to a Greek play will often include a section on the characters, in which their various traits are collected into a series of sketches. There may be sketches not only of the main characters but of minor, anonymous personages together with a sort of collective sketch of the chorus, and they are commonly made without fuss or discussion of critical theory. There has, of course, both here and in general books on the tragedians, always been room for differences of interpretation: as to whether, for example, Pentheus is moral or prurient. It is round such differences that discussion revolves, and the arguments have been heated enough. Why is the Aeschylean Agamemnon made to tread the purple carpet? Professor Thomson suggests that it is by reason of Clytemnestra's irresistible feminine charm. But since this charm, so far from being explicitly attested, is only an inference from three lines of dialogue; since the king has said a little earlier (in Thomson's own translation):

Seek not to unman me with effeminate

Graces and barbarous salaams agape

In grovelling obeisance at my feet—

from which any susceptibility to Clytemnestra's charm seems singularly absent; since, moreover, he has brought with him a concubine who is—

of many chattels the elect flower,

—one might be tempted to maintain that even if the charm is accepted as a help towards interpretation, there must be other reasons also for Agamemnon's acting as he does. Very well, you may say, modify the sketch to suit your taste.

In a passage of his Protrepticus mentioned by several ancient authors Aristotle wrote: εἰ μὲνφιλοσοφητέον φιλοσοφητέον, καὶ εἰ μὴ φιλοσοφητέον φιλοσοφητέον πάντως ἄρα φιλοσοφητέον (V. Rose, Aristotelis Fragmenta, 51. Cf. R. Walzer, Aristotelis Dialogorum Fragmenta, p. 22; W. D. Ross, Select Fragments of Aristotle, p. 27). That is to say, ‘If we ought to philosophise, then we ought to philosophise; and if we ought not to philosophise, then we ought to philosophise (i.e. in order to justify this view); in any case, therefore, we ought to philosophise’. So far as I know, this is the first appearance in philosophical literature of a pattern of argument that became popular among the Jesuits of the seventeenth century under the name of the consequentia mirabilis and inspired Saccheri's work Euclides ab Omni Naevo Vindicatus, in which theorems of non-Euclidean geometry were proved for the first time. The later history has been told by G. Vailati (in his article on Saccheri's Logica Demonstrativa, ‘Di un’ opera dimenticata del P. Gerolamo Saccheri’, reprinted in his Scritti, 1911, pp. 477–84), G. B. Halsted (in the preface to his 1920 edition of Saccheri's Euclides), and J. -Łukasiewicz (in his ‘Philosophische Bemerkungen zu mehrwertigen Systemen des Aussagenkalküls’, Comptes Rendus des séances de la société des sciences et des lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, Vol. xxiii, 1930, p. 67). In this note I wish to consider only the early history of the argument and in particular a curious criticism of it which appears in Aristotle's Prior Analytics.

I.G. xii (2). 1. 13–15.

These lines come from the well-known unique inscription, in Aeolic dialect, recording the terms of a monetary union between Mytilene and Phokaia, whereby each agreed to issue, in alternate years, an electrum coinage for circulation in both cities. The inscription is, on the evidence of letter forms, accepted as belonging to the early years of the fourth or possibly to the end of the fifth century B.C. The story of the poet Persinos, attributed to Kallisthenes, implies that the treaty was still in operation within the period c. 373–55 B.C.

The present note re-examines the meaning of τὸ χρυσίον κέρναν here, and in 11. 4–6 convincingly restored by G. N. Papageorgiu (Unedierte Inschriften von Mytilene, 16, no. 53) as:

This fragmentary vase was discovered in 1895 in a tomb at Curium by the British Museum Expedition (Turner Bequest) and was first published in the Excavations in Cyprus. Since then references to it have been made by various scholars, chiefly because of its unusual decoration with female figures inside ladder-pattern frames; these frames have been commonly interpreted as windows', hence the name ‘window-crater’.

The same tomb in which the ‘window-crater’ had been discovered was re-excavated by the expedition of the University Museum, Philadelphia, in 1939, and thirty-five new fragments of the same vase were found. These have now been restored to the main body of the crater in the British Museum, and it has been suggested that in its more complete form it should be re-examined and published with better illustration.

A detailed description of its form and fabric is given in BMC Vases and the CVA It is probably the largest of its kind (height, 43·5 cm.; diameter, 43·2 cm.); the fabric represents Mycenaean ware at its best: buff pinkish clay, dark red lustrous paint. Each panel between the two handles is decorated with a chariot scene flanked with groups of female figures.

The excellent report by H.-R. Schwyzer in his long article on Plotinus in R.-E. (Bd. XLI (1951), col. 477–81), presents the reader with a picture of the present state of research concerning Ammonius, while giving a critique of previous discussions. A significant feature of the situation is this: simultaneously with the endeavour to obtain a clear picture of Ammonius's doctrine from the reports in Nemesius of Emesa and Hierocles (Photius, Bibl. cod. 214 and 251)—reports whose upper and lower limits are controversial—a new and fruitful attempt has been made to work back to Ammonius as the common source behind numerous concordances between Plotinus and Origen. Following the lead of René Cadiou, who, in his epoch-making work La jeunesse d'Origène (Paris, 1935), demonstrated the importance of Ammonius for the development of the theology of Origen, de Jong has given a convenient conspectus of the parallels between Plotinus and Origen (Plotinus of Ammonius Saccas, Leiden, 1941). But this gives rise to some problems of general procedure. What justification is there for Schwyzer's assertion (op. cit. 480. 65) that ‘it is a priori improbable that Plotinus would have studied the writings of Origen’? This depends upon the presupposition that Christianity, and in particular its theology, during the years of Plotinus's studies at Alexandria, was of far too slight importance, intensive or extensive, to have had any influence upon a man of the spiritual calibre of Plotinus.

Amongst the unattributed Apophthegmata Laconica of Plutarch is one (no. 67, 236D) which seems to refer to an episode in Spartan history not recorded elsewhere in the extant sources. The text is as follows:

The details of the affair are lacking, but it is clear that the apophthegm presupposes a Spartan embassy to a tyrant named Lygdamis, on a subject which made him unwilling to receive it. The identity of the tyrant in question is not immediately certain; in addition to the famous Lygdamis of Naxos, the adventurer who assisted Pisistratus in his final attempt at securing power and was in return himself installed as tyrant of his native island, there was a Halicarnassian tyrant of that name, the son or (less probably) grandson of Queen Artemisia; and her father, who was also called Lygdamis, was quite possibly himself a tyrant. However, the chance that the reference here is to a Halicarnassian tyrant is I think remote. There is no tradition of Spartan dealings with Halicarnassus either in the time of Artemisia's father or in the generations immediately following her, nor can any plausible occasion be suggested; the former period is marked by Sparta's concentration on home affairs, the latter by her complete abdication from trans-Aegean politics in favour of Athens after 478 B.C. Thus whether the apophthegm be genuine or invented it seems unlikely that a Halicarnassian tyrant is meant; for even invented Laconisms, if credited with specific circumstances, are usually made to have reference to something either historical or at least plausible.

As regards Aristotle's Περὶ φυτῶν ᾱβ mentioned in Diog. Laert.'s list (nr. 108), Alexander's Statement is decisive: … ἔστι περὶ φυτῶν Θεοφράστῳ πραγματεία γεγραμμένη ᾿Αριστοτέλους γὰροὐ φέρεται and though Simplicius and others occasionally refer to a πραγματεία περὶ φυτῶν there is no indication that they ever saw the book with their own eyes. Aristotle's treatise On Plants, therefore, seems to have disappearedat an early date, and since the quotations in Antigonus, Athenaeus and others are concerned with insignificant details, they cannot give any hint as to its contents.

It has often been asked whether there exists any relation between this lost treatise and the two books Περὶ φυτῶν which are incorporated into all editions of the Corpus Aristotelicum (pp. 814–830 Bk.), but the question has never received a definite answer. There are good reasons for this reticence, for though these books were identified more than a century ago as a work of Nicolaus of Damascus, the text is in such a deplorable condition that it seemed to resist every attempt at interpretation. However, since in 1841 E. H. F. Meyer published the Arabic-Latin translation made by Alfred of Sareshel (the exemplar of the clumsy Greek rendering whichwas already known), the material has considerably increased.

Dans un travail déjà anciennous avons attiré l'attention sur l'intérêt que présentait pour l'histoire de la constitution du texte de la Physique d'Aristote latraduction arabo-latine de ce traité attribuée à Michel Scot ou à son école, et jointe, dans les éditions du XVIe siècle, comme dans les mss., à la version latine du Commentaire d'Averroès. En conclusion de cette étude nous avons appuyé—peut-être unpeu trop—sur la parenté du texte dont dérive la version arabo-latine avec celui du cod. E, le meilleur des mss. de Bekker. Sir David Ross, à qui ces pages sont offertes en hommage, a repris les données fournies par notre travail, mais a été amené par une étude plus minutieuse des leçonsen présence, à modifier ou à redresser nos conclusions. Il juge que le texte auquel remonte la version se trouve à peu près à mi-chemin entre celui de E et celui du groupe des autres mss. principaux de la Physique.

Notre travail antérieur ne portait que sur les quatre premiers livres de la Physique. Nous voudrions entreprendre ici un travail analogue sur une base à la fois plus étroite et plus large. Nous nous limiterons tout d'abord aux trois premiers chapitres du texte secondaire du livre VII de la Physique. Mais au lieu d'en examiner une seule version arabo-latine, nous en rapprocherons les deux versions médiévalesfaites sur l'arabe, lesquelles remontent respectivement au XIIe et au XIIIe siècle: dans la mesure où elles convergent elles pourront nous renseigner ainsi en même temps sur certaines caractéristiques du texte arabe dont elles dépendent et par là sur la teneur du texte grec dont dérive en dernière analyse ce texte arabe.

The purpose of this article is to try to show that the legend of the rape of the Delphic tripod by Herakles became associated as symbolic with the First Sacred War and that this association is a chief factor in the great popularity of that subject in late archaic art.

We should begin with the First Sacred War itself, an event whose historical importance is inadequately matched by the quality of our literary sources. The earliest account of it occurs in Aeschines' speech against Ktesiphon (iii. 107 ff.), where he introduced the subject because it provided the theological justification for the line which he had taken when attending the meeting of the Delphic Amphictyony in the autumn of 340. So it is not a simple narrative, but a tendentious statement, carefully designed to bring out the points which suited the orator's case. At the same time it has real value as historical evidence, because it is based to some extent on an ancient stele, a memorial of the war, to whose text Aeschines had referred in his original speech at Delphi. A copy of the inscription was read to the jury, and the extant speech contains quotations and paraphrases of portions of it.

Das bekannte Problem, von wem der Name Metaphysik eigentlich stamme und ob derselbe denn mehr als ganz äuβerliche Bedeutung (nämlich die Angabe der Reihenfolge der Ausgabe der Aristotelischen Schriften) habe, wurde innerhalb der letzten Jahre überaus gründlich diskutiert. Das Problem, das hier behandelt werden soll, ist ihm verwandt. Wie immer man Name und dessen Entstehung erklärt, so bleibt doch sehr bemerkenswert, daβ die Metaphysik, wie ihr Name besagt, in irgendeinem Sinne auf die Physik folgt. Denn es scheint doch, daβ es im Sinne einer Reihe von Stellen bei Aristoteles läge, dieselbe nicht auf die Physik, sondern auf die Mathematik folgen zulassen, so daβ sie nicht Metaphysik, sondern Metamathematik heiβen sollte. Wenn wir uns also für den Namen Metaphysik interessieren, so geschieht es in dem Sinne: Warum Metaphysik und nicht Metamathematik?

An den Stellen, an denen Aristoteles das Wesen der Ersten Philosophie bestimmt, behandelt er immer wieder zwei Wissenschaften, die den Anspruch erheben könnten, Erste Philosophie zu sein. Es sind dies Physik und Mathematik. Und Aristoteles gibt diesen beiden das Recht zu, als Teile der Weisheit zu gelten, weist dagegen deren Anspruch Erste Philosophie zu sein, ab. Als Endergebnis der Diskussion finden wir die Formel, daβ es drei Philosophien (oder wie wir auch sagen könnten, Sophien) gibt, Physik, Mathematik und Erste Philosophie.

In the course of examining Roman imperial medallions and coins in connexion with a study of Roman cult images, representations of Herakles Crowning Himself, a figure which appears on the reverses of medallions of Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus (Plate I, 2), and Commodus (Plate I, 3), merit further comment. These reverses, whether with or without legend, exhibit identical compositions. In the centre a young, beardless Herakles stands facing, his right hand raised in the act of placing a crown on his head; his left hand, close to his left hip, holds the club upwards in the crook of the elbow. Between club and elbow, the lion's skin hangs down over the forearm to a point midway along the left leg. The head, both forepaws, and tail are clearly visible dangling below. On all the medallions the die designer has made very clear the, important point that Herakles rests his weight on the left foot, with left hip thrown out and the right foot slightly back and out, giving a pronounced bow curve to the right side of the body from foot to shoulder. To Herakles' right and slightly behind him appears an apple tree on one branch of which hang the hero's quiver and bow; to his left rear is seen a square altar, festooned with garlands and with an offering burning on the top, and in her comprehensive monograph on Roman medallions J. M. C. Toynbee suggests that ‘the picture as a whole had been inspired by some bas-relief or painting now lost to us’. The question of relating the central figure to the whole composition will be taken up in Part II, in reappraising the general problem of famous statue types in medallion compositions. For the moment we may see what further progress may be made in identifying the statue type of the young Herakles Crowning Himself.

Cod. Florence Bibl. Nazion. Centr. Conv. Soppr. J.VI.34—formerly in Niccolò Niccoli's and St. Mark's libraries—written in a beautiful French hand of c. A.D. 1150–1200—contains the second edition of Boethius's translation of Pr. An. Many scholia, written on the margins and between the lines by the same calligraphic hand which wrote the Aristotelian text or by a hand very similar to and contemporary with it, accompany the translation in this MS. They are mainly concentrated in about one-half of the work, viz. in book i.23–30 (4ob–46a) and book ii (52a–70b); quite a few accompany i. 1, 5–6, 30–45 (24a, 27b–28a, 46a–50a); almost none is to be found in i. 10–14, 17–22 (30b7–33b25, 37a25–40b10). Arrangement and writing suggest that the scribe intended to give the reader Aristotle's text together with what was available to him of an authoritative commentary.

The scholia range, in nature and extent, from short glosses on single words or phrases and short summaries of sections of Aristotle's work to detailed explanations and doctrinal developments of important or difficult passages. Here and there carefully drawn diagrams illustrate logical rules and geometrical examples. The following scholia are mainly chosen from book i; others, from both books, will be given farther on.

Basic Structure: A broad flight of twenty-one steps leads up from the south-west angle of the Temple of Apollo to a partially paved court immediately in front of the lower face of the scarp. This is given a quadrilateral delimitation by the angular revetment of an irregularity in the scarp to the west, and by the monumental water tank to the east of the entrance to the grotto. The entrance was hewn in the cliff face in the form of three arches (now much destroyed), and was revetted with large well-draughted limestone blocks. Of these, only the lower two courses are now in situ, but individual blocks of the upper courses have been collected and amongst them are those with crowning mouldings and one bearing the fragment of a Greek inscription (height:of letters, 25 cm. approximately).

The interior of the grotto consists basically of a central oblong depression, paved and cemented, surrounded on the two sides and the back by a raised staging—thus giving rise to the term of reference ‘TRICLINIUM’—while between the staging and the walls are the tanks and channels: associated with the water supply and drainage.

Considered longitudinally, the interior may be divided into three entities. The first extends from the entrance to a pair of rock-hewn columns bearing rude inscriptions. Immediately above this compartment lay the terrace of an ancient rock-cut path and its collapse has breached the path and totally unroofed this section of the grotto.

In Map I of my article on the Battle in JHS lxxvi, p. 32, the position of the Greek fleet's front line c. 8 a.m. was incorrectly shown. It should be as shown here by the dotted line, in accordance with the text of the article on pp. 46 and 50.

In his lost essay περὶ ἰδεῶν Aristotle retailed and rebutted a number of Academic arguments for the existence of Ideas. Several of these, together with Aristotle's objections to them, are preserved in Alexander's commentary on A 9 of the Metaphysics. The first object of the following discussion is to show the sense and the provenance of one, the most complex and puzzling, of these surviving arguments. For several reasons it seems to deserve more consideration than it has yet had. 1. Its length and technicality make it singularly fitted to illustrate the sort of material on which Aristotle drew in his critique. 2. Moreover, Alexander reports it by way of amplifying Aristotle's comment that, of the more precise arguments on Ideas, οἱ μὲν τῶν πρός τι ποιοῦσιν ἰδέας , ὧν οὔ φαμεν εἶναι καθ᾿ αὑτὸ γένος (Met. 990b15–17 = 1079a11–13); condensed and allusive form of this remark and its immediate neighbours in the Metaphysics can be taken to show that here Aristotle is epitomising parts of his περὶ ἰδεῶν that are independently known to us only through his commentator. We shall not understand the objection if we misidentify its target; and another purpose of this discussion is to show that the objection is not the disingenuous muddle that one recent writer labours to make it. 3. But Alexander's report of the argument is a nest of problems, and the same recent writer brands it as almost incredibly careless. To this extent, the success of our explanation will be a vindication of the commentator. But on all the heads of this discussion I am well aware that much more remains to be said.

In his article on the Colossus of Rhodes in JHS lxxvi, Mr. Herbert Maryon argues that the statue was not cast as is usually assumed, but formed of hammered bronze plates. He bases his argument on the figure of 500 talents given by Philo Byz. (iv. 6) for the weight of bronze used in the statue. A statue 120 feet high using this quantity of metal would, he calculates, have walls rather less than one-fifteenth of an inch thick, which would be impossibly thin for a large casting.

Among the topics this paper will discuss, the leading one is that of the moral psychology of the Laws; it will not, however, attempt a general study of this, but will confine itself to the question whether that work presupposes any particular division of the soul into parts. The problem seems to have been on the whole neglected by scholars. Apelt in his Platon-Index says briefly that the soul is there treated as tripartite, which is certainly not true without qualification. Neither England's commentary nor Ritter's affords much help. The latter does, indeed, touch on the question in Volume II of his Platon; he there states that the Laws treats the soul as tripartite, and supports this by referring to I. 644C and IX. 863B, but neither passage proves his point, the second actually suggesting that it requires some modification, as will be argued below. The best treatment known to me is the discussion of the second of these passages by L. Gernet in his translation (with commentary) of Book IX, but it requires some expansion and supplementation.

It will be well to begin by recapitulating briefly the main points in the moral psychology of the Republic. The soul is there divided into three parts or (better) elements, the rational, the spirited and the appetitive, and this division has two aspects: (a) an analysis is thus provided which can be used in the interpretation and appraisal of all action whatever, the soul being in the right state and the agent's actions right in consequence when the rational element controls the appetitive through the agency of the spirited; (b) at the same time each of the three elements represents a drive towards one of three goals, the rational towards knowledge, the spirited towards honour and public distinction, and the appetitive towards pleasure (interpreted as bodily pleasure), or towards material gain as a means to the attainment of pleasure. Secondly, each of these three drives may predominate in any individual soul (though it is commonest for the last to do so, and least common for the first), and the three are therefore to be correlated with three ways of life, that of the thinker, that of the soldier or man in public life, and that of the merchant or other person engaged in a money-making enterprise, and further these ways of life are specially characteristic of different races. Thirdly, the three elements in the soul and the three types of character are correlated by Plato with the three classes in his ideal state, the rulers, the auxiliaries and the artisans. Fourthly, the distinction of three elements in the soul is made the basis for interpreting the four virtues, wisdom being the virtue of the rational element and courage of the spirited (ideally under the control of the rational), while justice consists in the maintenance of the proper relation between the three elements, the rational controlling the appetitive through the agency of the spirited, and temperance in the willing acquiescence of the appetites in the rule of reason. On the larger canvas of state organisation, the three classes will have as their specially characteristic virtues wisdom, courage and temperance respectively, while the state as a whole will be just if the correct relation between the three classes is maintained and the reason of the rulers preserves its control with the help of the auxiliaries. Fifthly, the tripartition of the soul is applied in Book IX to the discussion of pleasure, pleasures being graded as higher or lower according to the element in the soul which enjoys them; indeed, Plato argues that the pleasures of the rational element are not simply superior to those of the other two but more real as well.Finally, Book X suggests at least that the rational element is the real self, that it alone is immortal, and that the other two exist merely in virtue of our temporary attachment to a body.

On the 27th November, 1951, at a little distance outside the ditch which marks the walls of the Roman town of Melita (now Rabat-Mdina), in an area covered with Roman tombs, a huge stone was found measuring 60 in. in length, 27½ in. in height and 19½ in. in breadth (152·4 cm. } 73·6 cm. } 53·3 cm.). It is a funerary altar with a simply decorated mensa and sides. The back has no decoration and its surface is rough. When excavated the altar was found in a place where the rock was cut to allow of its being placed against it and between it and the wall of rock there was an empty space of a little depth, clearly indicating that the space must have been filled by some architectural structure of a nature slight enough to be completely destroyed at a later date.

A short section of Aristotle's de generatione animalium embodies his final answer to the question how the faculties of soul are transmitted from parent to offspring. Aristotle here speaks in a tone which is dogmatic as well as enthusiastic; he is able to announce a new discovery. There is, he sets forth, in the sperma a peculiar substance (σῶμα) which has some connection with soul and differs in quality as the souls themselves differ in worth. This substance is identical with two of the entities mentioned in our title and ‘analogous’ to the third.

Πάσης μὲν οὖν ψυχῆς δύναμις ἑτέρου σώματος ἔοικε κεκοινωνηκέναι καὶ θειοτέρου τῶν καλουμένων στοιχείων ὡς δὲ διαφέρουσι τιμιότητι αἱ ψυχαὶ καὶ ἀλλήλων, οὕτω καὶ ἡ τοιαύτη διαφέρει φύσις. πάντων μὲν γὰρ ἐν τῷ σπέρματι ὑπάρχει ὅπερ ποιεῖ γόνιμα εἶναι τὰ σπέρματα, τό καλούμενον θερμόν. τοῦτο δ᾿ οὐ πῦρ πὐδὲ τοιαύτη δύναμίς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐμπεριλαμβανόμενον ἐν τῷ σπέρματι καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀφρώδει πνεῦμα καὶ ἡ ἐν τῷ πνεύματι φύσις, ἀνάλογον οὖσα τῶν ἄστρων στοιείῳ.

The sentences which follow state that fire has no generative or procreative power, yet such a power must be present in the Sun and in the θερμόν, the vital heat of living beings. Clearly, then, this θερμόν cannot be identical with the fire.

Nowhere else in the body of his preserved work does Aristotle establish this close connection between the vital heat, the pneuma, and the element of the stars, the so-called aether. These three concepts differ as much in their origin and past history as in their function and place within Aristotle's own physical or biological system. A brief sketch of them—skipping by necessity many significant episodes in the history of each—will suffice to make this clear.

What needs here to be said about the ‘element of the stars’ is indeed not much. It was Aristotle himself who added this element to the canonic four of the Empedoclean and Platonic tradition. The dialogue On Philosophy and the First Book On the Heaven secured it its place. It is divine, un-ageing, and unchanging, and yet a material element. Like the other elements it has its specific ‘natural motion’, to wit the circular, which makes it possible for Aristotle to explain by a physical ‘hypothesis’ the celestial motions for which Plato had resorted to the World-Soul. The place of this element is the entire heavenly region, extending from the First Heaven to the moon; below this, in the regions occupied by the four other elements, it is never to be found.