Zucker Arnaud, Mayhew Robert, Hellmann Oliver (eds.) The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science

Routledge, 2024. — 357 p. — (Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities).The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science (Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities), edited by by Arnaud Zucker, Robert Mayhew and Oliver Hellmann, is the first volume devoted to the sections of the Aristotelian Mirabilia on natural science, filling a significant gap in the history of the Aristotelian study of nature and especially of animals. The chapters in this volume explore the Mirabilia, or De mirabilibus auscultationibus (On Marvelous Things Heard), and its engagement with the natural sciences. The first two chapters deliver an introduction to this work: one a discussion of the history of the text and the other a discussion of Aristotelian epistemology and methodology, and the role of the Mirabilia in that context. This is followed by eight chapters that, together, are effectively a commentary on those sections of the Mirabilia with close connections to Aristotle’s Historia animalium and to a number of Theophrastus’ scientific treatises. Finally, the volume ends with two chapters on thematic topics connected to natural science running throughout the work, namely color and disease. The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science should prove invaluable to scholars and students interested in the ancient Greek study of nature, ancient philosophy, and Aristotelian science in particular.This book is a collective endeavor to better understand the Unidentified Literary Object (ULO) that has come down to us from antiquity (always attributed to Aristotle) with the title Περὶ θαυμασίων ἀκουσμάτων (On Marvelous Things Heard, its standard English translation, or under its Latin titles De mirabilibus auscultationibus or Mirabilia), though a more accurate title might be Strange Tales or Puzzling Reports. This collection undeniably belongs, lato sensu, to the corpus Aristotelicum, a convenient term that makes it possible to group together works whose authenticity is more or less well established and which have their origin in the Peripatetic school and even in the first circle of this school, at the time of its three main representatives: Aristotle, Theophrastus and Eudemus. Besides the canonical works, since antiquity itself, this corpus has included a set of treatises or opuscules considered peripheral or dubious, which, at some point in the ancient tradition or in the modern history of scholarship, appeared either incompatible, for textual or historical reasons, with an attribution to Aristotle, or irreconcilable with his doctrine, or intellectually unworthyof the Master. This last reason is not the least avowed, and it may have played a determining role in the arbitration on the part of certain scholars. In the case of the Mirabilia (as we shall call it for convenience’s sake), despite the attribution to Aristotle in antiquity and beyond, the authenticity of this work has been doubted or rejected, at least going back to Erasmus of Rotterdam, who in the preface to his Opera omnia of Aristotle (Basil 1531) writes that it is a collection patched together from various authors and lacking an Aristotelian character.Table of ContentsList of tables
Preface
List of contributorsIntroductionThe Text of De mirabilibus auscultationibus: Observations on Its Structure and Transmission
By Ciro GiacomelliMapping Human Knowledge in Peripatetic Research: Thaumata, Endoxa and the Hierarchy of Beliefs
By Han BaltussenEncounters with Curious Animals: De mirabilibus auscultationibus 1–15 and Historia animalium 8(9)
By Myrto HatzimichaliDe mirabilibus auscultationibus 16–22 and Theophrastus’ Lost On Honey
By Katerina OikonomopoulouDe mirabilibus auscultationibus 23–28 and Theophrastus’ Lost On Animals That Appear in Swarms
By Arnaud ZuckerMiracula ignium: Theophrastus’ On the Lava Flow in Sicily, De mirabilibus auscultationibus 33–41, and Pliny’s Historia naturalis 2.236–238
By Myrto GaraniThe Lives of Metals in Theophrastus and De mirabilibus auscultationibus
By Malcolm WilsonDe mirabilibus auscultationibus 71–74 and Theophrastus’ De piscibus
By Robert MayhewMultiple Use of Data in Aristotle, the Peripatos, and Beyond: De mirabilibus auscultationibus 75–77 and Theophrastus’ Lost On Animals Said to be Grudging
By Oliver HellmannDe mirabilibus auscultationibus 139–151: Theophrastus’ On Animals That Bite and Sting and Aristotle’s Nomima barbarica
By Gertjan VerhasseltColor Changes in De mirabilibus auscultationibus
By Katerina IerodiakonouDiseases in De mirabilibus auscultationibus
By George KazantzidisIndex Locorum
Index Nominum
Index Animalium et Plantarum
Index Rerum