2 The Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Abstract

A brief history of commentary writing on the EN from antiquity to the late Middle AgesNumerous commentaries on individual books of the Nicomachean Ethics (henceforth abbreviated EN) have come down to us.The earliest surviving are those by Aspasius in the second century AD on Books 1-4 and 7 and 8 of the EN. 14 We also have anonymous scholia to Books 2, 3, 4, and 5, probably dating to the final quarter of the second century AD. 15 The next systematic effort to interpret the EN occurs, unexpectedly, after a gap of almost ten centuries, 16 when Eustratius (ca.1050-ca.1120), metropolitan bishop of Nicaea, commented on Books 1 and 6, and his contemporary Michael of Ephesus (ca.1060-1130/1135) on Books 5, 9, and 10.Both Eustratius and Michael are thought to have operated in a context of imperial patronage at the behest of the princess Anna Komnene, 17 while their combined efforts || 14 Cf.J. Barnes, "Introduction to Aspasius", in A. Alberti and R. W. Sharples (eds), Aspasius: The Earliest Extant Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics (Berlin 1999) 1-50.15 The scholia seem to have been compiled from various sources, for example Adrastus of Aphrodisias (2 nd century AD).See H. P. F. Mercken, "The Greek Commentators on Aristotle's Ethics", in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence (Ithaca 1990), 407-444, at 408 and 421-429.16 According to Arabic sources, Porphyry and Themistius produced scholia to the EN which are not mentioned in the Greek tradition.The EN were translated into Arabic partly by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and partly by Usṭāth.Arabic philosophers who produced commentaries on or scholia to the EN include Al-Fārābī (not extant) and Ibn Rushd (Latinised as Averroes; only fragments survive).See the general study by P. Adamson, "Aristotle and the Arabic Commentary Tradition", in C. Shields (ed.),The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle (Oxford 2012) 645-664.Specifically for the EN, see J. Hayes, "The Arabic Reception of the Nicomachean Ethics", in A. Alwishah and J. Hayes (eds), Aristotle and the Arabic Tradition (Cambridge, MA 2015) 200-213.17 R. Browning, "An Unpublished Funeral Oration on Anna Comnena", Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 8 (1962) 1-12; P. Frankopan, "The Literary, Cultural and Political Context for the Twelfth-Century Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics", in C. Barber and D. Jenkins (eds), Medieval Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics (Leiden-Boston 2009) 45-62; L. Garland, "Mary 'of Alania', Anna Komnene, and the Revival of Aristotelianism in Byzantium", Byzantinoslavica 75 (2017) 123-163; and M. Trizio, "Forging Identities between Heaven and Earth: Commentaries on Aristotle and Authorial Practices in Eleventh-and Twelfth-Century Byzantium", in P. Marciniak, B. Van der Berg and D. Manolova (eds), Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts (forthcoming; I am grateful to the author for sharing this paper with me ahead of

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