Table Of ContentSIMPLICIUS
On Aristotle
On the Heavens 3.7-4.6
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SIMPLICIUS
On Aristotle
On the Heavens 3.7-4.6
Translated by
Ian Mueller
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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First published in 2009 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Paperback edition (cid:192) rst published 2014
© 2009 by Ian Mueller
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to be identi(cid:192) ed as Author of this work.
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General Editor’s Acknowledgements
The present translations have been made possible by generous and
imaginative funding from the following sources: the National Endowment
for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, an
independent federal agency of the USA; the Leverhulme Trust; the
British Academy; the Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal Society
(UK); Centro Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia dello Spazio e del
Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci; Liverpool University; the Leventis
Foundation; the Arts and Humanities Research Council; Gresham
College; the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust; the Henry Brown
Trust; Mr and Mrs N. Egon; the Netherlands Organisation for Scienti(cid:192) c
Research (NWO/GW); the Ashdown Trust; Dr Victoria
Solomonides, the Cultural Attaché of the Greek Embassy in London.
The editor wishes to thank Dirk Baltzly, Donald Russell, Robert Todd,
Andrea Falcon and Alan Lacey for their comments, Fiona Leigh for
preparing the volume for press, Sarah Francis for assistance with the
indices, and Deborah Blake at Duckworth, who has been the publisher
responsible for every volume since the (cid:192) rst.
Typeset by Ray Davies.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
Translation 25
3.7, 305b28-end. Criticism of Plato’s geometrical chemistry 27
3.8 Criticism of Plato’s geometrical chemistry continued 42
4.1 Absolute and relative heaviness and lightness; criticism of 67
Plato’s claim that there is no above and below in the universe
4.2 Criticism of previous accounts of heaviness and lightness 74
4.3 Heaviness and lightness; natural motion as the attaining of 88
form
4.4 The existence of places between above and below and of 102
elements, water and air, to occupy them
4.5 The four elements differ in their matter 114
4.6 The effect of shape and size on the motion of bodies 127
Appendix 1. On the geometric arguments of 652,9-655,27 131
Appendix 2. On some later discussions of 306b5-8 136
Textual Questions 147
(a) Departures from Heiberg’s text 147
(b) Simplicius’ citations of On the Heaven 3.1-7, 305b28 148
(c) Simplicius’ citations of other texts 148
(d) Lemmas 149
Notes 151
Bibliography 169
English-Greek Glossary 173
Greek-English Index 183
Index of Passages 207
Index of Names 209
Subject Index 213
Addenda 215
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Acknowledgements
The first draft of my translation of Simplicius’ commentary on Books 3 and
4 of Aristotle’s On the Heavens (De Caelo, Cael.) was completed in 2005-6
when I was a Visiting Scholar at Christ’s College, Cambridge. I would like
to record my gratitude to the fellows of the College and particularly to the
then Master, the late Malcolm Bowie, who provided me with an ideal
working place and a most convivial intellectual and social atmosphere in
which to live.
I would also like to thank the Classics Faculty at Cambridge for both
the use of its library and continuing stimulation of its seminars and
lectures, in which the interventions of Nicholas Denyer, Geoffrey Lloyd,
Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, Robert Wardy, and others reminded me
again and again that no interpretive question can safely be considered
settled.
In making this translation I have constantly had to rely on others for
help with linguistic and substantive issues. I am sure I cannot remember
the names of all of those others, but I would like to mention Elizabeth
Asmis, Myles Burnyeat, Alan Code, Stephen Menn, Jan Opsomer, David
Sedley, James Wilberding, Dirk Baltzly, and Daniel Graham. Baltzly and
Graham are the only official vetters whose names are known to me, but
the suggestions and corrections of the other three were also extremely
helpful. I am especially grateful to the general editor of the ancient
commentators series, Richard Sorabji, whose advice and encouragement
were a sine qua non for my completion of this translation.
The most important mainstay for all my endeavours continues to be my
wife and intellectual partner of almost fifty years, Janel Mueller. How
lucky I have been to be able to have dinner conversations with her on the
translations of both Simplicius’ commentary and the texts of Queen Eliza-
beth I written in foreign languages.
Ian Mueller
Chicago
vii
Abbreviations
Cael. = Aristotle’s On the Heavens.
CAG = Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Berlin: G. Reimer, 1882-1909.
DK = Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz (eds and trans.) (1954), Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edn, Berlin: Weidmann.
DPA = Richard Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, Paris:
Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1989- .
GC = Aristotle’s On Coming to Be and Perishing.
Guthrie = W.K.C. Guthrie (ed. and trans.) (1939), Aristotle, On the Heav-
ens, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, and London: William
Heinemann.
in Phys. = Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (CAG, vols 9 and
10).
Karsten = Simon Karsten (ed.) (1865), Simplicii Commentarius in IV
Libros Aristotelis De Caelo, Utrecht: Kemink and Son.
LSJ = George Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon,
Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Metaph. = Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
Moraux = Paul Moraux (1965) (ed. and trans.), Aristote: du Ciel, texte
établi et traduit par Paul Moraux, Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Phys. = Aristotle’s Physics.
Rivaud = Albert Rivaud (ed. and trans.), Timée-Critias (Platon, Oeuvres
Complètes, vol. 10, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1925).
Stocks = J.L Stocks (trans.) (1922), De Caelo, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
also in vol. 2 of W.D. Ross (ed.) (1928-52), The Works of Aristotle, 12 vols,
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Theophrastus: Sources = William W. Fortenbaugh, Pamela M. Huby,
Robert W. Sharples and Dimitri Gutas (eds and trans.) (1992), Theo-
phrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought, and
Influence (Philosophia Antiqua 54), 2 vols, Leiden and New York: E.J.
Brill.
Tim. = Plato’s Timaeus.
TL = Timaeus of Locri, On the Nature of the World and the Soul; cited after
Marg (1972).
viii
Introduction
This volume is a translation of the end of Simplicius’ commentary on On
the Heavens (De Caelo or Cael.) starting at 305b28 in book 3, chapter 7.1
Most of Simplicius’ commentary on book 1 has been translated in Hankin-
son (2002), (2004), and (2006). Missing from the translation of the com-
mentary on chapters 2 to 4 are Simplicius’ exchanges with John
Philoponus on Aristotle’s cosmology. Simplicius’ representations of Phi-
loponus’ criticisms are translated in Wildberg (1987); Simplicius’ re-
sponses are for the most part still untranslated. The commentary on book
2 is translated in Mueller (2004) and (2005), the commentary on the first
part of book 3 in Mueller (2009).
Simplicius was born in Cilicia (in southeastern Turkey) in the late fifth
century of the Common Era. He studied philosophy with Ammonius of
Alexandria (DPA, vol. 1, 168-9) and with Damascius (DPA, vol. 2, 541-93)
in Athens or Alexandria. Sometime after the closing of the so-called
Platonic school in Athens (529), Simplicius went with Damascius and five
other philosophers to the court of Chosroes, King of Persia. They did not
stay long but returned in or around 532 to the confines of the Byzantine
Empire under a treaty provision protecting them from persecution. It is
not known where Simplicius went; Athens, Alexandria, and, more re-
cently, Harran in southeastern Turkey east of Cilicia have been
suggested.2 But it is now generally agreed that the three great Aristotelian
commentaries safely attributable to Simplicius, those on the Categories,
Physics, and On the Heavens3 were written after Simplicius’ departure
from Persia when, one assumes, he had the leisure to write these extensive
works and to do the research and thinking they presuppose.
1. The contents of the last part of Cael.4
In book 3 of Cael. Aristotle turns from the world above the moon to the
sublunary world. For Aristotle, it is axiomatic that this world is composed
of or from one or more elements, and an important task of book 4 is to prove
that there are four such elements (or simple bodies), earth, water, air, and
fire. However, Aristotle’s arguments are notoriously opaque, and Sim-
plicius is ultimately driven to the conclusion that Aristotle is simply
assuming this doctrine in Cael. and will demonstrate it in GC.5 By the
beginning of 3.6 Aristotle has established that there is more than one
element, but not infinitely many. Rather than proceeding directly to the
