As is well known, some of the volumes of the 19th-century project of the Prussian Academy to publish the late antique commentaries on Aristotle are in need of revision. Idiosyncratic emendations, bad collations and, sometimes, the appearance of important and hitherto unknown manuscripts all necessitate new editions. The task has been taken up by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy and the new project aims to include not only the commentaries from late antiquity but, as the title of the series shows, texts from Byzantine period as well. The corollaries on place and time stand out in Simplicius’ monumental commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. They are not proper commentaries with lemmata but systematic expositions furnished with references to, and, sometimes, extensive quotations from, the most important predecessors dealing with the issue and, as the editors emphasize (p. xvii), they do not presuppose the knowledge of the commentary.[1] Moreover, they are monograph treatises applying dialectical and exegetical methods. We can call them dialectical insofar as they examine the views of the predecessors, ancient and modern alike, with the aim of reaching a final exposition of the subject-matter itself.[2]
The volume starts with an extensive introduction where the editors analyse the content and the structure of the corollaries and discuss the textual and editorial problems that render the new edition necessary. They also indicate the original points in Simplicius’ discussion. Heavily inspired by his colleague Damascius, he comes up with suggestions that reflect the various approaches proposed by the Neoplatonists at Athens. Regarding place, the editors see his contribution to consist primarily in the detailed and fair presentation of all the important views on the subject, although we may also appreciate the effort he makes to reflect on some specific problems concerning the nature of place (p. xxi). Like Damascius, he rejects the notion of inert place. Instead, he promotes the idea that place has powers of its own insofar as it arranges the elements into their proper regions and serves as a kind of cohesive force by organising all extended things (e.g., 88.11-20 – 636.6-17 Diels). Moreover, unlike Damascius but in agreement with Syrianus, from the notion of active place he draws the conclusion that the unique place of the body moves along with the body in motion (e.g., 72.10-11 – 629.10-11 Diels; 92.1-9 – 637.22-32 Diels), which is in contrast with the received view that place does not move. It is naturally united with the body and differs from the place the body shares with others. As a result, the unique place is not considered as an extension and therefore it does not belong to the category of quantity. It is rather a substance qua extended, or it can hardly be distinguished from substance (94.8 – 638.26 Diels). In the discussion of the nature of time, the editors emphasize that Simplicius tries to solve the problems raised by Aristotle on time by reflecting on the status of the soul. Situated in between the sensible and the intelligible worlds it cannot grasp the time as it is even if time exists in reality (p. xxxvii). They also point out that he was willing to amend the teaching of his teacher Damascius. Instead of talking about an integral time that is attached to the being, not to the activity, of the heavens, and is static[3], he restores the twofold model of earlier Neoplatonists and, most importantly, offers highly Platonizing solutions to some of the difficulties concerning the nature of time that were raised by Aristotle. He suggests, among other things, that formally speaking the present, the past and the future are subsumed under the same form, while they are unfolded in becoming, and the present is that which is ever coming into being. As a consequence, by taking away the present as a part of time, one would have destroyed the form of time that has its being in becoming, as does motion (168.10 ff. – 798.20 ff. Diels). This, of course, amounts to a wholesale critique of the Aristotelian conception.
A new text of the corollaries is especially justified with the appearance of a manuscript in Moscow (Mosquensis GIM 3469), copied by Theodora Raoulaina Palaiologina, the niece of emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, between 1261 and 1274, which contains the first half of Simplicius’ commentary, up to the beginning of Bk. 5. Her work is one of the by now three independent witnesses on the basis of which an edition of the corollaries can be produced. The editors devote a whole section in the introduction (pp. liv-lx) to the characteristics of this manuscript in comparison with cod. Marcianus gr. Z 227 that was copied in the same period by George of Cyprus (Gregory II, patriarch of Constantinople) in the same period, with whom the princess was in regular correspondence. They also draw attention to certain mishaps in earlier reconstructions. In several cases, especially in the Corollary on Place, they point out that the previous edition was marred by improper recensions of the reading of the mss. (e.g. in 74.26 – 630.20 Diels; 76.22-23 – 631.11-12 Diels).
Both corollaries contain extensive quotations from the works of earlier thinkers. In some cases, they are the only source for the treatises in question. In other cases, however, we have the treatise or a part of it independently of the quotation in Simplicius, which may present the editors with an interesting dilemma. What is to be done if the text of the quotation differs from the readings of the mss. on which the edition of the treatise has been based? Shall we keep the reading in Simplicius or adjust it to the mss. of the treatise quoted by the commentator? While keeping the reading of the Simplicius’ mss. as against the mss. of Aristotle’s Physics III.6 in many places (e.g., 130.24 – 782.4 Diels; 132.1-2 – 782.12-13 Diels), elsewhere they follow a different policy. In many cases one can agree with them. Sometimes, however, one might raise doubts. On discussing Plotinus’ notion of eternity, Simplicius quotes long passages from Enn. III.7. At one place, quoting III.7.11.45, the manuscript sources and the Aldine edition of Simplicius give unanimously αἰών ἐστι ζωῆς (150.13 – 791.2 Diels), but the editors change it to αἰών ἐστι ζωή to make it conform to the reading of the mss. of Plotinus. I do not see much reason for this policy in this very place, because the meaning of the text is quite clear with the genitive as well. Furthermore, in quoting Aristotle’s Physics IV.10, 217b32-218a30, at lines a26-7 Simplicius seems to have a version different from the reading of the mss. of the Physics. He reads καὶ ἐν τῷ νῦν which the editors emend to καὶ ἑνὶ τῷ νῦν <ἐστι> (164.6 – 796.24 Diels) to adjust it to the Aristotelian text. I am not sure the adjustment is needed. The context is about the dilemma whether the now that divides past and future always remains one and the same or is always a different one. The first horn of the dilemma implies that to be simultaneous in time is to be in the same thing (τὸ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ εἶναι). This same thing turns out to be the now that was supposed to be the same all the way down. Therefore, ἑνί may not be necessary here since it was assumed at the outset and with the καί as epexegetic we can see that this same thing is the now.
In many cases, the editors suggest their own reading as opposed to that of the mss. and the Aldine. Most of the time, they are highly plausible. Just one example: in 156.15 (793.22 Diels) they amend ἀνυπόστατος [scil. χρόνος] to ἐνυπόστατος. Simplicius quotes a portion of Iamblichus’ lost commentary on Aristotle’s Categories in which the status of time came to be discussed. Does time have a real existence (ὑπόστασις) or not? The emendation is helpful since it suggests the real existence of time that seems to have been insisted on by Iamblichus in 156.3 and 5 (793.9 and 11). The editors also make a remark on this emendation in their “Notes on textual criticism” (p.178). Their suggestions for filling the extensive lacunae in 128.10 (780.29 Diels) and in 136.18-19 (785.29-30 Diels) are persuasive. Sometimes, however, their suggestions do not seem to be compelling. In 44.21 (618.16 Diels), they insert κατὰ τοῦτο διαφέρουσι. In part, they follow Diels, who reads διαφέρουσι with the Aldine edition but without support from the mss., but then they supply κατὰ τοῦτο as well, relying on 44.16. I am not sure whether the whole inclusion is necessary. The text here is a bit garbled anyway, reflected in Urmson’s translation as well, and the inserted passage does not seem to help to clarify it very much. It is not even clear to me what the subject of διαφέρουσι would be; the place and the bodies or the philosophers who claim that place is an incorporeal interval (44.14 – 618.8 Diels)? Moreover, in 118.13 (776.36 Diels), the insertion in πᾶς δὲ καὶ ἀ<εὶ ὁ α>ὐτὸς ἀριθμός may not be necessary either. If the editors aimed at emphasizing that this number is always the same, it has already become clear in the previous clause (οὐδὲ τοῦ ἀιδίου ἀριθμοῦ ἔξω τις ἀίδιος) and from the mathematical realism of the Neoplatonists in general. If we keep the reading of the mss. we might explain it as saying that, in Damascius’ view, just as there is a time that is static and integral there is a number that is all-encompassing. In 114.8 (774.36 Diels), the editors insert φησίν, possibly to emphasize that Simplicius is quoting Damascius, who says that time is the measure of the flow of being, and by being (τὸ εἶναι) means not only substantial being (οὐσία) but also activity (ἐνέργεια). The view is typical of Damascius and may not need a separate emphasis by means of inserting an extra verb referring to authorship.
I spotted one small slip only: in 144.24 (788.30 Diels) we should read ὥσπερ for ὥπερ (as Diels does, too).
The volume is furnished with an index of names and places and contains notes explaining certain suggestions concerning the state of the text. It signals a most welcome development in the study of the philosophy in late antiquity and will be an indispensable tool for further research.
Notes
[1] The edition of the corollary on place has already been published in P. Golitsis and Ph. Hoffmann,‘Simplicius et le “lieu”. À propos d’une nouvelle édition du Corollarium de loco’, Revue des Études Grecques 127 (2014), 119-75.
[2] It has been scrutinized in the study quoted above and in its partial rehearsal in Ph. Hoffmann and P. Golitsis, ‘Simplicius’ Corollary on Place: Method of philosophising and doctrine’, in: R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on the Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators. London: Bloomsbury, 2016, 531-40.
[3] The passages concerning Damascius’ theory of time have been also discussed and published as an appendix in Golitsis’ Damascius’ Philosophy of Time. Berlin / New York: de Gruyter, 2023, 91-107.