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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2019
Aristotle's Ethica Eudemia (Eth. Eud.) and Ethica Nicomachea (Eth. Nic.), as is well known and much discussed, contain three books in common (Eth. Eud. 4–6 = Eth. Nic. 5–7). Less well known, at least until Dieter Harlfinger alerted scholars to the fact in 1971, is that some of the manuscripts of Eth. Eud. do, contrary to the then prevailing consensus, contain the text of these common books. Even less well known is that Harlfinger's discovery was anticipated some 50 years before by Walter Ashburner, who had uncovered this fact about Eth. Eud. MSS in the Laurentian library of Florence. Ashburner's anticipation of Harlfinger, however, is not the real value of his article. Its value rather is that it contains collations of readings for the common books, and thereby gives us an excellent resource for examining the text of the common books as this text is contained in exclusively Eth. Eud. MSS. The Eth. Eud. tradition of the common books has hitherto received little attention. Modern editions of Eth. Eud. do not include these books, and editions of Eth. Nic. have other MSS for the purpose. Ashburner's collations are the more valuable because they are taken from (among others) the one MS that, in Harlfinger's learned stemma, appears as the archetype for all the rest.
1 Moraux, P. and Harlfinger, D. (edd.), Untersuchungen zur Eudemischen Ethik (Berlin, 1971), 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Briefly Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford in the 1920s, and best known for writings on ancient law. He was a friend of Housman's and a biographical note about him can be found in Naiditch, P.G., A.E. Housman at University College, London: The Election of 1892 (New York, 1988), 65–6Google Scholar.
3 Ashburner, W., ‘Studies in the text of the Nicomachean Ethics’, JHS 36 (1916), 45–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, about Laur. 81.04, 81.12, 81.15, 81.20. I am indebted to my colleague David Murphy for first drawing my attention to this article.
4 Ashburner published another article in 1918 about an Eth. Eud. MS containing the common books (Pal. 323): ‘Studies in the text of Nicomachean Ethics (continued)’, JHS 38 (1918), 74–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An article he published in 1917 is about a MS containing Eth. Nic. and Magna Moralia (Kb or Laur. 81.11): ‘Studies in the text of Nicomachean Ethics (continued)’, JHS 37 (1917), 31–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The MSS in the Laurentian Library of Florence are accessible online at http://teca.bmlonline.it/TecaRicerca/index.jsp. Type Plut.81.15, etc. in the search box for the relevant MS.
5 Harlfinger (n. 1), 43 did only an explorative collation of a few passages in Laur. 81.15.
6 Laur. 81.15, Harlfinger (n. 1), 30, 41, which he labels L. Ashburner (n. 3), 55–6 considered, for not altogether convincing reasons, that Laur. 81.15 (which he labels C) was inferior to Laur. 81.12 and Laur. 81.20 (which he labels A and B), but he collated Laur. 81.15 along with the other two. He did not always collate it when the other two agreed, but little is missing in his collation. Besides, where necessary, Laur. 81.15 can be consulted online. Harlfinger (n. 1), 41 considers Laur. 81.20 an immediate copy of Laur. 81.15, whereas Laur. 81.12 a more removed copy.
7 Susemihl, F. and Apelt, O., Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea (Leipzig, 1912)Google Scholar. Ashburner (n. 3), 57 collated the MSS against this Susemihl/Apelt edition.
8 Bywater, I., Ethica Nicomachea (Oxford, 1890)Google Scholar.
9 As so divided the Greek hardly makes sense. The τὰ μέν and τὰ δέ look intriguing at first sight but seem not to lead anywhere.
10 Kenny, A.J.P., Aristotle on the Perfect Life (Oxford, 1992), 115, 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dirlmeier, F., Aristoteles. Eudemische Ethik (Darmstadt, 1962), 110Google Scholar, who also cites Bendixen's ‘concis, hart, oft nachlässig’, and adds that the work's difficulty of comprehension yields only gradually to patient thought.
11 A different analysis will be necessary for this passage as written in Eth. Nic. MSS.
12 This difference between Eth. Nic. and Eth. Eud. is remarked on by Kenny (n. 10), 115 and also by Bodéüs, R., The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics (Albany, 1993), 3–5Google Scholar; cf. also Dirlmeier (n. 10), 110, who adds, with considerable understatement, that Eth. Eud. is not for ‘beginners’. The point anyway is evident enough from the contrasting way in which each work begins and ends, and especially from the fact that Eth. Eud., unlike Eth. Nic., has no continuation into the Politica.
13 νόμιμον is a legitimate alternative for νομικόν and seems not to be significant.
14 The Eth. Eud. MSS, like most MSS, do contain scribal errors (just as they contain corrections in other hands). The difficult question is deciding what is an error and what is not but a legitimate reading.
15 This repetition of ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ ἀδικεῖν πᾶν ἑκούσιον is deleted in Bywater's text (n. 8), and Susemihl/Apelt (n. 7) note Rassow's suspicion that these words should perhaps be deleted.
16 Laur. 81.15 has ἀκούσιον. Laur. 81.20 has ἑκούσιον, but the ἑ is over an erasure.
17 If the Kb reading is taken for Eth. Nic., this other and repetitious option would have to be added to the Eth. Nic. list.
18 The reading of Laur. 81.15. In Laur. 81.20 the ἀδικοῦντος has been crossed out in red and ἑκόντος has been written in black in the margin.
19 The variation from οὐδείς in the Eth. Nic. version to οὐδὲ εἷς in the Eth. Eud. version, while it adds hiatus, seems not to be significant, being a difference only in emphasis, from ‘no one [is wronged voluntarily]’ to ‘not one …’.
20 The text in the Eth. Eud. MSS is also the same as some MSS of Eth. Nic., notably Kb.
21 One could at a pinch adopt other ways of construing the two instances of καί and translate: ‘doing harm knowing the to whom as well, that is, that it is against the other's will’.
22 This reading is also found in Kb.
23 Ashburner (n. 3), 46–7.