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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
In Aristotle′s Nicomachean Ethics (E.N.), at 1149b15–16, there is a quotation: 
Aristotle does not tell us who wrote these words, and we now find the quotation as lyric fr. adesp. 949.2
2 Page, D. L., Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford, 1962).Google Scholar
3 Demodocus fr. 2, West, M. L., Iambi et Elegi Graeci (Oxford, 1992), vol. 2. For the manuscript leadings one has to consult F. Susemihl′s edition of E.N. (Leipzig, 19123). Cf. also ps-Aristotle, M.M. 1208b16, Aristotle, Rhet. 1412b15 (after a conjecture by Ross); Menander, Epitrepontes 894; Philo Judaeus, LA. 1.95.4; Plant. 85.3; Aet. 41.7, for other instances of authorial (i.e. quoter′s) 
intruding in a quotation. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1035b8 and bl 1 (ed. D. Ross, 1924) uses intrusive , but in a definition rather than in a quotation. Cf. also Met. 1017a13 and Rhet. 1388M (where the MSS is abandoned by R. Kassel [Berlin, 1976]Google Scholar, but see Sandys, J. E., The Rhetoric of Aristotle [Cambridge, 1877], vol. 2, pp. 134, 222).Google Scholar
4 See Wilson, N. G., ‘A mysterious Byzantine scriptorium: Ioannikios and his colleagues’, Scrittura e Civilita 7 (1983), 161–176Google Scholar. It was Brockmann, C, ‘Zur Uberlieferung der aristotelischen Magna Moralia’, in Berger, F.. (edd.), Symbolae Berolinenses fur Dieter Harlfinger (Amsterdam, 1993), pp. 43–80, who first identified Laur. 81, 18 as a product of Ioannikios′ scriptorium (p. 46), and who showed that, for the Magna Moralia, it is an independent manuscript. The manuscript has not been read by editors of E.N., but I have collated its version of E.N., and hope to publish my findings shortly.Google Scholar
5 The dating is Wilson′s: op. cit., p. 168.
6 Our sources for the fragments of Simonides, besides papyri, begin with Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle, but Stephanus of Byzantium (sixth century), Choeroboscus (sixth century), Priscian (sixth century), Etymologicum Genuinum (late ninth century), Photius (c. 810–893), Etymologicum Magnum (before 1175), and Tzetzes (twelfth century) are much later sources. None of these quote so extensively as to suggest that they had anything like Simonides′ Opera in their library. It is significant, and a sign of the age the ascription would have to be, if it is an informed ascription, that the early commentators–even Aspasius in the second century A.D.–could not identify the quotation in E.N. (see n. 9 below). For an account of the authorities for Simonides epigrams see Molyneux, J. H., Simonides: A Historical Study (Illinois, 1992) pp. 6–8.Google Scholar
7 So far as we know, none of the reference books available in c. 1175 (Hesychius, Suda, Etymologicum Magnum, Etymologicum Gudianum etc.) could have led a scribe to attribute the quotation to Simonides.
8 Sir Grant, A, The Ethics of Aristotle (London, 1866) p. 217Google Scholar; Stewart, J. A., Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford, 1892), Vol. II, p. 200Google Scholar; Burnet, J., The Ethics of Aristotle (London, 1900), p. 315Google Scholar; Gauthier, A. and Jolif, J. Y., L′Ethique a Nicomaque, introduction, traduction et commentaire (Louvain, 1959), vol. 2(2), p. 633.Google Scholar
9 Another modern commentator, F. Dirlmeier, Aristoteles Nikomachische Ethik (Berlin, 19692), p. 487, says ‘Meist der Sappho zugewiesen’, but the basis for this attribution is the highly risky joining of this fragment to two others by Bergk and Wilamowitz. (See n. 11 below.) One can add, following Gauthier-Jolif (loc. cit., n. 8), that earlier commentators on E.N. (the anonymous commentary on Book 7 and the paraphrast) had wrongly ascribed the quotation to Homer. The earliest commentator on E.N., Aspasius, refers to the fragment we are discussing and the next quotation at E.N. 1149b 17–an explicit quotation of Homer–as TO. 
. (128, 31, Heylbut), from which one can infer that he did not know who wrote the fragment we are looking at. I do not know why E. Cardwell, Aristotelis Ethicorum Nicomacheorum Libri Decem (Oxford, 1830), vol. 2, p. 204 says that Aspasius attributes the fragment to Homer.
10 See H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus (Berlin, 1870) s.v. 
. We should add a reference to J. Bernays (Aristoteles und Simonides′, Hermes 5 [1871], 301–302), who speculatively suggests that Pol. 1264a2 alludes to Simonides fr. 193 Bergk (= fr. 645, Page).
11 See Page, D. L., Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford, 1955), p. 6, where he explains how the fragment which I am discussing ‘has suffered much ill-treatment’ at the hands of Bergk and Wilamowitz.Google Scholar
12 Note fr. adesp. 919, 7 (Page) 
, and Simonides fr. 575 (Page) 
. On the latter see M. Davies ‘Simonides and Eros’, Prometheus 10 (1984), 114–116.
13 Here see Sandys J. E.., op. cit. (n. 3), p. 222: ‘
is generalised from one, viz. Euripides... The plural sometimes expresses the single individual plus those like him’. Rhet. 1409blO even attributes to Sophocles a quotation from Euripides. For the reliability of Aristotle as a source for the pre-Socratics, a closely related question, see Stevenson, J. G. ‘Aristotle as historian of philosophy’, JHS 94 (1974), 138–143 and further bibliography there.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1 I owe a debt of gratitude to Prof. J. Crook for his kind encouragement and helpful comments in the preparation of this note.
2 Tod′s dating is by far the most likely, although the decree gives no direct internal evidence for it.