Problems Concerning First Principles

that Chosroes is said to have provided for their safety and free practice of religion by the law of peace.

How long Damascius survived among the living after his return to Greece, I have nowhere found; it is probable, however, that he lived for many more years, and in this age especially wrote books which have partly perished, and partly still lie hidden in libraries.

Indeed, I shall briefly indicate the books written by Damascius of which I have obtained knowledge.

I) Ἀπορίαι καὶ Λύσεις περὶ τῶν πρώτων ἀρχῶν Difficulties and Solutions Concerning the First Principles: which book now appears in print for the first time. I fell upon it many years ago, when I was searching through the manuscript Codices of the Library, so that I might gather from there those things which would aid in illustrating Peripatetic philosophy and its history; and attracted by the gravity of the subject and the subtlety of the discourse, I immediately began to transcribe it, and soon, by the encouragement primarily of the most distinguished Creuzer, I determined to publish it, truly with a far different adornment than the one with which it now finally appears. —

I have used two manuscript codices: one from Munich, about which see Hardt's Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts of the Royal Library of Munich, Vol. I, No. V;

the other from Hamburg, about which see Chr. Wolf's Greek Annals, Vol. III, preface. This one, which I received through the help of my friend Ulrich, to whom I give the greatest thanks, and which I had the fortune to handle for a longer time, I made the foundation, so that almost nowhere in establishing the reading or the punctuation have I departed from it, except that where the Hamburg copy was defective, I filled it in from the Munich book. Nevertheless, because many hands were exercised in transcribing my transcript, it happened that from