Problems Concerning First Principles

the beginning, the signs for punctuation were here and there placed incorrectly, which the benevolent reader, a lover of Damascius, will forgive.

Furthermore, this book is preserved in other libraries, for example, the Venetian Library of St. Mark, the Bodleian in Oxford, and perhaps even still in Madrid.

A fragment from this work was published by Chr. Wolf in the aforementioned work, pp. 195–162. Others have brought forward smaller passages from it on given occasions, e.g., Fr. Patricius, Augustinus Steuchus Eugubinus, R. Bentley, Th. Gale, and others original: "7".

All the codices seem to be mutilated at the end of the work, certainly the Munich and the three Venetian ones. The Hamburg codex, without any note or suspicion of a gap, connects these discussions on principles with the other book, which is inscribed in the Munich Manuscript Codex as:

II) Δαμασκίου Διαδόχου Ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις εἰς τὸν Πλάτωνος Παρμενίδην ἀντειπαρατεινόμεναι τοῖς αὐτὸν sic ὑπομνήμασι τοῦ φιλοσόφου Difficulties and Solutions of Damascius the Successor on Plato's Parmenides, set against the commentaries of the philosopher himself on it. In the margin it is read: οὗ ἡ ἀρχὴ οὐχ εὕρηται whose beginning is not found. This book, as the inscription itself declares, adheres most closely to the former, unless perhaps it is to such an extent part

7) Fr. Patricius in Zoroaster (which, along with his other writings, is contained in Magia Philosophica, etc., Hamburg 1593, 8vo) excerpted Chaldean oracles from this book of Damascius. See the verso of the leaf, 15, and the recto of leaf 16, the verso of leaf 29, and elsewhere. Stanley inserted those oracles into his History of Philosophy, pp. 1178–1191. Taylor, a truly Platonic man, gave the same more fully in the Classical Journal of the year 1817, Part XXXII ff. Aug. Steuchus in Perennial Philosophy, e.g., bk. III, ch. 5, p. 138, ed. Leiden, year 1540; cf. bk. VIII, ch. 18, p. 442, etc. R. Bentley in his Epistle to Mill appended to Malalas, and repeated in his Philological Works. Th. Gale, to the book of Iamblichus On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, frequently, and to the Ethical and Physical Works, etc., here and there. I also remember reading that Alexander Morus in his notes to St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians, II, 18 ff., p. 179 ff., and others, used this book of our Damascius; but I did not have the opportunity to inspect the book of Morus. Compare Morelli, Catalogue of Venetian Manuscripts, pp. 137, 138, and Fabricius in Bibliotheca Graeca, Vol. V, "Damascius."