Commentary on the First Three Books of Aristotle's Physics

I have included the entire variety of readings for the first three books, but I have discarded it in the fourth, where I was able to use an older witness of the same recension.

In shaping the words of Philoponus, I have used these manuscripts, specimens of which had been learnedly and skillfully collected by the distinguished man Adolf Torstrik, who was taken by untimely death. I would not depart from KL in books I–III, or KM in book IV, if they agreed, unless there were certain reasons; if they did not agree, I would follow the one that seemed to better serve the thought and language of Philoponus. But there are quite a few places where I found it necessary to resort to manuscripts of inferior quality (specifically M in books I–III, or more frequently G in book IV). Such is the state of these manuscripts that one cannot follow any of them constantly without risk, nor discard any without loss. I shall bring forward very clear examples. M is of inferior quality in the earlier books, yet it preserved the prologue of the work, which was omitted in all others. KM almost always agree in book IV, but M alone preserved the correct designation of time on p. 703, line 17, "the 233rd year of Diocletian," and K alone preserved the genuine "movements" on p. 725, line 6, while KG and GM agreed in the corruptions "333" and "spheres" referring to manuscript variants in dates and terminology.

It is truly surprising that the older manuscript G, which was not written by a very unlearned person and which now contains only book IV, provides such frequently corrupted and interpolated text, while the much more recent and poorly written KM provide the genuine readings. However, the fact is certain. It cannot be doubted that the manuscript from which G originated experienced the hand of an interpolator of some learned man. For example, on p. 678, line 9, "this is against the evidence; for clearly the unequal things..." was corrupted by the traditional confusion of abbreviations, and KM patiently tolerated "for" instead of "becomes." The author of manuscript G ineptly interpolated: "against the evidence, clearly becomes the unequal things."

But since there is frequent agreement among all manuscripts in manifest errors, I seem to argue correctly that all the books we know have flowed from one and the same archetype, written in what they call uncial letters before the ninth century a style of writing using only capital letters, which often suffered from lacunae missing sections, and more rarely

¹ That "333" was written in K, I had gathered from my own collation, and it was explicitly confirmed by the most learned C. Castellani, prefect of the Marciana Library, who assisted me very kindly whenever I approached him by letter.
² Cf. e.g., p. 498, line 22, "where" KM vs "that not" G; p. 503, line 1, "roof" GM vs "roof, or" K; p. 587, line 25, "to one another" M vs "to one another and" G; p. 617, line 6, "but it is absurd" KM vs "but what the being" G; p. 650, line 28, "constructing as" KM vs "constructing how" G; p. 676, line 18, "nothing" G vs "nothing" K vs "non-being" M, etc. Added to this is the fact that the Parisian excerpts, written at the beginning of the tenth century, seem to reflect the same recension as the manuscripts of the complete commentaries.
³ However, the discourse gapes more rarely in book IV, in which we use the older and accurately written manuscript G; therefore, one should not prudently repeat all the lacunae of the earlier books from the archetype.