The manuscript B of Aulus Gellius, containing N.A. 9-12 and 13.5, and now split at potuit/admonendi 12.10.3 between Cod. Bern. 404 and Cod. Lugd.- Bat. B. P. L. 1925, is dated by Hosius and Marshall to 1173 on the strength of the subscript to an astronomical work immediately preceding Gellius in Cod. Bern. 404. This work is the ‘Liber Atphargan'i [sic] in scientia astrorum et radicibus motuum caelestium’’ translated by Johannes Hispalensis; the subscriptio, quoted in full by Hertz , indicates (...) the date as follows : Expletus est die uicesimo quarto. V. mensis lunaris anni Arabum quingentesimi. XXVIIII. existente,. . die mensis Martii era. M.C.LXXIII. (shrink)

The manuscript B of Aulus Gellius, containing N.A. 9-12 and 13.5, and now split at potuit/admonendi 12.10.3 between Cod. Bern. 404 and Cod. Lugd.- Bat. B. P. L. 1925, is dated by Hosius and Marshall to 1173 on the strength of the subscript to an astronomical work immediately preceding Gellius in Cod. Bern. 404. This work is the ‘Liber Atphargan'i [sic] in scientia astrorum et radicibus motuum caelestium’’ translated by Johannes Hispalensis; the subscriptio, quoted in full by Hertz, indicates the (...) date as follows : Expletus est die uicesimo quarto. V. mensis lunaris anni Arabum quingentesimi. XXVIIII. existente,.. die mensis Martii era. M.C.LXXIII. (shrink)

Gellius, in N. A. 6. 20, claims to have read ‘in quodam commentario’ that theoriginal text had been not ora but Nola; ‘postea Vergilium petisse a Nolanis, aquam uti duceret in propincum rus, Nolanos beneficium petitum non fecisse, poetam offensum nomen urbis eorum, quasi ex hominum memoria, sic excarmine suo derasisse oramque pro Nola mutasse’. It may be from this passagethat by way of Donatus this story reached the expanded Servius: ‘et hocemendauit ipse, quia Nolam posuerat; nam postea offensus a (...) Nolanis, qui eidemaquam negauerant, “ora” pro “Nola” posuit.’. (shrink)

In L. D. Reynolds , Texts and Transmission: a Survey of the Latin Classics , it is stated by J. G. F. Powell and by M. D. Reeve that MS. Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek Lat. 4° 404 , containing Cicero, De amicitia, and Publilius Syrus, Sententiae, is missing. Not so: it is currently held with numerous other Berlin MSS., including humanistic and musical autographs, at the Jagellonian Library in Cracow, where I saw it on 5 May 1992. Other classical MSS. from (...) Berlin now held in Cracow are Lat. 4° 1 , 257 , 590 , 939 , and 8° 102. (shrink)

Not only was Gellius' preface received in the fifteenth century at the end of his work instead of the beginning, but it arrived almost or wholly without the Greek, which had to be patched up by guesswork; between siluarum and quidam early editors read ‘ille κηρον, alius κρας μαλӨεας’, the first two names in the similar passage, Plin. N.H. pr. 24. Salmasius, in the preface to his Plinianae exercitationes, printed a text ‘ex vestigiis antiquae scripturae optimi exemplaris [sc. MS P (...) = Paris, BN lat. 5765] partim etiam coniecturis nostris correctiorem’; following κρας he gave, in the right place but with the wrong accent, ‘alius Κρια’. But when eleven years later he came to annotate Simplicius' commentary on Epictetus' γχειρδιον, alerted by Simplicius' statement συνταξεν ρριανς, τ καιριτατα κα ναγκαιτατα ν øιλοσοø κα κινητικτατα τν ψυχν πιλεξμενος κ τν πικττου λγων, he remarked: ‘Quidam et inscripsere libros suos olim τ καρια, quod maxime ad rem quam tractabant pertinentia eo opere persequebantur’, citing Gellius with ‘alius καρια and commenting ‘Ita enim ex veteri codice ibi scribendum est, non ut vulgo editur, κριον [sic]'. Nevertheless, editors preferred his first thoughts to his second; Hertz, in his separate edition of Gellius' preface and in his editio maior , gives three parallels: Plin. N.H. pr. 24, ‘Κηρον inscripsere quod uolebant intellegi fauom’, where the Latin translation guarantees the reading; Clem. Alex. 6.1.2.1 ν μν ον τ λειμνι τ νӨη ποικλως νӨοȗντα κν τ παραδεσ [‘orchard’] τν κροδρων øυτεα ο κατ εδος καστον κεχρισται τν λλογενν , where again the sense requires the honeycomb; Philost. VS 565 πιστολα δ πλεȋσται ρδου κα διαλξει κα øημερδες γχειρδι τε κα καίρια τν ρχααν πολυμӨειαν ν βραχεȋ πηνӨισμνα, where hertz emends καρια to κηρα. (shrink)

The purpose of this note is to banish for ever from our histories of Roman literature the term elocutio nouella as a description of the style preached and practised by Cornelius Fronto. Commenting on a speech recently delivered by the Emperor Marcus, Fronto declares : Pleraque in oratione recenti tua, quod ad sententias attinet, animaduerto egregia esse; pauca admodum uno tenus uerbo corrigenda; non nihil interdum elocutione nouella parum signatum. The standard interpretation of the last clause is that given by (...) Haines : ‘some parts here and there were not sufficiently marked with novelty of expression’. It is my contention that it means: ‘some parts here and there were insufficiently clear through new-fangled diction’. (shrink)

Besides the direct tradition, these verses are cited by Stephanus of Byzantium, s.n. Aγυς, who explains: λγος πρ ‘Eλυης Λακωυικς οὒσης κα ρρυ μτκοσης κα τ ’Aλζυδρω κα Δηϊøβω γαμηθσης Commentators have followed him both as to the identity of the three husbands and the sense of θηλπαις: ‘female-childed’.

Besides the direct tradition, these verses are cited by Stephanus of Byzantium, s.n. Aῖγυς, who explains: λγος π∊ρ ‘Eλυης Λακωυικς οὒσης καῷ ἂρρ∊υ μτ∊κοσης κα τ ’Aλ∊ζυδρω κα Δηϊøβω γαμηθ∊σης Commentators have followed him both as to the identity of the three husbands and the sense of θηλπαις: ‘female-childed’.

The late Sir Roger Mynors, in a letter to Sebastiano Timpanaro quoted in the latter's Contributi difilologia e di storia della lingua latina , p. 543 n. 15, states that he had wondered ‘whether it might be a habit of Latin writers, when they were putting only one or two “parolette” between two pieces of Greek’, to use Greek rather than Latin: he invents as an example ‘θος κα πθος where logic demanded θος et πθος’. The answer is that they (...) sometimes did: the present paper will concentrate on the type instantiated by his imaginary example, the use of κα for et. I do not claim to have recorded every case, but those I have observed are the following. (shrink)

Continuing previous studies of medieval and modern false quotations from Gellius,1 I present two more misascriptions, one by an early modern editor, the other by a medieval author.

Besides the direct tradition, these verses are cited by Stephanus of Byzantium, s.n. Aῖγυς, who explains: λγος π∊ρ ‘Eλυης Λακωυικς οὒσης καῷ ἂρρ∊υ μτ∊κοσης κα τ ’Aλ∊ζυδρω κα Δηϊøβω γαμηθ∊σης Commentators have followed him both as to the identity of the three husbands and the sense of θηλπαις: ‘female-childed’.

Besides the direct tradition, these verses are cited by Stephanus of Byzantium, s.n. Aῖγυς, who explains: λγος π∊ρ ‘Eλυης Λακωυικς οὒσης καῷ ἂρρ∊υ μτ∊κοσης κα τ ’Aλ∊ζυδρω κα Δηϊøβω γαμηθ∊σης Commentators have followed him both as to the identity of the three husbands and the sense of θηλπαις: ‘female-childed’.

Gell. NA 3.10.13 citing Varro's Hebdomades uel de imaginibus, reports: Venas etiam in hominibus, uel potius arterias, medicos musicos dicere ait numero moueri septenario, quod ipsi appellant τν δι τεσσρων συμφωναν, quae fit in collatione quaternarii et ternarii numeri. He also states that doctors who make use of music theory declare that the veins, or rather arteries, in human beings move in accordance with the number seven; they call this motion ‘the consonance of the fourth’, which is produced by the (...) proportional relation of the numbers four and three. (shrink)

1. NA 1.22.11 qui dicit ergo superesse se ei quem defendit, nihil istorum [sc. of the legitimate senses listed by Julius Paulus in §§9–10] uult dicere, sed nescioquid aliud indictum inscitumque dicit.

Bundle theory takes objects to be bundles of properties. Some bundle theorists take objects to be bundles of instantiated universals, and some take objects to be bundles of tropes. Tropes are instances of properties: some take instantiated universals to be tropes, while others deny the existence of universals and take tropes to be ontologically fundamental. Historically, the bundling relation has been taken to be a primitive relation, not analyzable in terms of or ontologically reducible to some other relation, and has (...) been variously characterized as, e.g., “compresence,” “concurrence,” or “consubstantiation.” Bertrand Russell (1940) defends compresence of universals, and Hector-Neri Castañeda (1974) defends consubstantiation of universals. John Bacon (1995) defends concurrent tropes and Keith Campbell (1990) defends compresent tropes. Jonathan Schaffer (2001) bucks this trend, endorsing compresence understood as co-location in spacetime, but this brings with it undesireable consequences such as the impossibility of distinguishing between objects (such as electrons or other microentities) with the same location. Mereological bundle theory improves upon traditional bundle theory by taking the primitive relation of bundling to be the more familiar relation of fusing or composing, such that objects are fusions of properties or fusions of property instances. Hence, mereological bundle theorists endorse a property mereology: a mereology where properties or property instances can be parts of objects. An advantage of the approach derives from the fact that standard mereologies take composition to be primitive or define it using a different primitive mereological notion (such as primitive parthood). Thus, taking the basic primitive of bundle theory to be composition can reduce the need for.. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

Critics of contemporary metaphysics argue that it attempts to do the hard work of science from the ease of the armchair. Physics, not metaphysics, tells us about the fundamental facts of the world, and empirical psychology is best placed to reveal the content of our concepts about the world. Exploring and understanding the world through metaphysical reflection is obsolete. In this paper, I will show why this critique of metaphysics fails, arguing that metaphysical methods used to make claims about the (...) world are similar to scientific methods used to make claims about the world, but that the subjects of metaphysics are not the subjects of science. Those who argue that metaphysics uses a problematic methodology to make claims about subjects better covered by natural science get the situation exactly the wrong way around: metaphysics has a distinctive subject matter, not a distinctive methodology. The questions metaphysicians address are different from those of scientists, but the methods employed to develop and select theories are similar. In the first section of the paper, I will describe the sort of subject matter that metaphysics tends to engage with. In the second section of the paper, I will show how metaphysical theories are classes of models and discuss the roles of experience, common sense and thought experiments in the construction and evaluation of such models. Finally, in the last section I will discuss the way these methodological points help us to understand the metaphysical project. Getting the right account of the metaphysical method allows us to better understand the relationship between science and metaphysics, to explain why doing metaphysics successfully involves having a range of different theories, to understand the role of thought experiments involving fictional worlds, and to situate metaphysical realism in a scientifically realist context. (shrink)