Themistius, Arabic

Abstract

From the sixth century onward, some of Themistius’ works were translated into semitic languages. Lost in Greek, some of Themistius' works have come down to us, either in part or in their entirety, through Arabic (or Hebrew) translations. The Arabic bio-bibliographical sources mention a great amount of his texts. Arabic readers got acquainted, to different degrees, with the Arabic or the Syriac version of his Paraphrases of Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics, Categories, Topics, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, On the Soul, of Book Lambda of the Metaphysics, On the Heavens, Poetics, Ethics and of some of Aristotle’s zoological works. Only few of these Arabic translations have come down to us. However, fragments of these texts are transmitted through Averroes and a few other Arabic authors. Several of these Arabic versions were in turn translated into Hebrew in the thirteenth century. Part of Themistius’ Paraphrase of the Prior Analytics has come down to us in Hebrew. Moreover, the Hebrew translations of his Paraphrases of Book Lambda of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and of Aristotle’s On the Heavens are extant in their entirety. Both of them are extant also in Latin translations made from the Hebrew in the sixteenth century. Among his works preserved in Arabic, there are also a discourse on Government and a treatise on logic, namely, the Treatise in Response to Maxim on the Reduction of the Second and Third Figures of the Syllogism to the First One, both lost in Greek. In addition, the ps-al-Kindī’s On how to Dispel Sorrow, preserved in Arabic, has been traced back to a lost work by Themistius. Finally, some passages that are not related to his or that determined work are also attributed to Themistius by a number of Arab and Jewish authors.