by Scott McGill
18.2 Commentary and Exegesis
We should now turn to the central focus of this chapter, the ancient philosophical commentary from late antiquity and its most typical “literary” forms. I will distinguish formal commentary (a narrow literary product of a literate culture) from exegesis (broadly understood as any interpretative act, whether positive, polemical, or implicit). The question of origin becomes less important when we realize that commentary was a second‐order exegetical activity that emerged from a slow process of debate and exegesis – an evolving format of texts commenting on other texts. In other words, commentaries were primarily meta‐texts with pedagogical and ideological purpose.
The period in which full‐blown commentary became a dominant form of doing philosophy falls between 300 and 700 CE. These centuries saw scholarly and complex exegetical writings originate primarily (though not exclusively) in the educational context of late Platonism, which brought a style of reading Plato initiated by Plotinus (205‐270 CE). Late Platonists had a vested interest in Plato and his works and were convinced that Plato’s wisdom revealed the preferred philosophical wisdom. In the preceding centuries two schools of thought had come out on top in the competitive world of ideas: Platonism and Stoicism. Now the philosophical discourse was influenced by both as well as by Aristotelian ideas. As we will see, Plotinus illustrates this new situation well in his reading of Plato and Aristotle, while certain Stoic terminology had already become lingua franca among philosophers (Gatti 1996). Plotinus’s followers created writings that contained increasingly more learned notes (hypomnēmata, sungrammata, scholai) in a cumulative process that also strengthened their increasingly bookish approach to intellectual endeavors. But their primary purpose was usually to clarify in great detail the words and thoughts of Plato (and Plotinus), whose writings were considered authoritative, covering everything from natural philosophy to theology and metaphysics. Thus Iamblichus (ca. 245–325 CE, see esp. Dillon 1987) introduced the idea of a singular objective (skopos) for each work studied, which would streamline the interpretive process and encourage exegetes to think in terms of the overall thematic consistency of a work. This idea is already found in the Protagoras, when Socrates discusses the Simonides poem (Baltussen 2004). This approach led to distinguishing discrete points to be discussed with any author, the so‐called isagogical issues (Westerink 1962; Hadot 1978; Mansfeld 1994). In the process they made use of other authors (most famously Aristotle) for the purpose of clarifying and shoring up Plato’s system, with the surprising result that the views of Plato and Aristotle came to be regarded as harmonious (Baltussen 2008).
In short, the motivation, format, and origin of ancient philosophical commentaries are very different from modern commentary. They share the same scholarly nature, an eye for detail, and responsiveness to their place in a long‐standing tradition. They also have a range of formats and variable levels of technicality, both of which have long stood in the way of a balanced treatment in modern scholarship. It is fair to say that the ancient philosophical commentary evolved over a long period of time and only has become visible to the historian’s probing eye at a time when it had already developed a near‐mature form (200 CE) as the “running commentary” in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias. Literary analysis of the ancient philosophical commentary has been rather sparse, even if the past three decades have seen major progress in the evaluation of their philosophical value and impact (Sorabji 1990). The next section pays particular attention to this aspect by focusing on the form of these unwieldy and complex works.
18.3 Forms of Commentary
The work of Plotinus offers an important milestone in late antique exegesis. His innovative style of philosophizing is highlighted by his biographer Porphyry, our main source on Plotinus’s inspired and inspiring style of interpreting Plato and Aristotle (VPlot 14). We should think of his classes as the locus for close teacher–pupil interactions, characterized by reading texts together (sunanagnōsis). It is this triangulated dynamic of teacher, students, and texts (base texts and previous commentaries) that sets the agenda for future authors of commentaries. His interpretive comments on Plato, Aristotle, and other thinkers are not (formal) commentary in the strict sense, but his critical engagement with texts shares a particular attitude with the later commentators, typified by a self‐conscious positioning within a tradition and a sense of the new building on the old. According to Porphyry, he had “compactly incorporated” (katapepuknōtai) Aristotle’s Metaphysics within his doctrines (VPlot 14). Porphyry leaves no doubt about the importance of books of earlier commentaries in Plotinus’s teaching. A list of writers he used includes Severus, Gaius, Numenius, and Alexander of Aphrodisias (VPlot 14.3), which shows how strongly text‐based his style of philosophical enquiry was. But Plotinus was not commenting on the text for the sake of clarifying the text, but was using it as a jumping‐off point to develop his own philosophy.
As his student and biographer, Porphyry marked a further important stage in the history of later Greek philosophy. Plotinus’s classes had become an encouraging environment for exegetical activities on “canonized” texts, and Porphyry instigated a curious reversal of chronology, making Aristotle’s work the introduction to Plato. Thus commentary on both authors became the preferred mode of philosophical education. Andronicus (ca. 50 BCE) had already made this work the starting point for studying Aristotle, in particular for logic and demonstration (Griffin 2015, pp. 32–39). This approach to the two scholarchs of related, but distinct, philosophical persuasions was based on the idea that their views could be brought into harmony (sumphōnia), which is not to be confused with complete agreement (Gerson 2005; Karamanolis 2006). This was not completely new: A rapprochement of Plato and Aristotle had started with the philosopher Antiochus (ca. 125–ca. 68 BCE, head of the Fourth Academy), and the choice of Aristotle’s Categories as a starting point for the philosophical curriculum can be traced back to Andronicus (mid‐first century BCE). But Porphyry’s initiative made the Categories a formal starting point in the curriculum. He set an example by writing two commentaries on the work, and many later Platonists followed suit, as we can read in Simplicius’s commentary on the Categories (ed. Kalbfleisch 1907), which incorporates materials from previous works now lost. Clearly, then, commentary was a product of teaching practices, but their exegesis was intended to be philosophical, not merely philological.
The works known to us, but not all extant, take several different forms, characterized by several different formats: word‐by‐word commentary, longer essays, problem‐oriented discussion, and commentary on part of a text or on a complete text. These could coexist and at times go hand in hand. The range of formats taken by commentaries composed between 100 and 800 CE suggests that it took some time for a fixed form to crystallize out of the different attempts to offer clarifications to the Platonic and Aristotelian corpus (Plato’s works probably formed the earliest corpus in a strong sense). The works can vary in length, in how much text they propose to cover, in exegetical approach, and in how much their exegesis is confined to clarification or constitutes a springboard for broader philosophical musings.
In line with these criteria of (in)completeness, I have divided them into four broad groups:
18.3.1 Discursive Evaluations: Essays and Short Lectures
This is the type of writing in which “commentary” only applies very loosely, since these writings typically arise from a passage. But there is clearly a text at the center of the discussion, and hence exegesis will occur: A prime example is Plotinus, whose style of discussing Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers extracts short phrases or sentences and offers a very idiosyncratic and syncretistic interpretation. He was much read in subsequent centuries, as is clear from quotations inside and outside the Platonist tradition (Klitenic Wear 2013, p. 149, argues that Plotinus was known even in Christian circles of Alexandria). Porphyry tells us that Plotinus would often read a passage and interpret it on the spot (VPlot. 14.4). He would read Plato, Aristotle,
and Alexander of Aphrodisias in conjunction and expand on their philosophical position to construct his own interpretation. Remarkably, the written version of his thoughts was put to paper only very late in his life (between 253 and 275 CE; Porph. VPlot. 4–6), so they are in a way a more developed philosophically than one would expect, yet also still quite fresh due to their dynamic and impressionistic style. It may be relevant to remember that Plotinus was an Egyptian whose Greek is not particularly elegant and also not flawless. Porphyry notes that he often had to correct the orthography of the text (VPlot. 8; 19; 39–40). Other examples in this group are the essays of Simplicius embedded in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (book 4), in which he elaborates on place and time, taking Aristotle as his springboard. The essays are self‐contained accounts of the late Platonist positions and are strongly influenced by his teacher Damascius (ca. 458– after 538), for instance, his Corrollaries on Place and Time (Urmson 1992; Athanassiadi 1999).
18.3.2 Paraphrase and Summary
Another form used by the commentators consisted of a paraphrase of the text under scrutiny (paraphrasis), or a summary (epitomē). We only have two clear examples for this type of work among late Platonists, and both date to the early sixth century CE: one by Priscian (Epitomē of Theophrastus’ On Sense Perception) and one by Simplicius (Epitomē of Theophrastus’ Physics). The term epitomē is here to be understood as a compressed rendering of the content in its main points, not a close summary that follows the text in linear fashion. Priscian’s work survives (translated by Huby 1997), but for Simplicius’s epitomē we only have a few snippets in self‐references (mainly in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, book 1). We should not forget that the Peripatetics also wrote summaries and synopses of Aristotle’s works (e.g. of the Physics, as Simplicius reports in Phys. 6.2–3: tōn spoudaiotatōn autou mathētōn…kephalaia autēs kai sunopseis poioumenōn). We also have Themistius’s paraphrases of Aristotle, but he is not a Platonist.
18.3.3 Partial or Selective Comments
In this type we may include selective notes on Aristotle’s Categories like those by Lucius and Boethus (first century BCE), as recorded by Simplicius in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories 1,18–19. It may have its earliest predecessor in Krantor’s comments on Plato’s Timaeus, which did not cover the whole work (Proclus in Plat. Tim. I. 76. 1–2, who calls him exēgētēs).
18.3.4 Fuller “Running” Commentary, Usually Covering a Whole Work
Commentary as a continuous set of notes to explain words, phrases, sentences, and overall outlook and aim of a work starts as partial commentary (as mentioned under 18.3.3). Its overall structure is often determined by a set of questions that arose from classroom discussions: These would address the purpose or objective (skopos) of the work, its utility (chrēsimon), its position in the corpus (taxis), whether it was genuine (gnēsion), what its main sections were (kephalaia), and which part of philosophy it belonged to (meros) (Mansfeld 1994, pp. 10–11). Clearly these are all useful topics to consider when examining a work of Aristotle or Plato: They became known as schēmata isagogica, “introductory figures.”
A few examples may be useful. The earliest example of a “running” commentary is probably the so‐called Anonymous Commentary on (Plato’s) Theaetetus (Anon. in Tht.), also dated to the first century BCE (Bastianini and Sedley 1995). Simplicius (ca. 480–540 CE) reports that the Peripatetic Boethus of Sidon (in Cat. 1.18, based on Porphyry) wrote a “word‐by‐word exegesis” on the Categories in the first century BCE (in Cat. 30.2). Next, one could point to the commentaries of Aspasius and Alexander of Aphrodisias, in the mid‐ to late second century CE.
Good examples of Aristotelian commentators who lived during the so‐called Second Sophistic (ca. 100–250, when intense study of the “Classics” from the golden era of Athens occurred), are Aspasius and Alexander of Aphrodisias. About Aspasius we know very little, except that he wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s ethics (Alberti and Sharples 1999). Alexander, holder of the Chair of Peripatetic philosophy, was the designated exegete of Aristotle in Athens (Sharples 1987; Rashed 2011). It was one of four chairs set up by emperor Marcus Aurelius in the 160 s CE (Philostr., Lives of Sophists 566). Recently a newly discovered inscription revealed his full name and that of his father (Chaniotis 2004a, 2004b). The most important feature of his commentaries is the meticulous attention to detail and the continuous reflection on almost every aspect of the arguments and language of Aristotle’s writings. He typically reads Aristotle in a way that can be labeled “creative exegesis:” a manner of reinterpreting passages that allows for shifts in meaning over time of important concepts. Alexander also regularly expresses disagreement with Aristotle but often attempts to preserve Aristotle’s integrity by reworking certain views so as to make them consistent with the overall system.
Thus the running commentary of this period exhibits a kind of meta‐narrative that closely follows a base text of a philosopher, who is seen as an authority. Its scholarly nature and particular format now seem all too familiar. Its scholarly nature arose in the context of teaching activity and because the teachers consciously attached considerable authority to the lecture notes and to comments of previous teachers. This circumstance created a two‐pronged approach to explicating texts: attention to the text itself as well as attention to existing exegeses (a fuller argument is presented in Baltussen 2016).
Apart from these broad groupings, there are exceptional cases among the Platonists that cannot be pigeonholed so easily. Some, in fact, will fit two or three categories. A peculiar case of a polemical commentary on a whole work is Plutarch’s Adversus Colotem, an attempt to provide a refutation of the Epicurean Colotes, who attacked a great number of earlier Greek philosophers (see esp. Kechagia 2011). Special mention should be made of Galen of Pergamum, the philosopher‐physician, who wrote commentaries on Hippocrates with a philosophical bent (Smith 1979). Porphyry wrote philosophical essays as well as an extensive Categories commentary, the now‐lost Ad Gedalium, and a shorter Commentary by Questions and Answers (Strange 1992; in Cat. [preface] 1.1–2.29). He used Alexander of Aphrodisias and also Iamblichus, whose commentary he tries to boil down to its essentials (in Cat. 3.2–10). There is also Hierocles’s commentary on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras (ca. 430 CE). A most unusual work, Proclus’s Platonic Theology, also deserves our attention, although it cannot be covered comprehensively here (Dodds 1963). This work explicates Plato’s metaphysics by systematically proving that reality is a unity (One). It further shows that within this reality there are only three true causes: gods, intellects, and souls. The content of this work is closely tied to the works of Plato, yet its philosophical tendencies and terminology are clearly Proclus’s. The resulting format is one of organizational and exegetical rigor with a dual doctrinal connection to the object text: dependence in so far as it aims to clarify Plato; independence by the way in which it develops its argument through a series of propositions, which suggest mathematical rigor and systematization not found in Plato himself.
All in all, the ancient philosophical commentary proves to be a very dynamic genre, incorporating within it a variety of formats and styles. The early stage (first century BCE) may well have been due to the “revival” of Aristotelian philosophy and was geared towards explicating the corpus, but the main period of the running commentary took shape in a new era of philosophy, in which the curriculum of the Platonists set the agenda for the extensive works we can now consult in the German edition of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (CAG), published by the Berlin Academy under the general editor Hermann Diels between 1882 and 1909 – some 15 000 pages of late antique Greek.
The variable formats clearly show how much they tended to arise organically in the context of teaching, and not always as an author’s deliberate choice. There is, however, one important point to be noted: While the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias were the most influential in the way they illustrated what detailed and sophisticated commentary could be like, the Platonis
t commentaries after Plotinus added a stronger philosophical agenda to the genre by using this format as a vehicle for doing philosophy. So while their starting point would often be a text of Plato or Aristotle, they would as a rule expand on the philosophical aspects to clarify their own interpretation. Sometimes this would lead to readings that strike us as forced, or they would add “digressions” to the text in which they expounded their specific ideas on a subject.
18.4 Techniques and Strategies
With the rise of longer exegetical works in philosophy, interpretive activity continued to include deciding on the meaning of a philosophical text in light of doctrinal positions and their supporting arguments. But while known techniques remained in use, commentators increasingly made use of polemic in order to establish their own philosophical position in opposition to others. Ideally such choices would be made in a dispassionate way, judging the arguments and relevant information on their own merit. In reality the critical assessment of arguments more often than not included a critique of particular views of individuals as one step in the right direction for developing one’s own views. Plotinus already had to engage in a “war of words” against contemporaries, in particular the Gnostics:
But we have addressed what we have said so far to our own intimate pupils [gnōrimous], not to the Gnostics (for we could make no progress towards convincing them) so that they may not be troubled by these latter, who do not bring forward proofs [apodeixeis] – how could they? – but make arbitrary, arrogant assertions. Another style of writing would be appropriate to repel those who have the insolence to pull to pieces [diasurein] what godlike men of antiquity have said nobly and in accordance with truth. (Enn. ii.9.10.12‐14; trans. Armstrong 1966)
