Themistius
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Themistius (317 - c. 387), named εὐφραδής (eloquent)[1], statesman, rhetorician and philosopher, was born in Paphlagonia and taught at Constantinople, where, apart from a short sojourn in Rome, he resided during the rest of his life.
Though a pagan, he was admitted to the senate by Constantius II in 355. He was prefect of Constantinople in 384 on the nomination of Theodosius. His paraphrases of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Physics and De Anima are valuable; but the orations in which he panegyrizes successive emperors, comparing them to Plato's true philosopher, and even to the idea itself, are servile and unworthy. Against this, however, should be set the description given by Boëthius, disertissimus scriptor ad lucidus, et omnia ad facilitatem inteliigentiae revocans, and that of Gregory Nazianzen--with whom Themistius corresponded. Themistius's paraphrases of the De Caelo and of book A of the Metaphysics have reached us only through Hebrew versions. In philosophy Themistius was an eclectic. He held that Plato and Aristotle were in substantial agreement, that God has made men free to adopt the mode of worship they prefer, and that Christianity and Hellenism were merely two forms of the one universal religion.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Simplicius, in Cael., C.A.G. vol. 7, p. 72, in Cat. v. 8 p. 1, in Phys. v. 9, p. 42 and v. 10, p. 968; Sophonias, Paraphr. in...de Anima, C.A.G. v. 23, p. 1.
[edit] References
- The first edition of Themistius's works (Venice, 1534) included the paraphrases and eight of the orations
- Nineteen orations were known to Petavius, whose editions appeared in 1613 and 1618
- Jean Hardouin (Paris, 1684) gives thirty-three
- Another oration was discovered by Angelo Mai, and published at Milan in 1816.
- W. Dindorf edition of the orations (Leipzig, 1832)
- Leonhard von Spengel's Teubner edition of the paraphrases (Leipzig, 1866).
The Latin translations of the Hebrew versions of the paraphrases of the De Caelo and Book Lambda (XII) of the Metaphysics were published at Venice in 1574 and 1558 respectively. A new edition of the latter by S. Landauer appeared in 1903.
See
- Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, vi. 790 seq.
- Eduard Zeller, History of Greek Phil.
- Eugène Baret, De Themistio sophista et apud imperatores oratore (Paris dissertation, 1853)
- Amable Jourdain's Recherches critiques sur l'âge et l'origine des traductions latines d'Aristote (Paris, 1819).
For Themistius's Commentaries on Aristotle, see
- Commentaria in Aristotelem GraecaVolume 5(Berlin)
- Themistii paraphrases Aristotelis libroruin quae supersunt, ed. L. Spengel (1866, Teubner series, mentioned above).
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
