Bekker numbers

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Page 184 of the first volume of Bekker's edition, published in 1831, showing the end of Sophistical Refutations and the beginning of Physics
Page 184 of the first volume of Bekker's edition, published in 1831, showing the end of Sophistical Refutations and the beginning of Physics

Bekker numbers are the page numbers used in the Prussian Academy of Sciences edition of the complete works of Aristotle. They take their name from the editor of that edition, the classical philologist August Immanuel Bekker (1785-1871).

Bekker numbers take the format of up to four digits, a letter for column 'a' or 'b', then the line number. For example, the beginning of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is 1094a1, which corresponds to page 1094 of Bekker's edition of the Greek text of Aristotle's works, first column, line 1.

All modern editions or translations of Aristotle intended for scholarly readers use Bekker numbers, in addition to or instead of page numbers. Contemporary scholars writing on Aristotle use the Bekker number so that the author's citations can be checked by readers without having to use the same edition or translation that the author used.

While Bekker numbers are the dominant method used to refer to the works of Aristotle, Catholic or Thomist scholars often use the medieval method of reference by book, chapter, and sentence, albeit generally in addition to Bekker numbers.

Stephanus pagination is the comparable system for referring to the works of Plato.

[edit] Specific numbers

The following list is complete. The titles are given in accordance with the standard set by the Revised Oxford Translation (The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols., Princeton University Press, 1984). Disputed works are marked by *, and ** marks a work generally agreed to be spurious.

[edit] Aristotelian works lacking Bekker numbers

  • The Constitution of Athens, because it was first edited in 1891 from papyrus rolls acquired in 1890 by the British Museum, was not included in Bekker's edition. The standard reference to it is by section (and subsection) numbers.
  • Surviving fragments of the many lost works of Aristotle were included in the third volume of Bekker's edition, edited by Valentin Rose. These are not cited by Bekker numbers, however, but according to fragment numbers. The numeration of the fragments in a revised edition by Rose, published in the Teubner series, Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta, Leipzig, 1886, was standard until superseded by the numeration of Olof Gigon's 1987 edition (printed as a new vol. 3 in Walter de Gruyter's reprint of the Bekker edition). For a selection of the fragments in English translation, see Jonathan Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 2, Princeton 1984, pp. 2384-2465.
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