The School of Aristotle

Aristotle founded the school in Athens in the last twenty years of his life, calling it the Lyceum or Peripatos, referring to a portico where teachers and students used to stroll,¹ as Epictetus would do many years later. Carlo Natali remarked that the type of scientific and philosophical research commonly associated with Aristotle does not seem appropriate for discussion while strolling, but ethical lectures to students on pleasure, pain, or friendship could be suitable topics.² Diogenes Laertius (5.3) reported that “in time the circle of his students grew larger and he then sat down to lecture… . He also taught his pupils to discourse upon a set theme and trained them in oratory.” Anton Chroust noted that Philodemus of Gadara berated Aristotle for abandoning philosophy for rhetoric and said that Aristotle’s only reason for doing so was to antagonize Isocrates.³

Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor, described the school’s various parts in his will. It had a museum with statues of the goddesses, a bust of Aristotle in the temple, and a statue of Nicomachus that was commissioned and paid for; the statue also had to be life-size. The school had tablets with world maps, a library, a garden, a walk, and houses around it in which groups of people interested in literature and philosophy could reside. Use of visual aids such as diagrams, maps, and lists indicate this teaching practice was fairly institutionalized and could not have been conducted entirely in an outdoor location. However, no documentation has survived, and it is unclear whether the lectures were delivered in a gymnasium, as is often claimed. Natali also argued that Aristotle preferred reading to lecturing, purchased many books to construct a large library, and based some of his teaching on these texts. Even though this may be correct in general, his teaching activity must have included lecturing.⁴ The story of the Peripatos’s decline after Theophrastus has often been related. The accounts of Strabo and Plutarch, who attributed the cause of the deterioration exclusively to the loss of the library, have been deemed simplistic, and scholars now take into consideration various causes of decline.⁵

Examining the various combined pieces of evidence concerning teaching and learning in the School of Aristotle proves fascinating. In antiquity, Aristotle’s works were divided in two groups: exoteric and esoteric.⁶ “Published” only in the restrictive sense of the word, the exoteric texts are known only from fragments. Written with some elegance and style, they were serious but not technical in tone and were destined to reach a larger public. By contrast, the esoteric works were used within the school and were not polished. Their unliterary style points to rough lecture notes or notes taken down by his students.

Scholars have debated for many years whether some of these works represented Aristotle’s personal lecture notes. In 1920 Henry Jackson argued that Aristotle’s informally written works were his memoranda for the lectures he was about to deliver.⁷ Jackson confidently pointed to several characteristics that supported this theory. For example, in the Metaphysics phrases were strung together in a disorganized way—paragraphs were inserted from literary works and the text included repetitions, additions, omissions, instructions to himself, and a conversational tone uncomplicated by grammar and syntax.

Later in 1923, William David Ross reconsidered the question, maintaining that the stylistically rough works of Aristotle had the same style as the philosopher’s own notes originally drawn up as a teaching aid.⁸ The unpolished style of these works, complete with digressions and repetitions, was explained by the fact that Aristotle never intended to publish these notes. Ross describes a divided view among scholars—that either those works represented annotations done by Aristotle or instead were drawn up by his pupils as they recorded his lectures. Ross decidedly dismissed the second hypothesis: “The latter hypothesis is ruled out by various considerations. It is hard to suppose that the notes of pupils would have produced such intelligible and coherent results.” It is not uncommon for students to be accused of being incompetent and untidy and in part III I share evidence of students of Olympiodorus who have been accused of incompetency, probably unjustly. They had taken down perfectly coherent texts but made some mistakes, which might perhaps be attributed to Olympiodorus.

Another scholar, Werner Jaeger, shared a different opinion in Aristoteles: Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, published in 1923.⁹ He argued that some of Aristotle’s works originated from students’ extensive notes, which covered some of the philosopher’s lectures. Furthermore, Jaeger remarked that parts of the incomplete Metaphysics failed to establish order in its many different sections, and thus had the form of notes compiled by Pasicles, a nephew of Aristotle’s disciple Eudemus of Rhodes. However, Jaeger’s somewhat presumptive hypotheses are in part no longer accepted, as he assumed that the school’s teaching routine was based on tradition, with Aristotle delivering philosophical lectures to his students in the morning and in the afternoon delivering lectures to a larger crowd on other topics, such as rhetoric or literature.¹⁰

In 1966 Ingemar Düring, examining the relation of Aristotle’s written works to his oral teaching in the Lyceum, became the main proponent of the view that Aristotle had jotted down personal notes to support his teaching. Again, this was seen as the reason for their rough style.¹¹ More recently some scholars agreed on the fact that these lecture-manuscripts are a unique record of Aristotle’s activity as a teacher. However, they did not linger on this issue and concluded that the interpretation surrounding these materials was rather uncertain. They also did not express a firm view on the identity of the author of these notes (Aristotle or other compilers).¹² Jonathan Barnes, however, argued that the view that the philosopher had redacted those notes had lost appeal because it rested on the false supposition that Aristotle lectured like a modern professor.¹³ Abrupt transitions and obscure connections between different ideas, lack of ornamentation, uncertain grammar and syntax, and the presence of doublets suggested that, rather than being lecture notes that Aristotle jotted down, these works were informally compiled texts.

As can be seen from the examples above, research on Aristotle’s texts has not reached any consistent conclusions. More recently though, Adam Beresford investigated the nature and origin of the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, which treat the subject of character.¹⁴He suggested that they consisted of notes taken down at lectures. They had not, he argues, been redacted personally by Aristotle and did not represent notes that Aristotle had taken down himself, for example as preparation for teaching. Instead, they had been jotted down by different listeners, members of Aristotle’s audience who were present at his lectures, possibly students. Beresford also argued that the full names of these works must have been combined with a term that we have already encountered: hypomnemata, that is, notes. In both sets of ethical texts, the central parts were identical, but the rest diverged, even though the arguments were basically the same. Beresford supposed that Aristotle continued to lecture on the same subjects and texts periodically over the years, so that members of the audience took down notes at different times. This scholar also pointed out that the title of the Eudemian Ethics suggested that Eudemus of Rhodes, a student of Aristotle, was involved in redacting the notes. Moreover, Theophrastus was also somewhat involved in the Nichomachean Ethics through Nicomachus, Aristotle’s son, who was his student and probably had taken down notes at the lectures and had organized them.

The evidence concerning notes taken down by students is very suggestive. A lost work, the Protrepticus, in particular provides clues.¹⁵ Young Aristotle is presumed the author, while he was still a member of the Academy. Since the work was not copied in the Middle Ages, it has survived only in fragments, most of which are found in the third-century works of the philosopher Iamblichus of Chalcis.¹⁶ This is why not all scholars accept its attribution to Aristotle. D. S. Hutchinson and Monte Ransome Johnson have devoted many years to producing a reconstruction of the work with a translation and commentary.¹⁷ The Protrepticus belonged to the hortatory genre and addressed young people, inciting them to study philosophy. Incidentally, we can imagine that fathers were also involved, since at later times philosophers like Musonius and Epictetus tried to win them over. In all ages, fathers were fundamental in their sons’ choices.

The Protrepticus’s beginning is not preserved, and the rest of the text is replete with lacunae. Though it is unclear where the dialogue took place, it appears to include three interlocuters addressing an audience of young students. Iamblichus intervened intermittently in the work trying to eliminate dialogic parts, converting questions into assertions, and combining various phrases, sometimes with little success. This is not very surprising, as we will see in later sections that compilers of notes recorded at philosophers’ lectures eliminated most dialogues because they valued only the philosophers’ ipsissima verba. Arrian did this when he took down Epictetus’s Discourses, as did the notetakers recording Didymus’s and Olympiodorus’s lectures.

In contrast to the above scholarly attention to Aristotle, later scholars in antiquity did attempt to explain Aristotle’s lack of clarity, including Galen, writing centuries after Aristotle. He referred to the discrepancies and resulting obscurity in Aristotle’s speeches generally and not specifically to those that reproduced live conversation. In the first chapter of On Fallacies, Galen mentioned the imperfect shape and obscurity of Aristotle’s works, which he attributed to the fact that the philosopher delivered his lectures with excessive velocity. “The philosopher Aristotle usually spoke with such velocity and expressed many of his points as it were by stenographic signs.”¹⁸ Such scenarios might sometimes take place as philosophers lectured. As a comparison, the sixth-century example of Olympiodorus reveals that his students were sometimes unable to take down notes because of the speed with which he spoke, an indication that some philosophers were more rapid thinkers than patient teachers.¹⁹ Apparently, Aristotle was one of them, and as a result, Galen tried to find a cause for such rapidity.

Of course, this was Galen’s point of view. In the second century he knew of stenography, even though he did not dictate to stenographers very often. At the time of Aristotle, stenography was not known in Greece, but still the comparison renders efficaciously the thumping of the philosopher’s words. What were the reasons for Aristotle’s obscurity? Why did he speak with such speed, even to the point of making his works obscure? Mansfeld pondered the question with surprise, considering the philosopher’s general concern for clarity, but did not refer to speeches that exist in the form of live texts.²⁰ In his published works Aristotle strove for a clear style that used ordinary verbs and nouns, so his obscurity is puzzling. Of course, to compare Aristotle’s speaking habits with his writing style is unfair. His speaking style apparently made it difficult for people to follow him—that is, unless they already knew the text he was discussing.

Mansfeld found two possible reasons for the philosopher’s approach. First, perhaps the philosopher wrote for an inner circle and did not need to be fully accessible, so he could instead afford to be somewhat unintelligible in his language. Second, it is possible that Aristotle used old-fashioned terminology and did not care that it was difficult to comprehend. Neither explanation, however, is fully plausible, and we have tried to explain the difficulties in Aristotle’s style by considering some speeches as live texts. Beresford put in relief another peculiar point in the texts of Aristotle’s lectures that exist in the form of notes.²¹ The philosopher alluded to or quoted from Homer very often, but mistakes abound, even in passages that were well known. So not only did the philosopher mangle the Homeric text, but he also attributed passages to the wrong speakers. Did his notetakers commit these mistakes, or was the philosopher himself responsible? Scholars have been quick to absolve Aristotle, but both scenarios are possible. Over the centuries the Homeric text acquired imprecisions and errors when it was quoted by memory, and we should take this into account as we evaluate the later commentary of Olympiodorus’s Alcibiades in light of its considerable errors of attribution. There too, scholars have quickly pardoned Olympiodorus, saying that it was impossible for him to have committed such blunders and that a student certainly must be guilty. Perhaps, however, they did not consider the informality of the delivery. Olympiodorus did not check his sources. He did not care for that and neither did his students.

What do we know of the students of Aristotle? One point that is important to emphasize is that often scholars have imagined scribes as recorders of notes, but no evidence suggests that except for the high-quality manuscripts.²² Aristotle lectured to young men of various ages, beginners and advanced students, as was customary in schools in antiquity. The pupils studied various subjects and apparently were divided into two categories. Aristotle addressed mainly the most capable, who were provided with phronesis (understanding, prudence) and possessed maturity of mind.²³ He described others who were less prepared and immature, saying they might be knowledgeable and expert in mathematics and geometry but lacked phronesis, which came with experience.²⁴ Adopting a metaphor that would have resonance throughout antiquity, Aristotle said, “The soil must have been previously tilled to foster the seeds and the mind of the pupil must have been prepared.”²⁵ No argument would be effective to persuade the immature pupils.

Diogenes Laertius said that about two hundred students attended Theophrastus’s lectures, but then he showed that not everything was straightforward; there were difficulties and some resistance when it came to assembling students (presumably the older ones). In a letter to Phanias the Peripatetic, he spoke of a place where they were gathered.²⁶ At the time of Aristotle and Theophrastus, students did not often listen to original lectures. It seems that the philosopher probably revised and edited other lectures, heightening the confusion. Theophrastus remarked: “It will not be easy to set up not only a large public lecture but also a limited circle as one wished. The lecturers engage in reading a text but they are correcting it at the same time. To give a lecture randomly²⁷ and without care is not allowed any more by the youth.” Students in antiquity usually appear passive. In this remarkable passage, though, students appear to dictate the format and content of lectures. It is a unicum in education that shows older students reacting to what they were offered and refusing to be fed old works that they already knew in better forms. Far from being passive, the students had some authority and shunned gatherings they did not consider worthy of the original philosophers. They were exasperated and rebellious, and they objected to lectures that were full of mistakes and delivered carelessly. Students like Theaetetus had to take down those lectures to form their own library, and these lectures’ lack of consistency impaired their work.²⁸

Different versions of philosophical works were in circulation, making it very difficult to identify the original of each. This phenomenon would later become common in the Roman period.²⁹ Aristotle’s texts suffered from this treatment. His lectures, including the Metaphysics, became a subject of research and “improvements.” In particular, scholarly attention has focused on Book K, which is an ensemble of two parts (a doublet) and is a remnant of a longer version, where careful consideration reveals an evolution from one part to another. Pierre Aubenque argues that Book K is not entirely authentic, remarking on how valuable genetic criticism can be in identifying and solving these questions.³⁰ Students objected to the imperfect versions in circulation and demanded clarity.

Some of the texts that persisted through tradition presented the confusion that Theophrastus discussed, to which the students also objected. If we return to that passage, we see that even when texts were not delivered at full speed, the language and the different layers of the content created a confusion that made these lectures less appealing and less accessible. Furthermore, another reason for the students’ dissatisfaction, as remarked on by Theophrastus, was the impossibility of capturing Aristotle’s ipsissima verba and making satisfactory notes.

Aristotle’s third-longest work, the Problems, requires additional consideration. The text consisted of thirty-eight books and more than nine hundred chapters. Each chapter starts with a question, which is followed by an answer (or answers), according to a very popular educational process. Throughout, it is easy to visualize a master asking questions of a student sitting or standing in front of him.³¹ It is likely, in fact, that some school papyri or ostraca consisting of simple lines of text or a list of words originally represented answers to such questions.³² The Erotapokriseis (as they were called) are a small body of literature, studied only to a limited extent, that became widespread in late antiquity and in the Byzantine period, mostly in Christian literature.³³ The Problemata continued to be published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They served to organize notions like grammar, medicine, health, wine, shrubs and vegetables, fruits, or winds. Scholars have noticed a similarity between question-and-answer texts and dialogues. These Problemata could also be known as aporiai, zetemata, and luseis (that is, answers).³⁴ They were probably composed according to the dictates of a genre, but only later on. Problemata are found in the works of several philosophers, such as the Stoics, Cynics, and others. In the second century the philosopher Epictetus mentions Problemata in connection with literary education in the class of the grammarian. The questions sound elementary and relentless, but their association with lower education is clear. For example,

When asked: “who was the father of Hector?” He replied “Priam.” “Who were his brothers?” “Alexander and Deïphobus.” “And who was their mother?” “Hecuba.” “This historia came down to me.” “From whom?” “From Homer.” (Diss. 2.19.7)

Epictetus placed these Problemata early on in education, and they appear mechanical and uninteresting. However, the genre had a technical and intellectual component beyond practice and indoctrination. It stood between writing and orality, although writing was its only expression outside of school. In the collection transmitted under Aristotle’s name, there are clusters that for several reasons (but mostly because of style) appear Aristotelian. In other clusters, the text seems to have been manipulated, with additions appearing to have been made according to the process that Theophrastus noted above. We do not know how they were written down in Aristotle’s time. The structure was open; the genre was permeable and could be used by others since it allowed for elaborations. In this way the texts of Hippocrates, for instance, were pillaged. The Problems were not designed for publication as a treatise but instead derived from lectures, class discussions, or notes.³⁵ They were not meant to generate new certain knowledge but were exercises for the intellect. A search for the text’s history would not produce many results, and there was no conversation between texts. I believe that C. F. Jacob is right in supposing that the collection originated from the notes of Aristotle (44–45), to which notes of his disciples were added.³⁶

Carlo Natali has argued that Aristotle might have addressed some of these questions to students.³⁷ In Section XVIII, which was titled “Philology” and considered literature or letters, at 1.916b1–3 the question is “Why is it that some people when they begin to read are overtaken by sleep, even if they do not want to, while others who want to sleep are kept awake when they take up a book?” The scientific answer that follows this first question points to “an intellect that was moved but did not think with concentration,” so that for this reader reading was a light task that did not leave lasting impact. The answer to the second question mentions those “who concentrate on something in the intellect,” with the result being that reading keeps them awake because it becomes part of their thinking. Another of these Problemata regards why “contentious arguments are suitable for exercise.”³⁸ The answer is that “they involved frequent victories and defeat. Victorious people enjoy them and so are induced to compete again.” There are more questions beyond Book XVIII and those commented on by Natali, many of which imply a pedagogical process and strong didacticism. Questions concern verbosity or the superiority of a philosopher as compared with an orator. One asks, “Why do we enjoy hearing what is neither very old nor quite new?” Of course, questions that addressed students would have been spread out everywhere when ethical concepts such as justice or morality were explained.

Finally, it is important to examine the texts of the Problemata themselves in an attempt to evaluate the gravity of their errors and imperfections. The accumulation of material, the lack of order, and the plurality of hands have caused scholars to denounce the form of these texts; my aim is to determine how easily those texts could have been altered. Could they map onto those described by Theophrastus, of which students did not have a great opinion? In scholars’ estimation the actual Problemata date to between the third century BCE and the sixth century CE. We have said that Aristotle authored a number of them; at the beginning he probably ordered the collection, which then diverged from his hand. The collection grew, but there is no discernable organization of the books and their various chapters, which meander to different topics. Virtually every chapter starts with a question (Why?) and is followed by an answer, in the tradition of Erotapokriseis.

The most common mistake found in such a large collection consists of the presence of identical chapters that recur in various parts. They are repeated randomly, for no apparent reason. So, for example, “Why will purslane and salt stop bleeding gums? It is because purslane contains some moisture.”³⁹ At times a problem is repeated but with some variations. Sometimes words are missing, impairing the general understanding with the result that the editor has to substitute another.⁴⁰ The subject of a question might also be unclear: “Why are people less drunk when they drink from large cups? Indeed, the cause is the same, the downward pressure of the surface heat.” Here the obscurity is due to a conflation of two different chapters.⁴¹ At XXV 14, some editors presume that some piece of the text is missing because the line contradicts the previous chapter: “Why does air not travel upward? For if the winds occur when the air is moved by heat and fire by its nature travels upward, the wind too should go upwards since that which sets in motion runs upward and that which is moved runs upwards …” My survey of the mistakes in the Problems reveals that they are usually unobtrusive and can be forgiven. Some of these mistakes could have derived from random notes.

After Aristotle

The farther a student progressed on his educational path, the more specialized and valuable his notebook would become. It would circulate and could be used by others.⁴² The cases I consider below also show that notes allowed philosophers-in-training to compile their own publications. Yet much discernment is necessary in order to identify notes properly.

Alexander of Aphrodisias

Alexander of Aphrodisias is an important figure on whom to focus our attention, not as a philosopher who lectured in class to students but as a writer of treatises and commentaries, some of which were later compiled under titles such as “school discussions.” Alexander lived between the second and third centuries and was appointed as a public teacher of Aristotelian philosophy in Athens; his surviving writing reveals what kind of school he directed. The existence of a school is sometimes considered a given, for example by Brad Inwood.⁴³ Questions to ask are: Did Alexander have a school where exegesis of texts was practiced as a rule, as has been claimed? Do we know if his students took down notes of his lectures? Can we regard his works, especially his minor ones, as notes? Robert Sharples, who devoted much attention to Alexander, was doubtful.⁴⁴ He remarked that some of Alexander’s writings—especially those that he judged not particularly accomplished and called “inept”—might point to students’ exercises, even though the light that they throw on this question is “dimmer and more fitful … than we might wish.”

Gregory Snyder strongly defended the idea that exegesis of texts was practiced in the school of Alexander. He argued “that Alexander’s commentaries show definite signs of classroom origin and that they are probably based on Alexander’s lecture notes.”⁴⁵ Snyder’s analysis of Alexander’s treatises and commentaries is in my view superficial. His observations about some pedantic features in the prose, the fact that Alexander sometimes poses problems and suggests different ways of solving them, and his sporadic use of the plural personal pronoun (we) do not strictly demonstrate that these are classroom notes. There is a big difference between some works of Aristotle that show inconsistences and traces of school activity, as well as the writings of Platonists and Aristotelians of late antiquity like Olympiodorus, and the meager traces of teaching in Alexander’s works, which can be otherwise interpreted. One of the differences between Alexander’s commentaries (even the minor ones) and the later ones, addressed in detail in part III, is the usual lack of an introduction and the fact that they are not divided into a section for general discussion, followed by an examination of various points. It is possible that some of Alexander’s minor works reveal some connection with education, but they do not do so directly. In addition, Snyder presented a view of classroom activity that is redolent of teaching in the modern world. Thus he suggested that students bring to class several books to be interpreted and that the different readings of Alexander derived from those and not from his knowledge of different views and collation of manuscripts. Altogether, it is difficult to dismiss the views of Pierluigi Donini that Alexander’s works were not directly connected to formal education and pedagogic activity; instead, this scholar suggests, it is more likely that these works may have addressed educated people in general.⁴⁶ In light of these considerations, I exclude Alexander’s writings among the texts that reveal students’ use of their teachers’ lectures.

As previously mentioned, it is unclear whether students employed their notes afterward to compile new works when they were preparing to become philosophers themselves. Were the comprehensive notes that Olympiodorus’s disciples drew up of fundamental relevance to their future profession? It is indicative that the notes that Olympiodorus and Philoponus themselves recorded when editing Ammonius’s lectures formed the base of their subsequent scholarly activity. Below are examples of students and listeners who recorded lectures and demonstrations (in the case of Galen) at the start of their professional careers, which corroborates the circumstances of note-taking, even though their notes are not extant.

In philosophical schools, notes served as receptacles for thoughts, threads for recollection, material to peruse and study, and starting points for productive activity. Most importantly, some philosophers’ authoritative texts were preserved through the work of students who jotted down their teachers’ lectures. I will start from what the literary evidence suggests about young men writing notes; though many details of this evidence might be fictional, they are still indicative of overall scholarly habit.

In the Hermotimus, Lucian presents the titular character as a philosopher’s very diligent student who not only bent over books but also took notes at lectures (2).⁴⁷ For about twenty years Hermotimus had followed the same life, “writing notes (hypomnemata) at the lectures, pale and wasted in body with thoughts and studying.” This dialogue is replete with references to books written by philosophers “by the hundreds and thousands” (56), yet this student could not dispense with writing down his teacher’s lessons. His teacher’s words, in fact, “like Zeus’s golden rope in Homer,” were fundamental in raising him up to a world of knowledge (3). The playful Lucian presents here a stereotyped image of the “good student.” Of course, this is an ironic account. Lucian does not regard Hermotimus’s diligence as an admirable personality trait. This kind of mocking reference reminds one of Lucian’s portrayal of philosophers’ arrogant and disputable behavior, which he attacks unremittingly.

Another text, Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana, confirms the strong inclination of a student to record his teacher’s words. Loyalty and allegiance to one’s mentor were paramount among the qualities required for a student of philosophy. While traveling in Assyria, Apollonius of Tyana acquired a disciple as devoted as Hermotimus, one Damis of Nineveh, who looked at him as a superhumanly wise being.⁴⁸ In exchange for becoming Apollonius’s follower, Damis offered Apollonius his superior knowledge of not only the geographical surroundings but also the place’s various languages. Apollonius replied that he himself knew all human idioms. The mention of languages reveals the imperfection of Damis’s linguistic skills; educated among the barbarians, Damis lacked the ability to express himself suitably. This passage confirms that the styles of teachers’ discourses and notes differed sharply. Damis was only capable enough to record what he saw and heard, including conversations with his teacher (synousia), by taking notes of everything (hypomnemata). He noted things down in his scrapbook, which Philostratus somewhat irreverently calls ἐκφάτνισμα (scraps from the manger), because Damis, determined not to let anything escape him, had the habit of jotting down every infinitesimal and negligible bit of information regarding Apollonius. Notebooks could draw criticism because of the varied and abbreviated material they included. A malignant fellow compared the trifles Damis had collected to the crumbs that fell from a table during a feast that were fitting for dogs to consume, but Damis was not at all discouraged. In this account as well as the previous, irony is palpable: Damis’s obtuse diligence silently condemns him.

The information concerning the behavior of students of existing philosophers is sketchy and may appear as a conglomeration of anecdotes and various references, but it will be useful in light of the sections that follow in this book. Galen mentioned that the works of Carneades, an academic-skeptic philosopher of the third century BCE, were handed down to posterity through the notes that his pupils “treasured up” in their notebooks.⁴⁹ In the Roman Empire, individual teachers with small groups of adherents supplanted larger rhetorical and philosophical schools, albeit with some exceptions. When texts were unavailable, recording current and popular teachers’ lectures and commentaries became indispensable. Porphyry, in the Life of Plotinus, says that there was not a ready and accessible distribution of philosophical works because their recipients were scrutinized and chosen with care, with many excluded (4). Moreover, as we will see, some philosophers chose not to write for various reasons and only to lecture and lead conversations in class.

In his Life of Pythagoras the third-century philosopher Iamblichus describes how the philosopher’s school functioned.⁵⁰ He states that the members of the school did not employ common, ordinary words that any reader could superficially understand, instead using secret devices and symbols. This behavior made what they said difficult for the uninitiated to follow. Iamblichus distinguishes between oral lectures, course notes (which he calls hypomnematismoi and hyposemeioseis), and the books subsequently produced and published (syggrammata and ekdoseis). Students would follow oral lectures and record the same course notes that the students of Olympiodorus would take down centuries later. They then developed from these notes texts that could be disseminated and, according to Iamblichus, transmitted to us. Iamblichus may well have attributed characteristics that were present in his time to a sixth-fifth century BCE school. From what he says, note-taking appears as a quasi-formal and obligatory activity completed during the lecture or after it. In some schools of philosophy, only students (rather than their teachers) were engaged in writing.

We know only a few details about the Neoplatonic philosopher (and later the teacher of Galen) Albinus of Smyrna, who claimed that Aristotle’s logic was already present in Plato. At the age of twenty, after the death of his father, Galen went to Smyrna to hear the lectures of a doctor as well as Albinus. The latter apparently wrote in his turn eleven books of notes from the philosopher Gaius’s lectures: Sketch of Platonic Doctrines and Introduction to Plato’s Dialogues. These works are lost, like most of Albinus’s production, and the titles are only known from the contents listed in manuscripts, but they represent one more testimony of the practice of taking notes from oral lectures.⁵¹

Notes were necessary because books did not circulate widely. The third-century critic, philosopher, and rhetorician Cassius Longinus pointed to a related problem: the fact that it was not easy to find scribes to copy texts.⁵² He had asked his scribe to interrupt the copying of other books assigned to him and devote all his attention to Plotinus’s writings. When he looked at the texts, however, he was not satisfied and had reservations about the copies, which, in his view, were full of mistakes. The errors were not due to the scribe’s negligence; Longinus apparently did not know of the trouble that Plotinus encountered in writing. Plotinus’s follower Amelius, in fact, had not corrected his master’s written voice. Yet there were more issues standing in the way of students reading philosophers’ published texts. In a letter by Longinus, as reported by Porphyry (20), Longinus remembers the outstanding philosophers he encountered in his youth:

When I was an adolescent there were a few outstanding professors of philosophy. I had the opportunity to hear them because, from when I was a child, I visited many places with my parents as I encountered numerous people and cities and followed the lectures of those who were still alive. Now some of them strove to set out their opinions in writing to allow posterity to get a measure of benefit from them; others thought that all they needed to do was to guide their students to an understanding of their doctrine.

Philosophers in the second category who chose not to write may have possessed less interest in personal glory, but as good educators they kept in mind their students’ ability to comprehend and retain knowledge. Longinus added that, among the philosophers who were engaged in writing, some only adjusted others’ works or developed small points from them. What students did was not much different. Longinus, in any case, was not a philosopher, according to Plotinus, who called him a “philologist” when he read one of his works.⁵³ Among the philosophers he listed who did not write was Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus, who in his turn did not write. Longinus also mentioned several philosophers who belonged to both categories; among these was Plotinus, who had written many treatises.⁵⁴ Yet, as we will see, Plotinus abstained from writing for ten years at the beginning of his career. The preferable solution for a student interested in philosophy was to follow lectures. Placing oral lectures firmly in memory was not easy, though, and note-taking was needed. The student of a philosopher who never produced a book or wrote a treatise had only his memory of an event at his disposal.⁵⁵ Eunapius pointed to the difference between Alypius and Iamblichus.⁵⁶ Students of the former, unsatisfied with the fact that Alypius confined his teaching to informal conversations and did not produce a written text, ran away from his classes and enthusiastically attended Iamblichus’s rich lectures. With Alypius, notes were a necessity, but classes with Iamblichus were more satisfying.

The close relation between a student and his teacher of philosophy, which will be discussed in parts II and III, manifested itself in the young man’s desire not to miss a syllable from the latter’s teaching. A matter of great interest is the intercourse of Proclus with the old philosopher Plutarch in the fifth century, as described by the philosopher Marinus, who wrote a life of Proclus in prose and epic verse.⁵⁷ The eminent philosopher Syrianus took Proclus to visit Plutarch, his predecessor as head of the school in Athens. Proclus was barely twenty years old but manifested such determination and desire for philosophy that Plutarch made him part of his study circle, which was reading Aristotle and Plato. Even though Plutarch was extremely old, he found himself very much taken by the young man and exhorted him to take notes, recording what was said in the group. Of course, this episode is idealized and cannot be taken at face value, but to my knowledge this is the only instance in which a teacher recognized openly the value of notes and persuaded his ward to take the initiative. It is quite possible that Didymus and Olympiodorus did likewise. Plutarch also suggested that a new work could emerge from Proclus’s eager participation and that his notes could eventually form a treatise on the Phaedo that Proclus could publish under his name.⁵⁸ We may suspect that in other instances a teacher might have intervened by suggesting a very useful exercise, but for that we lack evidence.

In light of what we will consider in part III, it is important to realize not only that several students might take notes at the same time but also that a lecture could be repeated with some variations. Photius reported that the student Theosebius took down a single text several times.⁵⁹ Theosebius, a very private and honorable man and philosopher, was a contemporary of Olympiodorus and the best scholar on Epictetus of the time.⁶⁰ He twice recorded the philosopher Hierocles’s lectures on the Gorgias with confusing results, since a comparison of the versions showed notable discrepancies. But was Theosebius entirely to blame for the details surrounding the fundamental exegesis and its inconsistencies? As I have noted, tradition preferred to blame the student, but it is possible that Hierocles had actually delivered different versions of the lecture at different times.

The School of Plotinus

A comprehensive account of the writing activities of Plotinus is provided by his disciple Porphyry of Tyre. Porphyry wrote extensively about his master’s life and was particularly enthusiastic about Plotinus’s philosophy, conversations in class, and his charisma, attractive physical aspect, and sweet and calm disposition. Plotinus founded Neoplatonism, which dominated the Platonic school in late antiquity. Porphyry meant to defend him from his critics and from Iamblichus in particular; he presented Plotinus as an exponent of the true philosophy. Porphyry’s words were “une véritable machine de guerre,” in the opinion of Saffrey.⁶¹ In his youth Plotinus had gone to Alexandria but was very disappointed by the lectures of the philosophers there, until he became a disciple of Ammonius.⁶² After attending Ammonius’s conversations and lectures for eleven years, he moved to Rome, where his school became popular, even including some women. Plotinus produced many works after refraining from writing for ten years.⁶³ Why this refusal, since apparently people had urged him to do so? Ammonius had objected to writing too, so perhaps this was one of the reasons behind the temporary decision of Plotinus; perhaps Plato’s negative attitude toward writing may have also been influential.⁶⁴

In addition, we learn that Plotinus had one more reason to deliver his lectures only orally. Porphyry attributed his difficulty with letters, syllables, and spelling to the fact that he did not see clearly: that is, he was farsighted.⁶⁵ It appears, however, that his visual issues derived more specifically from another cause or were at least compounded by it, namely a dysgraphia, a disturbance in handwriting that is camouflaged here as a personal dislike for calligraphic letters. It seems clear to us today that Plotinus’s difficulties derived from a learning disability, which of course did not affect his brilliant thoughts.⁶⁶ This impairment seemingly afflicted him all of his life, and the books that he “wrote” likely originated from students’ note-taking or his dictation to scribes.

Plotinus’s students Amelius, Eustochius, and Porphyry wrote down Plotinus’s lectures that then formed the Enneads.⁶⁷ Eustochius was a physician and Plotinus’s friend. He started studying philosophy with Plotinus later than the others but still became a good philosopher, and he even assisted Plotinus while he was dying and Amelius and Porphyry were away. Eustochius is also credited with having completed his own edition of the Enneads. Porphyry divides the followers of Plotinus into two groups: the zelotai and the akroatai (7.1). The first, which included Amelius and Porphyry, were those who cultivated philosophy, and the second were those who occasionally listened to Plotinus’s lectures. In the first group, Porphyry mentions a variety of personages who were passionate about philosophy and had embraced professional or literate careers. Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé excludes from the first group regular students of Plotinus who were also young, but age is a relative concept.⁶⁸ Students like Eustochius, when he was a beginner and later progressed, must have belonged to the first category, as Porphyry in the encomium of his master mentions only those eminent figures to increase the impression that Plotinus’s classes were very well attended; in reality, naturally less prominent students must also have been part of these classes. Thus the references to Epictetus and Proclus do not confirm Goulet-Cazé’s argument.⁶⁹ Marinus (Proclus 38) only points to the obvious difference between the two groups. From Epictetus, we learn that he had not only regular students who followed him and people who occasionally came to hear him speak when they were in Epirus, but also “young” students who naturally were zelotai.

Amelius seems to be the most fervent and passionate notetaker of antiquity. He started to follow Plotinus three years after he came to Rome and remained with him for twenty-four years. Previously, while a student of the Syrian philosopher Eumenius, Amelius had put together some hundred books taken from lectures.⁷⁰ He surpassed everyone else in the ability to work hard (philoponia), the trait typical of a good student. Amelius continued to take notes and produced about a hundred of them from Plotinus’s lectures. Porphyry, who was always very competitive, appeared not to value these very much (4). Unfortunately, Amelius’s scholia have not been preserved. They would have given us a good idea of how Plotinus conducted his classes and how his students were able to follow him,⁷¹ as well as an opportunity to compare them with Olympiodorus’s students.

The abundance of Amelius’s notes makes one suspect that he was recording everything in a kind of apo phones commentary, perhaps not unlike what the students of Olympiodorus did and stenographers would have done. One can perceive a definite rivalry between him and Porphyry, who cited Longinus’s words that Amelius in his work “is prolix in his treatment and in his rambling exposition.”⁷² Amelius was a student of Plotinus for eighteen years before Porphyry arrived from Greece at the age of thirty. At that point, Amelius had not written anything besides his notes, yet he must have appeared to Porphyry a formidable rival for Plotinus’s favor. The two philosophers wrote works in competition with each other, but in the end, Porphyry prevailed and published Plotinus’s treatises that their master entrusted to him (18). An interesting detail that Porphyry recounts regards Plotinus’s classes before he arrived in Rome (3). “Now Plotinus’s classes, since he urged those who were present to ask questions, were full of disorder (ataxia) and a great deal of nonsense (phluaria), as Amelius informed me.” Porphyry might have attributed the information to Amelius, but one must note that Porphyry had an interest in denigrating his rival, thus implying that under his own guidance the situation had improved radically. Questions were of great importance in a philosopher’s class, as we will see. It appears that Porphyry did not appreciate this pedagogy and preferred orderly lectures that a philosopher delivered without interruptions. When several students participated, asked for concepts to be repeated, suggested that the educator return to previous points, required clarifications from a teacher or other classmates, and devoted themselves to the intense, furious activity of note-taking, the pace of a class slowed down and even the authority of teaching could be challenged. We will have to keep in mind this scenario in part III where we analyze some students’ actual notes—perhaps this was a silent and disciplined spectacle of recording information in class, but the background of note-taking may have been clamorous to a degree.

We lack a clear picture of whether students always followed the same routine in taking notes or tailored them according to their learning needs. In medieval and early modern classrooms, notes were taken during lectures. As in antiquity, they existed within pedagogic methods based on the presence of more or less formal lectures. Unlike in antiquity, from which only a few notebooks are extant, lecture notebooks from the eighteenth century proliferate and survive in collections, particularly in Europe. They were circulated and provided the basis for some illegitimately printed books.⁷³ In early modern times, students in German universities tried to capture every single word of a professor using a technique called Schreibechor, that is, a “writing chorus.”⁷⁴ In the nineteenth century, students recorded all their teachers’ words during university classes by hand.⁷⁵Nearly two millennia earlier, taking notes was already a common practice in education in the imperial period and late antiquity. We have seen that in teaching rhetoric, medicine, and philosophy, students found it necessary to record their educators’ voices. This practice may have been a regular part of schooling, a method that did not require much discussion because it was implied in teaching and learning. Teachers of philosophy in the Aristotelian and Platonist schools lectured from their own notes, whether written down or memorized. Using an expression of Matthew Eddy, notebooks were “paper tools, that is, productive tools for work on paper.”⁷⁶ We have seen above some manifestations of this phenomenon when notebooks (in antiquity, of course, on papyrus or tablet) not only functioned as information management but became the basis of later publications.

As we have seen in the preceding typology, notes were fundamental in organizing a text as the author recorded thoughts that might otherwise escape, which solidified notes as part of the fabric of a narrative, sometimes indistinguishable from the core text. Also, notes were strictly tied to the power of memory—comprehensive books such as those of Gellius or Pamphila contained anecdotes and notes put together with some sophistication to form collections of literary history. Individuals could also put notes together less systematically, as when preparing a list of items to organize travel or in the hope of retaining the details and facts of a trip, perhaps with an eye toward forming a narrative of some kind.

The many types of notes that we have analyzed from antiquity clearly illustrate that the force of notes is due to their polymorphism and derivation from testimonia. It is also evident that actual examples of notes and even notetakers are rare in the classical period and late antiquity, as compared to a higher frequency in the sixteenth century and beyond.⁷⁷ However, much can be learned and understood from the notes and notetakers that we have uncovered, from their travel experiences to oratorical studies to the details hidden in the margins. In the ancient world notes were an integral part of the routine in higher education; today they help elucidate the role of students in philosophy, a role that diminishes and is actively extinguished in later centuries.⁷⁸ As a result, we are able and perhaps privileged to examine veritable literary phenomena and truly understand how notes lie at the crossroads of the history of the book and reception of written works.

1. Diogenes Laertius 5.2.

2. Natali 2013, 96–119. This book provides a secure bibliographical framework for Aristotle, bringing together all the pieces of evidence. Protagoras (Plato, Protagoras 315b) is a model for showing the sophist conversing and teaching while strolling in the midst of an attentive audience.

3. De Rhetorica vol. 2, 50–57; Chroust 2015, 105–16.

4. Natali (1991) argues that it is important not to consider Aristotle like a modern professor as some scholars portray him. One of the reasons is that unlike the sophists (or modern academics), Aristotle was never paid for his classes.

5. Strabo 13.1.54; Plutarch, Life of Sulla 26. See Natali 2013, 102–4.

6. Guthrie 1981, 41.

7. H. Jackson 1920.

8. See Ross 1923, 14–15.

9. The book was translated into English; see Jaeger 1948.

10. Centuries later, Epictetus would also separate teaching into two portions in different parts of the day.

11. Düring 1966.

12. See Guthrie 1981, 50: “lectures to his advanced pupils or perhaps notes taken by a pupil.” Shields (2014, 25) concludes with some uncertainty that they are drafts.

13. Barnes 1995.

14. Beresford 2020.

15. On different kinds of protreptic literature, see Markovich 2022.

16. Teubner edition 1888.

17. See Hutchinson and Johnson 2005, 2014.

18. De Captionibus 1.20.

19. Life of Proclus 9.

20. Mansfeld 1994, 24–26, 148–77 on teachers and pupils.

21. Beresford 2020, xiii.

22. See Beresford 2020, xliv.

23. Nic. Eth. 9. 1179b 7–10.

24. Nic. Eth. 1.3.5–7, 6.8.5–8; 10.9.6.

25. On popular morality, see Morgan 2007. On the importance of nature, cf. Cribiore 2007b, 129–34. On the mind as soil to be cultivated, see Plutarch, Mor. On the Education of Children 2d–e.

26. Diogenes Laertius V 37. Dorandi (2013) on the strength of the manuscripts reads deikterion (a place where people showed up) instead of dikasterion. Was Theophrastus editing his lectures? I think it is likely that he was working on lectures previously given.

27. One of the meanings of anaballo is to “throw up,” and I wonder if it can be applied here to a lecture that is given uncritically and unprofessionally. To vomit speeches will be considered later a characteristic of sophists.

28. On making annotations of a lecture of Socrates, see p. 29 on Theaetetus. Theaetetus’s (Plato, Theaetetus 143a) difficulties were different from those of Theophrastus’s students.

29. Décarie 1983.

30. Aubenque 1983.

31. See, e.g., the Douris cup from the Staatliche Museum in Berlin. See figures 1–2 in Cribiore 2001b, 29.

32. Cribiore 1996, some exercises, nos. 98–128.

33. Papadoiannakis 2006, with bibliography in note 1. Similar collections were attributed to Democritus, Theophrastus, and Chrysippus. See also Volgers and Zamagni 2004.

34. See Jacob 2004, 25–54, who mentions various sources.

35. Blair 1999, 175–76.

36. Jacob 2004, 44–45.

37. Natali 2013, 98–99.

38. Aristotle, Pr. XVIII 2.

39. Pr. VII 9. Purslane is an edible succulent with small flowers; cf. I 38.

40. Pr. X 35.

41. Pr. III 25a. Completely obscure is XXV 8, a long chapter.

42. I will consider here notes that students made spontaneously, taking down their teachers’ words, and not texts that were dictated.

43. Inwood 2014, e.g., 109.

44. See especially Sharples 2016.

45. Snyder 2000, 66–92 at 91.

46. Donini 1994.

47. Reading texts by other philosophers continued to be important. See Del Corso 2005, 31–49.

48. Philostratus VA 19; Jones 2001.

49. Galen, de optima doctrina 2.5 Barigazzi = I.45 Kühn. I owe this information and that regarding Albinus to Stephen Kidd.

50. Iamblicus, De vita Pythagorica 23.104; Deubner 1937. Cf. the translation in 1989 by Clark. On texts attributed to Pythagoras, see Macris et al. 2021.

51. Parisinus Graecus 1962, 146v. In Smyrna Galen had followed the lectures of Albinus; see De libris propriis I.2; Boudon-Millot 2007, 140.

52. Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 19. A new edition and translation appeared in Gerson 2018; see also Richard Goulet 1982 and Edwards 2000.

53. Porphyry, Plot. 14.

54. The following account of Plotinus’s teaching is taken from his Life, compiled by his student Porphyry.

55. See the list of the philosophers in both categories in Goulet-Cazé 1982.

56. Eunapius, VS 460.

57. Marinus succeeded Proclus and taught the philosopher Isidorus, whom Damascius immortalized in his Life. See Edwards 2000, 55–115.

58. Marinus, Proclus or on Happiness 12. Translation by Edwards 2000, 55–119. The treatise on the Phaedo is lost.

59. Photius, Bibl. 338b 35–36b.

60. See Watts 2006, 56–57; Damascius, Vit.Is. 45b.

61. Cf. Saffrey 1982, 55.

62. Cf. Blank 2010.

63. Cf. Ammonius in the fourth to fifth centuries; see part III.

64. Plato, Phaedrus 274c–277a. See also the controversial seventh letter.

65. Porphyry (14) writes that Plotinus was interested in optics. See his short treatise On Seeing or on How It Is That Distant Things Appear Small, in Gerson 2018, 202–5.

66. Cf. Edwards 2000, 23n109. To complete what we learn from the Life in chapter 8, chapter 13 adds that Plotinus transposed syllables. This is further evidence of trouble with reading and writing that usually manifests itself at an early age. From Plotinus’s abstention from writing in a book by hand, it seems that he wrote in cursive, so that the text’s clarity was even more compromised. Besides the fact that this impairment was not commented on in antiquity, I found it basically impossible to encounter examples of that in school exercises, unless very coarse handwriting in conjunction with an exercise at a high level might be an example of dysgraphia.

67. For text and translation, see Gerson 2018, the definitive edition of the text superseding the minor edition of Henry and Schwyzer.

68. Goulet-Cazé 1982, 232–37. This scholar brings the practice of Proclus and Epictetus in support of her argument.

69. Epictetus, Diss. 2.19.7.

70. Porphyry 3.2021. Edwards (2000, 8n49) suggests that the fragments of Numenius came from a work that Amelius had communicated to Eusebius at the beginning of the fourth century, Praeparatio evangelica 11.

71. Goulet-Cazé 1982, 270–71.

72. Porphyry 21.

73. See Blair 2008, 39.

74. See Eddy 2016, 86.

75. Souilhé (1948, xvii) noted that students in European universities always took down their class ad verbum. This corresponds to my personal experience in Italy in the 1970s. Those who were more proficient could disseminate and “sell” their notes (called in Italian dispense) to others, and teachers were very aware of those deals. Quintilian comes to mind.

76. On the usefulness of collections see te Heesen and Spary 2001.

77. Arnould and Poulouin 2008.

78. Blair 2008, 41. Cf. also 42–43 where notes are called reportationes.