On Marvellous Things Heard

On Marvellous Things Heard (Ancient Greek: Περὶ θαυμασίων ἀκουσμάτων; Latin: De mirabilibus auscultationibus), often called Mirabilia,[1] is a collection of thematically arranged anecdotes formerly attributed to Aristotle. The material included in the collection mainly deals with the natural world (e.g., plants, animals, minerals, weather, geography).[2] The work consists of 178 chapters and is an example of the paradoxography genre of literature.[3]

According to the revised Oxford translation of The Complete Works of Aristotle this treatise's "spuriousness has never been seriously contested".[4] It was denied by Desiderius Erasmus in his edition of the Corpus Aristotelicum in 1531.[1]

On Marvellous Things Heard was translated into Latin three times during the Middle Ages: first by Bartolomeo da Messina in the 13th century, then in the 14th century by Leontius Pilatus and finally in the 15th century by the humanist Antonio Beccaria.[5] The first edition of the Greek text was an incunabulum printed by Aldo Manuzio in 1497.[6] Four Latin translations appeared in the 16th century based on printed editions (two anonymous, two by Domenico Montesoro and Natale Conti).[7]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Introduction to Zucker, Mayhew and Hellmann (2024).
  2. ^ Thomas (2002:138).
  3. ^ Introduction to Schorn and Mayhew (2024).
  4. ^ Barnes (1995:VII).
  5. ^ Giacomelli (2021:356).
  6. ^ Giacomelli (2021:276).
  7. ^ Giacomelli (2021:360–362).

References

  • Barnes, Jonathan (ed.) (1995). The Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2. Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-01651-8
  • Schorn, Stefan; Mayhew, Robert (eds.) (2024) Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia. Routledge.
  • Giacomelli, Ciro (ed.) (2021). Ps.-Aristotele, ›De mirabilibus auscultationibus‹: Indagini sulla storia della tradizione e ricezione del testo. De Gruyter, doi:10.1515/9783110699258
  • Thomas, Rosalind (2002). Herodotus in context: ethnography, science and the art of persuasion. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-01241-4
  • Zucker, Arnaud; Mayhew, Robert; Hellmann, Oliver (eds.) (2024) The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science. Routledge.
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