Minor Works, Volume I

Short treatises attributed to a great mind.

Aristotle of Stagirus (384–322 BC), the great Greek philosopher, researcher, logician, and scholar, studied with Plato at Athens and taught in the Academy (367–347). Subsequently he spent three years in Asia Minor at the court of his former pupil Hermeias, where he married Pythias, one of Hermeias’ relations. After some time at Mitylene, he was appointed in 343–342 by King Philip of Macedon to be tutor of his teen-aged son Alexander. After Philip’s death in 336, Aristotle became head of his own school (of “Peripatetics”), the Lyceum at Athens. Because of anti-Macedonian feeling there after Alexander’s death in 323, he withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died the following year.

The Minor Works comprise nine treatises on technical subjects traditionally attributed to Aristotle and valuable both for the study of Peripatetic research and for the history of science. Volume I contains On Colors, On Things Heard, Physiognomics, On Plants, and On Marvelous Things Heard.

This two-volume edition replaces the earlier one-volume Loeb edition by W.S. Hett (1936), with introductions, texts, translations, and annotation each by a leading specialist and incorporating the latest scholarship.