Abstract
AbstractDeriving from a larger investigation into the sources used by Leonidas of Byzantium for his second-century ADHalieutica, this article argues that a handful of passages in Aelian’sDe natura animalium(3.18, 3.28, 10.13, 10.20, 11.21, 11.23–24, 12.24–25[24] and 12.27[25]) comprise a coherent series indebted to the same section of Leonidas’ work. More importantly, all of these accounts are ultimately derived from a Peripatetic treatise on the marine fauna of the Red Sea. The author, whom I dub the Red Sea Aristotle, based his treatise on first-hand research likely conducted at a Ptolemaic settlement in the northern Red Sea. This treatise seems to have been known to at least one later Alexandrian lexicographer, while Agatharchides of Cnidus may have had access to it already in the middle of the second century BC. This Peripatetic treatise invites a reconsideration of orthodox claims about the fate of scientific zoology in the Hellenistic period.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Literature and Literary Theory,Linguistics and Language,Archeology,Visual Arts and Performing Arts,Language and Linguistics,Archeology,Classics
Reference157 articles.
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