Υπόμνημα εις τον Παρμενίδην Πλάτωνος

The series "Philosophi Byzantini" is published by the Academy of Athens under the auspices of the international union of academies and the supervison of an international commitee (L. Benakis, R. Browing, H. Hunger, C. A. Trypanis, G. Verbeke, D. Zakynthinos). Director of the series is L. Benakis.



The present edition is the outcome of a seminar in the edition of Greek texts, held in the Department of Classics, State University of New York at Buffalo, in the fall of 1983. The participants were: Thomas A. Gadra (1960), B.A.; Sion M. Honea (1952), B.M., M.A.; Patricia M. Stinger (1945), B.A., M.A.; Gretchen Umholtz (1959), A.B., M.A.; Leendert G. Westerink (1913), Prof. Classics Buffalo 1965-1984.



"The text edited and translated in this volume has until now been anonymous. On the ground of new evidence, to be presented in the following pages, it can now confidently be ascribed to the well-known Byzantine churchman, historian and scholar George Pachymeres (13th cent.). It thus becomes the only extant Plato commentary of the later Byzantine period, after the closing of the Athenian and Alexandrian schools.

The immediate reason for reopening the question of its authorship was a suggestion by Prof. Carlos Steel (Louvain), whose research on the text of Proclus "In Parmenidem" had led him to the conclusion that certain significant variants in the text of Proclus as well as the entire anonymous sequel to it were the work of a Byzantine sholar contemporary, or nearly contemporary, with the manuscript that preserved them, Parisinus gr. 1810 (13th century). The handwriting of this manuscript could be identified as that of Pachymeres thanks to the discoveries of Prof. Dieter Harlfinger (Berlin), who had previously located three autograph copies of works of Pachymeres, Berolinensis Ham. 512, Parisinus gr. 1930 (both of the "Philosophia") and Angelicus C.3.7. (of the "Quadrivium") [...]

George Pachymeres (b. 1242, d. after 1308), deacon and protekdikos of St. Sophia, who at the same time held the secular office of dikaiophylax, deserves attention as the leading historian and scholar of his time, rather than for his active role in the affairs of church and state. Of his voluminous output (listed in the Bibliography below) the major works are in the fields of contemporary history, rhetoric, mathematics, theology and philosophy."



(Introduction by Leendert G. Westerink)