Nicolas le Péripatéticien, dit le Damascène: notes pour une étude

The De Philosophia Aristotelis (DPA) is a large compendium of Aristotle's works, made by a syriac peripatetic scholar named Nicolaus, currently identified with Nicolaus of Damascus, the court historian working at the court of Herodes of Judea (I c. BC). However, such an assuption has no foudament in the ancient sources and implies a number a counterfactual implications. This paper is mainly devoted to enlight and to rediscuss the historical frame of the work, which seems to have been written between the III and the VI century AD, most likely in the IV c. Among the consequences: one piece of evidence for interest in a wide range of Aristotle's works already in the first century BC/first century AD is removed; the supposedly earliest evidence for "Metaphysics" as the title of Aristotle's work is moved to a later date; the supposedly earliest evidence for knowledge of Theophrastus' "Metaphysics" may be moved to a later date too; the idea that Peripatetic activity more or less ceased with Alexander, Themistius being the only exception, is weakened by another counter-example. By constrast, a distinctively peripatetic culture must have been still alive in Themistius' and Nicolas time, when especially proficient tools were produced both for teaching activity and for the transmission of Aristotle's compendiated philosophy to later eras