Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3/Simplicius

Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3 (1876)

Excerpted from The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, Volume 3, 1876 ed., page 988. (Ferrier's contributions to the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography were for for the edition published 1857-1863. That this is the subsequent edition of 1876 is evidenced in its mentioning later dates—including that of Ferrier's death in 1864.)

2390358Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3 — SIMPLICIUS1876James Frederick Ferrier

SIMPLICIUS, one of the latest philosophers of the Neoplatonic school, and a commentator on the works of Aristotle, was a native of Cilicia. He flourished during the first half of the sixth century, and studied at Athens under Ammonius Hermeas and Damascius. When the rising power of Christianity exposed the heathen philosophers to severe persecutions, and the Athenian schools were closed (529) by the edict of the Emperor Justinian, Simplicius sought refuge, with six philosophic friends, at the court of Kosroes, king of Persia. A few years afterwards, their safety being guaranteed by a treaty between Kosroes and Justinian, the exiled philosophers returned to Greece; but of the subsequent fortunes of Simplicius no account has been handed down to us. Of his writings on Aristotle, there are extant his commentary on the Categories, on the Physica Auscultatio, the De Cælo, and the De Anima. "These commentaries," says Brandis, "may without hesitation be regarded as the richest in their contents, of any that have come down to us bearing on the explanation of Aristotle. But for them we should be without the most important fragments of the writings of the Eleatics, of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and others, which were at that day already very scarce, as well as without many extracts from the lost books of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Eudemus."—(Art. "Simplicius" in Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biog. and Mythol.) Extracts from Simplicius are to be found in Brandis' Scholia in Aristotelem, pp. 468-518. A complete edition of his commentaries on the Physica Auscultatio and the De Cælo has been long promised by Cobet and Karsten, but has not yet made its appearance.—J. F. F.