where they remained for 150 years forgotten by the world. At the end of that interval, the dynasty of the kings of Pergamus having passed away, the books were brought out of their hiding-place and sold to one Apellicon, a wealthy Peripatetic and book-collector, who resided at Athens. They were said to have been by this time a good deal damaged by worms and damp; yet still it was a great thing that, after 187 years’ absence, the best productions of Aristotle should be restored, about 100 b.c., to the West.
The termination of this “strange eventful history” was that in 86 b.c. Athens was taken by Sylla, and the library of Apellicon was seized and brought to Rome, where it was placed under the custody of a librarian, and several literary Greeks, resident in Rome, had access to it. Tyrannion, the learned friend of Cicero, got permission to arrange the MSS, and Andronicus of Rhodes, applying himself with earnestness to the task of obtaining a correct text and furnishing a complete edition of the philosophical works of Aristotle, arranged the different treatises and scattered fragments under their proper heads, and getting numerous transcripts made, gave publicity to a generally received text of Aristotle. There seems to be good reason for believing that “Our Aristotle,” as Grote calls it, in contradistinction to the Aristotle of the Alexandrian Library,—is none other than this recension of Andronicus. And this being the case, we may well reflect how great was the risk which these works incurred of being consigned to perpetual oblivion. A few more years in the cellar at Scepsis, or any one of a hundred
