Nicolaus of Damascus (ca. 64 – after 4 BC)

Historian and peripatetic philosopher, who served as adviser to Herod the Great (74-4 BC). Excerpts from the Syriac version of his compendium covering Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy and metaphysics are preserved.

Historian and peripatetic philosopher, who served as adviser to Herod the Great (74–4 BC). Excerpts from the Syriac version of his compendium covering Aristotle ’s works on natural philosophy and metaphysics (‘On the philosophy of Aristotle’) are preserved in ms. Cambridge, Gg. 2.14 (copied in 15/16th cent.?). These excerpts include a passage of his ‘On plants’. Whether this work, which in its Latin version and Greek retroversion made from the Latin was later ascribed to Aristotle, originally constituted a separate work or was a part of the compendium is difficult to determine. Passages in the section of the compendium dealing with meteorology are accompanied by a large number of scholia which are often based on the commentary on Aristotle’s ‘Meteorologica’ by Olympiodorus (6th cent.). Two of these scholia are found explicitly attributed to Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq in another ms. (Paris, Bibl. Nat. Syr. 346, dated 1309), while Bar ʿEbroyo attributes the translation of the compendium as a whole to Ḥunayn (Mukhtaṣar taʾrīkh al-duwal, ed. Beirut 1958, 82.15f.). It remains uncertain at the present state of research whether the scholia alone or both the scholia and the translation should be attributed to Ḥunayn. The Syriac version of the compendium was used extensively as a source by Bar ʿEbroyo in his ‘Candelabrum of the sanctuary’ and ‘Cream of wisdom’.