Aristoteles aus dritter Hand. Die Parekbolai aus der Philosophia des Georgios Pachymeres

The παρεκβολα (excerpts) from Georgios Pachymeres’ Philosophia might be dubbed “third-hand literature”, as the Philosophia is itself a paraphrase of sorts of Aristotle’s works, though unlike the Philosophia the παρεκβολα simply abridge. Both of these secondary texts reduce their respective source to a fifth of the original extent, and they both quote without attribution.This paper examines the two known manuscripts from the early 14th century (Mon. gr. 545 and Vat. gr. 1144) of these particular παρεκβολα , including the provision of concise codicological descriptions as well as a concordance of treatises. Some codicological data on the (probably nonextant) manuscript of Pachymeres used in the compilation is reconstructed based on Pachymeres’ almost contemporary autograph Berol. Ham. 512, and possible stemmatic relationships are elucidated.In a concluding section, other παρεκβολα in Greek literature are summarily discussed, ranging from juridical abstracts to excerpts of scholarly grammatical, historical, strategic and philosophical works.