Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1891-04-11
aust work of Aristotle Recovered.

,.n-t work of Aristotle Recovered.
...- r"covery of the almost comp etc
g., e the treatise on the constitution
4, ! ems, attributed by all the ancient
= W ho quote it to Aristotle, is
T. + went of the rarest and most in
f., &" kind. There has been nothing
~ Il " Importance in its way since the
.,..l r,ble discovery of five books of
g., tr,oas Of Tacitus in the library of
. an monastery in the sixteenth CEN
IT,. Arstote's great work on Poll
t;r- still extant, was based, not on
to ~. but on a study of the constitu-
jD,n in existence in his day. Unlike
tn + cuch revolutionists of a century
:, Ar stotle was not content to evolve
lr, ut.ul political principles out of his
owA head. He preferred a basis tested
iy actual human experience He ac-
rdngly. before taking his great work
in hand, drew up himself, or had drawn
up by others under his direction, careful
de criptions of the institutions of 1853
different states, most of them Greek,
but some of them barbarian, the Car
tllaginans and the Brahmins of India
being included in his list
The treatise on the constitution of
Athens, now recovered in remarkable
manner by the British Museum after
Leing lost for over thousand years, is
supposed to have been the first and
II ost important, as we'll as the fullest
in the collection. That it is a genuine
work of the Stagirite is indicated partly
by the character of the manuscript,
A. ,;r Of 70 fip1-
ing, and in part by the text Papyrus
rolls are made by laying strips of ma
t-rial derived from the papyrus plant,
one across another at right angles, SO
that on one side of the shed the fibers
run hor zontally and on the other per-
pendicularly. The side used first by
writer-ca led the recto-is the side on
Which the tibers run horizontally, as on
that sile the pen runs easily, because it
runs with the grain. The recto of the
newly discovered manuscript is occupied
with the accountable receipts and ex-
pcnditures-of the bailiff of a private
estate in Egypt, dated month by month,
in the eleventh year of the Emperor
Nespasian. This was the first use to
which the papyrus was put.
Subsequently-som about the
end of the first century after Christ
the text of Aristotle's treatise was writ
ten on the other side of the papyrus in
four distinct hands That the accounts
and part at least of the text were written
by the same hand is indicated by the
fact that the authorizations used in the
one are used also in the other, and by
the further fact that peculiar forma-
ton of certain letters appears in both.
When the accounts had been "passed"
by the employer as correct" the bailitf,
itappears, being thrifty person, utilized
the paper they were written on for his
own literary deIectation Further proof
of the genuineness of the manuscript is
to lie had in the fact that when the
British Museum acquired it in Egypt
neither the seller nor the buyer had any
idea of its nature. 1t was bought along
with lot of other rolls whose character
remained to be ,ermined by SUISSE
que.it inspection. Now that the latter
have been decipIered, their contents
fortily, it is stated the presumption of
the genuness of the treatise.
An important part of the evidence
SUI stantially exact correspondence of its
language with the quotations made from
the constitution of Athens by writer's of
antiquity. OF the 81 fragments attributed
by scholars with more or less probability
to the treatise on the Athenian constitu-
ton, some sc of which probably really
refer to it, as many as 70, says the Lon
don Times, are found in the manuscript
in its present condi ion A part of the
opening chapters and part of the closing
apters are in badly mutilated con-
dillon or wanting. Taking account of
this circumstance it is held that, with
two possible exceptions, all the quota
lions made by ancient writers are salts
factorily verified. At Berlin there are
two scraps of papyrus containing frag-l
ments of passages which have been re-
ferred by some German scholars to the
treatise in question. 1t is interesting to
note that both passages are found in the
British Museums papyrus.
The museum has thus, it appears, had
the luck of acquiring for song and by
an accident one of the oldest Greek
manuscripts in the world. Happily
there is promise in the circumstances of
its finding that other discoveries of like
interest may be made by and by. Egyp-
tian graves and ruined buildings have
possibly still richer treasures in reserve.
The discovery of manuscripts of CLASH
cal Greek authors written on papyrus
began hut so years ago. In that time
four or five nearly complete orations of
the great Athenian orator, Hyperides,
have been recovered; also fragments of
Euripides and of Alcman. There have
also been obtained besides early copies
of portions of Homer, Thucydides.
Plato, Demosthenes, Isocrates, and 9TH
ers. The work of Aristotle, just recov.
cred, does not, of course, radically alter
the main lines of Greek history as re-
cited by Herodotus and Thucydides, but
it throws new light on the early con-
stitutional history of Athens, and must
change our point of view as to certain
details
Some new information is given as to
the part Themistocles took in over
throwing the Areopagus-information
that adds to his reputation as shifty
and INSCRIPTIONS politician. Draco and
Scion are placed in a new light and the
baneful effect of the methods of popular
government introduced by Pericles are
traced in most striking manner. Aris-
totle evidently thinks less of Pericles
than Thucydides did. In fact, he ex-
presses the opinion that the decline Of