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Concerning embryos, Porphyry takes an original view on issues that had been left undecided by his teacher Plotinus and earlier by the doctor Galen. What role is played in the development of the embryo by the souls or the natures of the father, of the mother, of the embryo, or of the whole world?

Is there such a thing as three-dimensional space? Is space inert or dynamic? Is the division of time into past, present and future real? Does the whole of time exist all at once? Does it progress smoothly or by discontinuous leaps?Simplicius surveys ideas about place and time from the preceding thousand years of Greek Philosophy and reveals the extraordinary ingenuity of the late Neoplatonist theories, which he regards as marking a substantial advance on all previous ideas.

Priscian of Lydia was one of the Athenian philosophers who took refuge in 531 AD with King Khosroes I of Persia, after the Christian Emperor Justinian stopped the teaching of the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. This was one of the earliest examples of the sixth-century diffusion of the philosophy of the commentators to other cultures.Tantalisingly, Priscian fully recorded in Greek the answers provided by the Athenian philosophers to the king''s questions on philosophy and science. But these answers survive only in a later Latin translation which understood both the Greek and the subject matter very poorly. Our translators have often had to reconstruct from the Latin what the Greek would have been, in order to recover the original sense. The answers start with subjects close to the Athenians'' hearts: the human soul, on which Priscian was an expert, and sleep and visions. But their interest may have diminished when the king sought their expertise on matters of physical science: the seasons, celestial zones, medical effects of heat and cold, the tides, displacement of the four elements, the effect of regions on living things, why only reptiles are poisonous, and winds. At any rate, in 532 AD, they moved on from the palace, but still under Khosroes'' protection. This is the first translation of the record they left into English or any modern language.This English translation is accompanied by an introduction and comprehensive commentary notes, which clarify and discuss the meaning and implications of the original philosophy. Part of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, the edition makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership and includes additional scholarly apparatus such as a bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index.

Boethius (c 480-c 525) was a Christian philosopher and author of many translations and works of philosophy. "On Interpretation" is the second part of the "Organon", as Aristotle's collected works on logic are known; it deals comprehensively with the relationship between logic and language. This title presents a translation of this work.

Book 2 of the Physics is arguably the best introduction to Aristotle's work, both because it explains some of his central concepts, such as nature and the four causes, and because it asks some gripping questions that are still debated today: Is chance something real? If so, what? Can nature be explained by chance, necessity and natural selection, or is it purposive?Philoponus' commentary is not only a valuable guide, but also a work of Neoplatonism with its own views on causation, the Providence of Nature, the problem of evil and the immortality of the soul.

In this volume the commentator, Simplicius, covers the first half of Aristotle's "On the Soul", comprising Aristotle's survey of his predecessor's and his own rival account of the nature of the soul. It is a source for late Neoplatonist theories of thought and sense perception.

"On the Soul" was one of the most widely published of all the Aristotle commentaries in the Renaissance. The best-known of Themistius's discussions is that concerned with Aristotle's active intellect, which leads to his wider musings on the nature of the self.

The ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle constitute a large body of Greek philosophical writings, not previously translated into European languages. This volume includes notes and indexes and forms part of a series to fill this gap.

An ancient commentary on Aristotle's philosophical text, "On the Soul". The book also includes an assessment of the authorship of the commentary by the editor, Henry Blumenthal.

Discusses the core ideas in Aristotle's account of change, his theory of the continuum, and his doctrine of the unmoved mover. This book covers the central features of Aristotle's physical theory, synthesized and epitomized in a manner that has always marked Aristotelian exegesis.

In this commentary of Aristotle's Meteorology, the Neoplatonist Philoponus discusses subjects such as the nature of fiery and light phenomena in the sky, the formation of comets, the Milky Way, the properties of moist exhalation, and the formation of hail.

Aristotle's "Meteorology" influenced generations of speculation about the earth sciences - ranging from atmospheric phenomena to earthquakes. This title presents the commentary of John Philoponus (6th century AD) on the opening three chapters of "Meteorology", building on the work of L G Westerink.

Reveals how Aristotelian metaphysics was formalized and transformed by a philosophy which found its deepest roots in Pythagoras and Plato. This book shows how metaphysics, as a philosophical science, was conceived by the Neoplatonic philosopher of Late Antiquity.

Aristotle's "On Interpretation" studies the relationship between conflicting pairs of statements. The first eight chapters, studied in this text, explain what statements are; they start from their basic components, the words, and work up to the character of opposed affirmations and negations.

In the chapters of his 'Physics' commented on here, Aristotle disagrees with Pre-Socratic philosophers about the basic principles that explain natural changes. But he finds some agreement among them that at least two contrary properties must be involved, for example hot and cold.

The 15,000 pages of the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle, written mainly between 200 and 600 AD, constitute the largest corpus of extant Greek philosophical writings. This series of translations with introductions, notes and indexes fills an important gap in the history of European thought.