Aristotle Poetics 21.13

ed. Henry James Pye

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therefore evening may be called the oldage of day and old-age the evening of life or as it is styled by Empedocles, 'the setting of life.' In some instances, even where there is no analogous name, the same method may be employed: to scatter grain, is called to sow; but there is no name for the fun's scattering his beams

Poetics. Aristotle. ed. Henry James Pye. London. 1792.

Current edition Experimental

The Poetic of Aristotle (Henry James Pye, revised 1792) (OCR draft) (English) (Henry James Pye's revised 1792 English translation, corrected against the 1788 first edition, aligned to the Kassel reference edition, and supplied with a selective apparatus of substantive 1788 readings.)

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

Editions (4)
Περὶ ποιητικῆς (OCR draft) (Aristotle, Poetics. Immanuel Bekker, editor, Aristotelis Opera, volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1837.) — 21 focus
Περὶ ποιητικῆς (OCR draft) Perseus (Aristotle, De arte poetica liber. Rudolf Kassel, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. Reference edition for passage alignment.) — 21 focus
Poetics, Greek text (Ingram Bywater, 1909) (OCR draft) Experimental (Ingram Bywater's Greek text of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1909.) — 21 focus
Poetics, Greek text (Franz Ritter, 1839) (OCR draft) Experimental (Franz Ritter's 1839 Greek edition, corrected against OCR of the represented copy and aligned to the conventional Perseus chapter-and-subchapter sequence.) — 21 focus
Translations (13)
Poetics (W. H. Fyfe) (OCR draft) Perseus (William Hamilton Fyfe's English translation of Aristotle's Poetics, Loeb Classical Library, 1939 printing.) — 21 focus
Arabic Poetics (Badawī edition, 1953) (OCR draft) (The ancient Arabic translation of Aristotle's Poetics in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī's 1953 edition.) — 21 focus
Poetics (S. H. Butcher, 1911) (OCR draft) Experimental (S. H. Butcher's English translation from Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, fourth edition, 1911.) — 21 focus
Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (Ingram Bywater, 1909) (OCR draft) Experimental (Ingram Bywater's English translation of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1909.) — 21 focus
Poetics (Thomas Twining, 1789) (OCR draft) Experimental (Thomas Twining's English translation of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1789 and aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.) — 21.13 focus
Again-evening being to day, what old age is to life, the evening may be called the old age of the day, and old age, the evening of life; or, as Empedocles has expressed it, "Life's setting sun 1 .".
The Poetic of Aristotle (Theodore Alois Buckley) (OCR draft) Experimental (Theodore Alois Buckley's English translation, first published in 1850 and represented from the Henry G. Bohn 1857 printing; corrected against a second OCR and aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.) — 21.13 focus
Again, evening has the same relation to day that old age has to life. One may therefore say that 1 2 3 4 5 evening is the old age of day, and that old age is the evening of life ; or as Empedocles calls it, " The setting of life 12." 6 In some instances, also, where there is no analogous name, this method may be no less similarly employed. Thus, to scatter grain is to sow; but there is no name for the scattering of light from the sun,
Poetica Latine conversa (Franciscus Ritter, 1839) (OCR draft) Experimental (Franz Ritter's Latin translation, corrected against OCR of the represented copy and aligned to the conventional Perseus chapter-and-subchapter sequence.) — 21 focus
La poëtique d'Aristote (André Dacier, 1692) (OCR draft) Experimental (André Dacier's French translation of Aristotle's Poetics, published in 1692.) — 21.13 focus
Ou encore le ſoir eſt au jour, ce que la vielleſſe eſt à la vie, on dira donc en parlant du ſoir que c'eſt la vielleſſe du jour, & en parlant de la vielleſſe, que c'eſt le ſoir, ou ſelon l'expreſſion d'Empedocle, que c'eſt le couchant de la vie.
Poetica d'Aristotile (Bernardo Segni, 1549) (OCR draft) Experimental (Bernardo Segni's 1549 Florentine Italian translation, aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.) — 21 focus
De poetica (Antonio Riccobono, 1587) (OCR draft) Experimental (Antonio Riccobono's Latin translation, first published in 1587; text represented from Immanuel Bekker's 1831 edition.) — 21 focus
De arte poetica liber (William of Moerbeke, ca. 1277) (OCR draft) Experimental (William of Moerbeke's medieval Latin translation, represented by the 1953 Aristoteles Latinus edition.) — 21 focus
Arabic Poetics (Abū Bishr Mattā; Tkatsch edition) (OCR draft) Experimental (The Arabic translation attributed to Abū Bishr Mattā, edited by Jaroslaus Tkatsch in 1928 and aligned to the Kassel reference passage sequence.) — 21 focus
Arabic Poetics (Abū Bishr Mattā; Tkatsch edition, unaligned) (OCR draft) Experimental (Tkatsch's edition of the medieval Arabic translation in its original, unaligned segmentation.) — 21 focus

Commentary

Commentary on the Poetics (Ingram Bywater, 1909) (OCR draft) (Ingram Bywater's English commentary on Aristotle's Poetics.) focus

13. mvp-aristotle-comment-769

ἢ ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς. The actual words of Empedocles, which Aristotle supposes us to know, are not to be found among his extant fragments; all that can be said of them is that they must have been something like γῆρας ἡμέρας but different from that in point of phraseology. The metaphor in Emped. 20. 5 Diels,
περὶ ῥηγμῖνι βίοιο
, is not sufficiently like this to be what Aristotle had in mind. This allusive way of referring to something supposed to be known to the reader is not uncommon in Aristotle; see 17, 1455 b 9 ( εἴθ᾽ ὡς Εὐριπίδης), 25, 1460 b 36 ( ἔτυχεν ὥσπερ Ξενοφάνει); comp. Metaph. Γ 5, 1010 a 5
οὕτω γὰρ ἁρμόττει μᾶλλον εἰπεῖν ἢ ὥσπερ Ἐπίχαρμος εἰς Ξενοφάνην
.

13. mvp-aristotle-comment-770

ἑσπέραν βίου: Alexis fr. 228 Kock
ἤδη γὰρ ὁ βίος οὐμὸς ἑσπέραν ἄγει
.

13. mvp-aristotle-comment-771

25 δυσμὰς βίου: Plato Laws 6, 770 A
ἐν δυσμαῖς τοῦ βίου
.

Commentary on the Poetics (Thomas Twining, 1789) (OCR draft) (Thomas Twining's notes on Aristotle's Poetics, aligned to the Kassel reference edition.) focus

186. mvp-aristotle-comment-186

NOTE 186. P. 108.

21.13 OR AS EMPEDOCLES HAS EXPRESSED IT, LIFE'S SETTING SUN.
Δυσμας βιου
. — Victorius has pointed out this expression in Plato's sixth book De Legibus , where the Athenian says,
ἡμεις δ᾽ ἐν δυσμαις του βιου, οι δε, ὡς προς ἡμας, νεοι
: probably alluding, in Plato's usual manner, to the very passage of Empedocles . 1 See also Ælian, Var. Hist. II. 34 .
ἐπι δυσμαις ἐσμεν
: where, as the metaphor was sufficiently explained by the subject of the conversation, the word
βιου
is not added.
Victorius remarks, also, the
βιου ΔΥΝΤΟΣ αυγαις
of Æschylus, Agamem. v. 1123 . The rest of that passage is very obscure; 2 but this expression seems, clearly enough, to describe the dying eye, that opens, for the last time, upon the light: —
Βλεψαι προς ΑΥΓΑΣ βουλεται τας ήλιου, / Ως οὐποτ᾿ ἀυθις, άλλα νυν πανυστατον, / Ακτινα, κυκλονθ᾿, ήλιου προσοψεται.
Eurip. Alcest. 203.
or, in the finest picture of the kind, I think, that Poetry affords, —
oculisque errantibus, alto / Quæsivit cælo lucem, ingemuitque reperta.
Æn. IV. 691.
— The poetical reader, I believe, will pardon me, if I wander so much farther from my subject, as to take occasion, from these beautiful passages, to point out three lines of Petrarch , which shew, that his powers were not confined to the expression of amorous tenderness, but were capable of rising, on occasion, to the true sublime. In the sonnet,
"Se lamentar augelli,"
&c. written after the death of Laura , he imagines himself to hear her voice, in his solitude, consoling him for his loss, in these lines: —
Di me non pianger tu; ch' i miei di fersi / Morendo eterni; e, NEL ETERNO LUME, / Quando mostrai di chiuder gli occhi, APERSI! —
Ed. di Gesualdo, p. 288.

Commentarius in Aristotelis Poeticam (Franciscus Ritter, 1839) (OCR draft) (Ritter's Latin commentary, extracted from the 1839 volume, divided by Ritter's chapters and sections, and linked to the corresponding Perseus reference subsections.) focus

6. mvp-aristotle-comment-152

Ritter, cap. 21 § 6

καὶ ἐνίοτε προστιθέασιν ἀνθ' οὗ λέγει, πρὸς ὅ ἐστιν: post finitam quartae speciei explicationem non continuo exempla sequuntur, idque fieri posset, si etiam eius quae sequitur admonitionis exemplum aliquod additum legeretur, quod factum non esse cernimus. ipsa verba consideres velim; et interdum addunt (qui scribunt) pro quo dicat (qui scribit), ad quid spectet (nomen translatum). nonne vides miram confusionem et explicationis obscuritatem summae infantiae signum? hoc mihi liquet, πρὸς ὅ ἐστιν nihil esse nisi ἐπεξήγησιν commatis antecedentis ἀνθ' οὗ λέγει. interpolator huiusmodi exempla fortasse respexit, τὸ γῆρας ἑσπέρα βίου μοι πάρεστιν pro eo quod quis nude dicat ἑσπέρα βίου μοι πάρεστιν. haud dubie hoc ita obscure dictum est, ut prae ceteris exemplo illustrandum esset, quod cum nonsit factum, et exempli defectus et loquendi obscuritas et locus non aptus conspirant, ut multis modis personati auctoris vultum agnoscamus. ἐρεῖ τοίνυν, h. e. is qui scribit. metaphora hic commemorata usus est Timotheus dithyramborum scriptor, quem ridet Antiphanes comicus. v. Athen. X. p. 433 C. οὐκ ἂν ἁμάρτοι δέ τις καὶ τὸ ποτήριον αὐτοῦ λέγων φιάλην Αρεως κατὰ τὸν ᾿Αντιφάνους Καινέα, ἐν ᾧ λέγεται οὕτως· ἦτει 1) δ' ἥρως φιάλην ῎Αρεως, κατὰ Τιμόθεον, ξυστόν τε βέλος. eiusdem metaphorae mentionem facit Aristoteles Rhetor. III, 4 extr. et 11. pag 1412 b 35.