ABSTRACT
Aristotle’s opinions are of greatest interest to him when they concern the nature and origin of the physical universe. Aristotle, he says, agrees with Plato in denying form and quality to matter. Aristotle is praised incidentally in a vindication of free will culled from Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Aristocles’ defence of him is quarried for biographical information. The testimony of Clearchus, another Peripatetic, to Aristotle’s meeting with a Jew is quoted only to demonstrate that the contempt which Greeks display towards this people is undeserved. The one author who cites him repeatedly is Eusebius of Caesarea, but his aims are apologetic and his attitude is hostile, while his knowledge is desultory and almost certainly second-hand. In his Preparation for the Gospel, he finds the closest analogue to the Trinity in the Platonist Numenius of Apamea, a precursor of Plotinus who appears to have been less touched by Aristotle than by the Gnostic tendency in Christian thought.
