ABSTRACT
I must first define my limitations, orientation and purpose. I have no intention of attempting a rounded account or analysis of Theophrastus’ meteorology. My interest lies with the content and form of Theophrastus’ Meteorology as reported in the Syriac and Arabic translations. Since I do not read Syriac or Arabic, I can not be concerned with problems relating to critical details of text and collation of the primary evidence. Furthermore, my investigations were first based on the translations of Bergsträsser (Neue meteorologische Fragmente des Theophrast, Heidelberg, 1918) and Steinmetz (Der syrische Auszug der Meteorologie des Theophrast, Mainz, Wiesbaden, 1964), only supplemented belatedly in summer 1989 by an interim report of the important work of Dr. Daiber in his draft version formed from recendy discovered Arabic translations in India (see p. 218); but I do not yet know the details of these collations. Also I came to this material from Posidonius’ engagement with meteorology in the first century B.C. For, as has been well shown and documented, the Theophrastus fragments have quite startling and extensive similarities in Lucretius VI, and even a doublet in Vitruvius (VIII.2.3), and so seemed to reverberate in the early part of the first century B.C. Was it then part of an Aristotelian revival? But this is where the material roused my interest and astonishment. For in this subject Posidonius, for example, turns out to be far more Aristotelian than Theophrastus is, if the fragment is indeed a faithful account of Theophrastus’ Meteorology. The latter in content, form and method seems divorced from Aristotle’s Meteorology and its later influence to a surprising extent. Now, I am well aware of the dangers of interpretation of material from such uncertain origins, context and transmission. It still seems to me an open question as to what extent the evidence may be a collection (cf. Gottschalk, Gnom. 37 (1965), 759 f.), or how diluted, composite, garbled, epitomised or faithful a survival it is of an ultimate Theophrastean original. But supposing it does reflect a Theophrastean work on meteorology, my very limited purpose is to select a few reactions from parts 295of the fragment when compared with earlier Aristotelian theory and presentation on the one hand, and on the other to later meteorological accounts in the first centuries B.C. and A.D.
