Eustratius of Nicaea as a source for the Neoplatonist notion of levels of virtue in the Early Latin commentators on the Nicomachean Ethics

The chapter analyses the influence of the Byzantine commentator Eustratius of Nicaea on the later Latin reception of Aristotle’s ethics. It argues that Eustratius’s commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics, Books 1 and 6, composed around 1118, introduced the important Neoplatonist conception of levels of virtue, i.e., in short, the conception that the four cardinal virtues can be acquired on subsequently higher levels, aiming at the Platonic ideal of assimilation to the divine. Traditionally, Macrobius’s commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio is considered the only source for medieval occurrences of this Neoplatonist conception of the virtues, but the chapter argues that Eustratius, commenting directly on Aristotle’s ethics, is an important alternative channel for such influence.