In Poetics 25 (1461b1–3), Aristotle mentions critics who tend to misunderstand the text or read it inaccurately and thus criticise not the actual work, but rather their ideas on it. Some of the extant fragments of Zoilus (4th c. BC), the best-known and the most notorious critic of all the Aristotle’s contemporaries, imply that his critique was sometimes based on misreading and misinterpreting of the text so he could be one of those whom Aristotle meant. This article deals with three fragments attributed to Zoilus (two of them are found in the Scholia to the Iliad, the third one is quoted in Ps. Longinus’ De Sublimitate), each containing criticism towards certain passages in Homer’s poems. On closer examination it turns out that all the inconsistencies Zoilus postulated can be explained, should we read the text more carefully. Hence Zoilus dealt not with what is written but rather with what seemed to him to be convenient for his criticism
The post-Renaissance copies of Aristotle’s Poetics were mostly made for scholarly use. The copyists such as Anton Salvini, a Florentine polymath, librarian and professor of Greek, drew on MSS as well as on printed editions in an attempt to establish the text they could use for translation or academic teaching. Still uncertain remains the rationale of the latest known manuscipts — from the Vatopedi monastery on Mt. Athos (ca. mid 18th cent.) and from Bucharest (of the early 19th cent.). Several similarities these copies display suppose common provenance. The Greek diaspora in Bucharest blossomed around 1800 and Romania is linked to Vatopedi by a long tradition of orthodox learning. The MSS in question provide an overall impression of a schoolwork. The Athoan is of supreme quality while the Romanian often resembles an abstract. The first MS was probably written soon after the foundation of the Athonite Academy near Vatopedi. Aristotle’s Poetics is hardly suitable for monastic learning, but Eugenius Bulgaris who was the headmaster of Athonias from 1753 to 1758 introduced ancient texts into its curriculum: from one of his letters we conjecture that Plato and Aristotle were studied there. It is thus reasonable to suppose that the cod. Vatopedius was made in the Athonias for learning purposes. By 1800 the Academy was in decline but they still taught disciplines and read texts introduced by Bulgaris. So, the Bucarestensis could have been written in the same place. Judging by the composition of the codex its maker was nurturing interest in ancient and modern Greek literature
Among the examples on how not to portray a character in tragedy, Aristotle names the female protagonist of the Iphigenia in Aulis, claiming that she is drawn in violation of the principle of consistency: begging to spare her life she is much unlike her later self. Philologists stood for Euripides, charging Aristotle with a lack of intuitive understanding. Moreover, as has been pointed out, the unaffected character of Iphigenia’s behaviour could find a footing in the ample observations on human psychology Aristotle himself made elsewhere in the Ethics and Rhethoric. Certain modern scholars, however, tend to side with Aristotle. To argumentatively prove or disprove the feasibility of the change Iphigenia undergoes seems thus to be close to impossible, both psychologically and aesthetically. A thought not alien to the Poetics goes as simple as that: not all the shifts and turns, so human and so easily observed in life, should find their way into art. One supposes Aristotle all too well recognised the fact that no example would in this case prove to be free of blame, while holding that the general applicability and inherent veracity of his theory goes unimpaired by the fact that it could in principle be assailed.