• DOI:10.1086/367188
• Corpus ID: 162257274

New Evidence for the Dating of Aristotle "Meteorologica" 1-3

@article{Cohen1990NewEF,
  title={New Evidence for the Dating of Aristotle "Meteorologica" 1-3},
  author={Sheldon M. Cohen and Paul Burke},
  journal={Classical Philology},
  year={1990},
  volume={85},
  pages={126 - 129}
}

• Sheldon M. Cohen, P. Burke
• Published 1 April 1990
• History
• Classical Philology

event. But perhaps there is a more significant, and more subtle, type of balance present here. Agathon, who wished to honor his own art, tragedy-and that means also honoring tragedians has just quoted Sophocles and Euripides. Is it not probable that the third (and final) tragic quotation should be removed from the limbo of the adespota and be assigned to the third of the great tragedians, Aeschylus? Aristophanes' Frogs (66-85, 758-94, 1515-23) shows that the classical triad of tragedians, though not established in 404 B.C., was well on its way to becoming such. (The only other real candidate there is Agathon himself; lophon is hardly treated with equal respect.) As R. Pfeiffer observes, "the passionate debate about the pre-eminence among the Attic tragedians, still going on in Aristophanes' Frogs, must have been settled by the middle or second half of the fourth century B.C. when Heraclides Ponticus wrote clEpi TIV IplOV Tpay6ot7ointv.''8 This gives us, of course, only a demonstrable terminus post quem; there is nothing inherently improbable in the existence of the canon Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides already a bit earlier than Heraclides' work, that is, at the time of the composition of the Symposium. The image of Zeus the helmsman in this fragment would be very appropriate to Aeschylus (see, e.g., Fraenkel on Aesch. Ag. 182-83), but that is not proof. It might be worthwhile, however, to call attention to another passage for the combination Plato-Aeschylus-helmsman, Euthydemus 291D: . . . KCti &TEXVW)q