Ad Eruditionem Multorum. The Latin Version of the Book of the Apple as a Philosophical Protreptic

The pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de pomo (Book of the Apple) is part of the pseudepigrapha genre which has enriched the Aristotelian corpus at the price of distorting Aristotle’s real teachings. The present article seeks to re-evaluate the protreptic dimension of the opuscule and its connection to the tradition of philosophical exhortations, such as Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. From this perspective, we aim to reconsider Manfred’s intention to translate the Book of the Apple by taking into account the very nature of a philosophical protreptic as manifested within both the text itself and the Prologue that Manfred attached to the Latin translation. Such an approach is motivated by our identification of a new source in Manfred’s prologue and our reattribution of the first proposition (allegedly from Liber de pomo) present in the Auctoritates Aristotelis.

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