Prove it tbh w/o resorting to "hypothetical texts" and modes of transmission.https://twitter.com/nastyinmuhtaxi/status/996793796535967744 …
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But there's more: Aspasius (2nd AD) commented the Nic. Eth, as well as Alexander of Aphrodisias, in the same century. Heliodorus did a paraphrase of the Nic. Eth., and all were in possession of slightly differing versions of the same text.
The fact that the MSS contain so many errors and differences is actually a proof for the validity of the MS tradition we have. It shows that early on, these works already had many versions, which means we have multiple sources, and multiple proof of Aristotle's works.
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Yes, and this is all a matter of speculation: people are citing hypothetical texts to validate the existence of hypothetical parallel transmissions that "must date" from a hypothetical certain time.
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You can do this with stuff like the Bible sort of because you have enough actually existing parallel documents to compare against and check your work.
End of conversation
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The fact that so many authors in Antiquity mention a text by NAME, that they have different versions of it, although the text is ~99% the same, shows us that the text benefited from an extremely rich manuscript tradition in Antiquity, meaning it couldn't have been tampered with
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But it goes even further: we have eleven (11) papyri of Aristotle, dating between the first and fifth century AD. The papyrus of The Constitution of the Athenians is dated 80 AD. We have two passages from the Nic. Eth. from Oxyrhyncus, dated from the 2nd century AD.
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And the versions contained in these papyri, which are attestations of a much earlier MS tradition, often the Alexandrine edition, are the SAME as those we own from the 10th century. This goes to show the great quality of the MSS we own, even in the 10th century.
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And this in turn should lead us to believe that if the Byzantine were able to preserve such a great manuscript tradition for over 700 years, the tradition in Antiquity, from Aristotle down to Alexandria, thence down to papyri, must have been even better.
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And right now, we're discussing one the worse manuscript preservations of Ancient Greece. Our Homer is virtually flawless. Our Plato is excellent. Even minor authors benefited from an excellent preservation.
End of conversation
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