Note 65 — Chapter III · CATEGORIÆ.

Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 986, a. 8. There existed, in the time of the later Peripatetics, a treatise in the Doric dialect by Archytas — Περὶ τοῦ Παντός — discriminating Ten Categories, and apparently the same ten Categories as Aristotle. By several Aristotelian critics this treatise was believed to have been composed by Archytas the Tarentine, eminent both as a Pythagorean philosopher and as the leading citizen of Tarentum — the contemporary and friend of Plato, and, therefore, of course, earlier than Aristotle. Several critics believed that Aristotle had borrowed his Ten Categories from this work of Archytas; and we know that the latter preserved the total number of Ten. See Schol. ad Categor. p. 79, b. 3, Br.

But other critics affirmed, apparently with better reason, that the Archytas, author of this treatise, was a Peripatetic philosopher later than Aristotle; and that the doctrine of Archytas on the Categories was copied from Aristotle in the same manner as the Doric treatise on the Kosmos, ascribed to the Lokrian Timæus, was copied from the Timæus of Plato, being translated into a Doric dialect.

See Scholia of Simplikius and Boëthius, p. 33, a. 1, n.; p. 40, a. 43, Brandis. The fact that this treatise was ascribed to the Tarentine Archytas, indicates how much the number Ten was consecrated in men’s minds as a Pythagorean canon.