Note 324 — Chapter X

Aristotle: On the Generation of Animals, 736b, 33 to 737a, 7. In translating into English the foregoing Aristotelian passages the present writer has sought rather to indicate than to smooth away the ruggedness of the original Greek. Harvey quotes these passages verbatim from a Latin translation which may be found in Volume III of the Berlin Academy's quarto edition of Aristotle's works. This translation was made in the fifteenth century by Theodore Gaza, a learned Greek of Thessalonica, who had fled from the conquering Turks to Italy, where he learned Latin not long before his thirtieth year. Gaza was neither physician nor biologist. In view of these facts we need not wonder that his Latin version of Aristotle On the Generation of Animals is occasionally unsatisfactory, as we have seen. In the edition of the Greek text of Aristotle's History of Animals, published by Teubner in 1907 (Aristotelis De Animalibus Historia, textum recognovit Leonardus Dittmeyer, 1907, Leipsic, p. XXII, l. 1-5), the editor says in his Latin preface, regarding Gaza's Latin Translation of the History of Animals: "There is need of caution, if we wish to unearth the Greek text from his interpretation."