Note 33 — Chapter XIV · HIPPARCHUS — MINOS.

See Alkibiad. ii. pp. 142-149-150; Alkibiad. i. pp. 121-122: Protagoras, 342-344; Politikus, 268 D., σχεδὸν παιδιὰν ἐγκερασαμένους and the two or three pages which follow.

F. A. Wolf, and various critics after him, contend that the genuineness of the Hipparchus was doubted in antiquity, on the authority of Ælian, V. H. viii. 2. But I maintain that this is not the meaning of the passage, unless upon the supposition that the word μαθητὴς is struck out of the text conjecturally. The passage may be perfectly well construed, leaving μαθητὴς in the text: we must undoubtedly suppose the author to have made an assertion historically erroneous: but this is nowise impossible in the case of Ælian. If you construe the passage as it stands, without such conjectural alteration, it does not justify Wolf’s inference.