Theoria

As a side project driven entirely be a too great interest in a short section in the chapter on Hobbes in my dissertation, I’ve started (passively) working on a critical edition of Charles Butler’s The Feminine Monarchi, or The History of Bees. Butler’s “classical” sources are limited to four authorities: Aristotle, Pliny, Virgil and St. Ambrose. Assuming I can find a more or less recent edition of Ambrose’s Hexaemeron (does such an edition exist?), I should be able to find the references. The major problem, however, is with Aristotle. Like all people in the early seventeenth century, Butler is working with a Latin edition of Aristotle’s History of Animals (and one that has most likely followed the trajectory of Greek -> Arabic -> Latin). This makes finding references incredibly difficult (I’ve had no luck locating them in Loeb edition of the History of Animals). Is there anyone at all out there who (1) knows Latin, (2) is bored and (3) is willing to do a few translations? Or, is anyone aware of a Latin edition of Aristotle’s History of Animals? (One with Bekker numbers would be a true godsend.)

I should add: having taken on this project (however passively), I have a great deal of respect and admiration for all the critical editions of works currently in existence, especially for the work that the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, edited by Quentin Skinner and Raymond Geuss, and the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, edited by Karl Ameriks and Desmond Clarke, involve. Comparing textual variants across a number of editions is painstaking and time-consuming work. I can’t imagine how people did this prior to the widespread use of computers.