1 (1) Pythagoras of Samos instructed the region of Italy once called ...

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or ‘Platonian,’ resulting in qualities of ‘Platonicity’ or ‘Platonism’ or ‘Platonianism.’ But I see no way for ‘Platonity,’ a noun that does not arise from an adjective of quality, to signify quality. (13) What to say when some (not counted among the ancients) have added ‘identity,’ ‘whatness’ and ‘itness’ – ‘same thingness,’ ‘what thingness’ and ‘that thingness,’ in other words? Such expressions are not far from the absurdity of ‘initselfness,’ ‘thishereness’ and various others that even Crassus would have found ridiculous, no less so than the thing that made him laugh at least once in his life, according to Lucilius. 98 (14) Actually, I have found no substantives based on adjectives that end in -eus and signify a material – ‘woodiness’ from ‘woody,’ ‘marbleness’ for ‘marble,’ ‘ironness’ from ‘iron.’ These are not adjectives of quality, I believe, to which ‘mine,’ ‘yours’ and ‘his’ are somehow similar, and I have never heard of a ‘mineness,’ ‘yourness’ or ‘hisness’ coming from them. Some legal authories venture to use this last one, nonetheless, but they do not even understand the proper use of the pronoun. On the quite difficult application of this word and of ‘his,’ its root, I have recently written a little book dedicated to Giovanni Tortelli of Arezzo. 99 But if these nouns in -itas, which also signify quality according to Boethius, do not come from all adjectives, how much less likely is it that they come from substantives? 5 THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ‘ESSENCE’ AND ‘TO BE’ WITH THE ARTICLE, AND LIKEWISE WITH OTHER TERMS LIKE ‘WILL’ AND ‘TO WILL’ WITH THE ARTICLE. (1) Now I come to the predicaments; for the first of these (as I have shown) Quintilian says ‘essence’ is the correct translation. 100 This is what he says elsewhere about this word: ‘Many words are formed from Greek, especially by Sergius Flavius, and they are just as crude as “abling” and “essence;” why we should have such scorn for them I fail to see, except that we criticize ourselves unfairly and then struggle with an impoverished language.’ 101 In one of his letters, Seneca denies that to on and hê ousia can be expressed in Latin. 102 (2) Preferring not to translate ousia word for word, Boethius used ‘substance,’ which is hupostasis in Greek. As a result, when ‘substance’ is applied not to its Greek equivalent but to a different term, some inevitably use the Greek term ‘hypostasis’ in place of a Latin term. Clearly, it was not because Boethius shunned the 98 Zippel cites Cic. Fin. 5.92; identify Crassus, Lucilius ??? 99 Zippel cites Angelo de Periglis, Tractatus suitatis, in Tractatus universi iuris (Lyon, 1541), I, 7; and Ad Ioannem Tortellium Aretinum cubicularium apostolicum de reciprocatione sui et suus liber, written by Valla in 1449-50; identify Tortelli ??? The possessive pronouns – ‘mine’ (meus), ‘yours’ (tuus), ‘his’ (suus) and so on – were of special importance in law for describing claims of possession and ownership. They are declined like adjectives, but suus, related to the reflexive pronoun sui, is more restricted than the others in its syntax, applicable only to the subject of the clause in which it appears. 100 Above, 1.6. 101 Zippel cites Quint. 8.3.33; above, n. 25 on Flavius and Plautus; the participle quens is an unusual form of the defective verb quire, ‘to be able,’ probably itself a back-formation from nequire, ‘to be unable,’ but modern editions of Quintilian have queentia. 102 Zippel cites Sen. Ep. 58.6-8; these are Greek words for ‘being’ and/or ‘essence.’ 26 2/21/05 9:35 PM 26/44
word ‘essence’ as difficult that he did this, for he frequently uses this word, though in a different sense, and this was the reason why many recent Latin writers have gone wrong. 103 On this point, I must first register a few objections to establish a broader context for later discussion of the question that I have opened. (3) Boethius (assuming that he is the translator of Aristotle’s Predicaments) writes as follows: ‘In addition to what has already been said, however, there seems to be another way of being prior. For of those things that are convertible in that they follow from essence, what is somehow the cause of another’s essence is rightly said to be prior by nature. That there really are such things is obvious, for in that it follows from essence, a person’s being is convertible with a true statement about it.’ And right after this: ‘Whatever things are convertible in that they follow from essence….’ 104 (4) For what Aristotle says in Greek, one can read neither ‘being,’ since Greek has no gerund, nor ‘essence’ – only the infinitive with an article. Because Boethius knew they meant the same thing, however, he put one in place of the other. Who believes that ‘essence’ is one thing and ‘the to-be’ something else? Boethius was certainly clear in the fifth book of his Commentary on the Perihermenias, where he says: ‘It is necessary for that not to be, to have no essence, in other words.’ I make the same claim about ‘to be’ and ‘essence’ as about other such cases: that infinitives mean nothing different when they are treated as nouns derived from their verbal forms. 105 (5) The Greeks teach this too, and therefore they apply the article and the preposition to infinitives as they do to nouns, confirming that they are verbs no longer but obviously nouns. And we also affix adjectives to these words as if they were nouns – though rarely, and only in the nominative and genitive cases. This is why Boethius avoided the infinitive in the genitive, though he does not always observe the rule. Persius writes also our dreary way of living; … and I noted Your knowing means nothing unless someone else knows that you know it; and also To each his own wish. And Martial adds 103 Zippel cites Boethius, In Cat. Arist. I (‘De substantia’), PLM 64.181-202. 104 Where Aristotle has t«n går éntistrefÒntvn katå tØn toË e‰nai ékoloÊyhsin, the Latin is eorum enim quae convertuntur secundum essentiae consequentiam, using the noun essentia (‘essence’) to translate the infinitive einai preceded by the article to (‘the to-be’); Arist. Cat. 14 b 10-15, 27-8; Zippel cites Aristoteles Latinus, 1.1-5, 76; on convertibility, see above, n. 27. 105 Zippel cites Boethius, In lib. Arist. de interpret., 2 nd ed., 5 (PLM 64.585). 27 2/21/05 9:35 PM 27/44
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Page 3 and 4: (8) But other Latins consider other
Page 5 and 6: (17) For this there are various rea
Page 7 and 8: they are called ‘genera’ becaus
Page 9 and 10: participle loses strength, and yet
Page 11 and 12: (18) But we note that this word doe
Page 13 and 14: practice of human beings, which is
Page 15 and 16: 3 EXCEPT IN A FEW SPECIAL CASES, TH
Page 17 and 18: meaning more grief. 68 The reason g
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Page 21 and 22: ‘who is useful for the plow?’ m
Page 23 and 24: 4 NO NOUNS IN -ITAS COME FROM SUBST
Page 25: some of them claim - it meant ‘li
Page 29 and 30: And since the ecclesiastics often d
Page 31 and 32: (7) Letting this rock pass by for f
Page 33 and 34: classified into differences or spec
Page 35 and 36: ‘substances,’ though three ‘n
Page 37 and 38: (11) Now let us hear what Aristotle
Page 39 and 40: The world is not animate, then, nor
Page 41 and 42: (6) The Epicureans and Stoics spoke
Page 43 and 44: whether that rational part is God,

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