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

Yet, in the end, they did not give much attention to learning foreign languages, in some
cases not even their own, especially since Greek at that time was nearly one and the same
for common people and for the learned. Likewise with the ancient Romans, whose
language was sometimes called ‘Roman’ (as the Greeks always called it) and sometimes
‘Latin.’ 14 (13) In our time, these two languages are harder to master than any number of
the liberal arts. For while many steer easily through all those arts, as if sailing over
ponds, Greek puts them in deep water indeed, where the same tide keeps dragging them
back. In Latin, on the other hand, they dare not go far from land, as if the language were
the open sea.
(14) “But Aristotle actually wrote more works than the others.” I suppose those works
are also more important? For all I know, what Hippocrates or Euclid or various others
did may be more important since they proposed firm and unquestionable principles for
some of the arts. I hesitate to say how remarkable it is to give impertinent advice at one
moment on matters of which you have no experience (such as politics or rhetoric, which I
call ‘oratory’ in my book) and at the next to claim familiarity with things that cannot be
known (such as why the peacock that changes its colors is distinguished in this way). 15
(15) “He wrote more works than the others,” but he also stole more. You admit his
dishonesty in this, but a person who does not ascribe what he steals to those from whom
he took it, claiming it for his own instead and opining that his very victims have
committed blunders everywhere, such a person can sooner hold a burning brand in his
mouth than not name a name. “He wrote more works than the others.” So be it. These
works are all better than the others, then? For my part, I find in him nothing thoroughly
worked out, neither its arrangement nor its expression. Did he say it so well that others
can say nothing better? Was it so godlike that he must be treated as a god? And yet he
was not the best man, this person who had a poor understanding of the true God and did
not dare condemn the false gods of the people since he dreaded finding fault with
anything non-literary.
(16) It is disgraceful to report the custom that some have of initiating disciples and
making them swear never to oppose Aristotle, a foolish and superstitious race of people
that serves itself badly by cheating itself of the capacity to discover the truth. If we can
rightly find fault with them for imposing this rule on themselves, then how harshly
should we reprimand them if they transfer this rule to others? Having rejected these
people, then, and disregarding them, if there are things anywhere in Aristotle that he
might have said better, I myself shall do my best to say them better, not to blame the
person, which I hope to avoid, but to honor the truth, which one must honor (as Plato
says) rather than the man. 16
14 Zippel cites Valla, In Pogium; whether the Latin of the uneducated was like that of the learned who wrote
books and made speeches was a contentious issue; see ???
15 Peacock’s tail; Aristotle, Pliny ???
16 Zippel cites Plat. Rep. 595C
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