2 The Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Numerous commentaries on individual books of the Nicomachean Ethics (henceforth abbreviated EN) have come down to us. The earliest surviving are those by Aspasius in the second century AD on Books 1-4 and 7 and 8 of the EN. 14 We also have anonymous scholia to Books 2, 3, 4, and 5, probably dating to the final quarter of the second century AD. 15 The next systematic effort to interpret the EN occurs, unexpectedly, after a gap of almost ten centuries, 16 when Eustratius (ca. 1050-ca. 1120), metropolitan bishop of Nicaea, commented on Books 1 and 6, and his contemporary Michael of Ephesus (ca. 1060-1130/1135) on Books 5, 9, and 10. Both Eustratius and Michael are thought to have operated in a context of imperial…