The first account of Aristotle's Metaphysics in fourteen books: Alexander of Aphrodisias' 'Fragment zero'

The purpose of this article is to point out historical relevancy of the further textual findings made together by Fazzo and Zonta in 2014, namely the confirmation that a large section of Averroes' introduction to his Great Commentary on Metaphysics Lambda comes from the Syriac-to-Arabic translation of a corresponding text by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Even if the content of Alexander's introduction has been adjusted by Averroes for the sake of his own commentary, traces of the Greek-to-Syriac translation can still be found in the letters-titles attributed to the Metaphysics books 7 to 11 (in Greek, Metaphysics Zeta, Theta, Eta, Iota, Kappa). The findings are interesting for two reasons. On the one hand, the section is missing in Freudenthal's standard collection of Fragmente des Alexanders from Averroes' Great Commentary, so a new section needs to be inserted, whose historical relevance can hardly be overestimated. On the other hand, further proof emerges to include our previous research on the textual history of Aristotle's Metaphysics, thus fixing Alexander as a safe terminus ante quem for the final assemblage. Admittedly, our proposal raises a broader question: the terminus is remarkably later than usually assumed. Yet, based on our previous results and research (cf. Fazzo 2012), Alexander of Aphrodisias turns out to be the first safe source of our current arrangement of the Metaphysics fourteen books.