Abstract

According to a later report, Aristotle thought that wise sayings are the “relics” of the past tekhne, preserved thanks to their conciseness and cleverness when ancient civilization perished in a world cataclysm. In this respect they are valuable clues for a retrospective reconstruction of the intellectual history of Greece, and Aristotle was the first to develop in his works a sense of historical consciousness, prerequisite for such a reconstruction, although some contemporary authors would contest this view. In the paper I translate and comment selected fragments of and testimonies about Aristotle’s lost works and observe how he used this historical observations in his philosophical treaties, having thus paved the way to a systematic historical research, conducted by the Peripatetics in a pre-established institutional framework.