Abstract

The only extant fragment of Aristotle’s lost treatise On Prayer [Περὶ εὐχῆς] is an excerpt from Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s On Heavens [De caelo] (ad II.12, 292b10; ed. CAG VII; p. 485.19-22 Heiberg). Simplicius’ text, however, has been poorly edited for a long time, with several textual problems being spread unconsciously by the majority of the editors of the Aristotelian fragments, and only recently the text began to be properly clarified. The fragment 49 Rose3 was repeatedly exploited to sustain and to endow with antiquity and authority theological readings with Neoplatonist features, and there is a place where the establishment of the critical text is of the utmost importance for a research in quest for the possibility of understanding God and its intelligibility. This paper discusses the context of Simplicius’ testimony, the idiosyncrasies of the textual problems, the structure of the fragment, its lexicon (e.g. ὑπέρ and ἐπέκεινα), and the hermeneutical challenges it poses regarding its authenticity and interpretation within the Aristotelian corpus.