Acroamatic Sentence Examples

He says that Aristotle (I) divided his commentationes and arts taught to his pupils into i wrspuch and IcKpoarcKa; (2) taught the latter in the morning walk (iwOcvov 7rEpi-rraTov), the former in the evening walk (SaXcvew 71Epi-zrarov); (3) divided his books in the same manner; (4) defended himself against Alexander's letter, complaining that it was not right to his pupils to have published his acroamatic works, by replying in a letter that they were published and not published, because they are intelligible only to those who heard them.

The answer to the first three points is that Aristotle did not make any distinction between exoteric and acroamatic, and was not likely to have any longer taught his exoteric dialogues when he was teaching his mature philosophy at Athens, but may have alternated the teaching of the latter between the more abstruse and the more popular parts which had gradually come to be called " exoteric."

As regards the last point, the authority of Andronicus proves that he at all events did not exaggerate his own share in publishing Aristotle's works; but it does not prove either that this correspondence between Alexander and Aristotle took place, or that Aristotle called his philosophical writings acroamatic, or that he had published them wholesale to the world.

But there was no doubt a tendency to extend the term " exoteric " from the dialectical to the more popular of the scientific writings of Aristotle, to make a new distinction between exoteric and acroamatic or esoteric, and even to make out that Aristotle was in the habit of teaching both exoterically and acroamatically day by day as head of the Peripatetic school at Athens.