Aristotle to Pythagoras? Nigidius Figulus’ Biology in Late Republican Rome

Abstract

The destiny of silence and oblivion that obscured the figure of Nigidius Figulus seems to have affected with particular severity Nigidius’ works on human and animal biology, of which only tiny fragments survive. In the present paper, I shall attempt to set Nigidius Figulus’ biological fragments against the background of their time, reading them in connection with the renewed interest of late Republican writers in physical laws, animal behavior, and the related moral issues – an interest which was often coupled with a reinterpretation of Peripatetic and Hellenistic zoological knowledge. The years in which Nigidius Figulus wrote his ‘commentationes’ – and, according to Cicero, revived Pythagoreanism – were the same years in which Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ biological writings attracted increased attention, owing also to their growing availability in both direct and indirect textual traditions. Nigidius’ ‘commentationes’ seem to have been heavily influenced by Aristotle’s History of Animals – especially by its ninth book, which has been reasonably attributed to Theophrastus, has an impressive ‘Nachleben’ in Hellenistic literature, and is widely echoed in both Cicero and Lucretius. As a closer reading of the extant fragments will show, several issues of Peripatetic anatomy, ethology, and epistemology are reframed by Nigidius in the context of Roman culture, religion, and folklore – with an eye on the then prevailing Stoic philosophy and with the clear purpose of offering a thought-provoking contribution to the Roman ‘Republic of Letters’.