This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Greece, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Greek people on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GreeceWikipedia:WikiProject GreeceTemplate:WikiProject GreeceGreek
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, a group of contributors interested in Wikipedia's articles on classics. If you would like to join the WikiProject or learn how to contribute, please see our project page. If you need assistance from a classicist, please see our talk page.Classical Greece and RomeWikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and RomeTemplate:WikiProject Classical Greece and RomeClassical Greece and Rome
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women scientists, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Women in science on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women scientistsWikipedia:WikiProject Women scientistsTemplate:WikiProject Women scientistsWomen scientists
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women writers, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of women writers on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women writersWikipedia:WikiProject Women writersTemplate:WikiProject Women writersWomen writers
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot03:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
we should absolutely discuss the work "on human nature" on this page, as it is frequently attributed to Aesara, but the current state of this page is absolutely too enthusiastic about doing so - almost all pythagorean literature is generally considered pseudynomous, and this work is attributed to Aresas in the editio princeps of Stobaeus, not Aesara, so definitively ascribing it to her is irresponsible.
At some point I wonder if we shouldn't deprecate Waithe as a source - I appreciate what she was trying to do but she is an amateur historian with a background in philosophy, who uses motivated reasoning to come to here preferred conclusions and so will misrepresent scholarly consensus and simply ignore anything that challenges the ascription of any work to a woman. Her conclusions shouldn't be stated in wikivoice, and we should corroborate them and any who directly cite them with the work of other sources with some familiarity in the field. - car chasm (talk) 02:31, 21 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's a weird situation: Plant and Pomeroy both say that Aesara is a woman and the argument that she is not is based on an emendation of Stobaeus' text; the BMCR review says that this is not true and that in fact it is reading Aesara as a woman which requires emending the text! Brill's New Pauly doesn't seem to mention Aesara at all; the Oxford Classical Dictionary says that On Human Nature is "possibly" attributed to Aesara. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:20, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I dug into this a bit further than above and it's worse than I first thought, there doesn't seem to be any proof of the existence of Aesara at all. It looks like the critical edition of the text by Wachsmuth, which Wachsmuth says in the apparatus is an emendation! So the apparent claim by Plant and Pomeroy that this is not an emendation would appear to be verifiably false.
As also noted in the review, The "Aesara" who is a daughter of pythagoras that is supposedly mentioned in Photius, which Wachsmuth justifies his own with, is itself an emendation which Wachsmuth credits to Richard Bentley(?), based on line 36 of the Greek which reads "Σαρ́α". So it would seem "Aesara" has been invented out of thin air from two different manuscript emendations, there isn't definitive evidence in either Stobaeus or Photius of her existence. - car chasm (talk) 01:02, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've now stubbed the article, quite frankly I don't think Plant, Pomeroy, or Waithe are engaged in scholarship here; the arguments that there's no reason to think that the extract we have wasn't rewritten (which would let it be older than the 4th century) or that the mere attribution itself proves there really was an Aesara of Lucania would both strain credulity even if there was any attestation of her existence whatsoever. I checked some more sources as well - Charles Kahn's "Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans" and Leonid Zhmud's "Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans" similarly don't mention her at all. - car chasm (talk) 01:23, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
.jpg){kind=small}