A survey of the evidence for textile production and trade shows extensive market activities, supported by state enforcement of agreements. The most intrusive form of state intervention was the imposition of a monthly quota to be delivered by weavers, accounting for up to half of their production volume. This may have represented the transformation of an existing quota arrangement attested in New Kingdom Egypt. However, the cash-based Ptolemaic system, in which weavers were compensated and could substitute cash payments for their deliveries, had a different dynamic. The stable demand offered by the quotas offset some of the risk of production for the market by the weavers. This arrangement made the state into an oversized market player, but the textiles it collected were not sold through retail concessions but put to practical use or exported. In addition, weavers and other occupations were subject to taxation in cash, the state levied customs and sales taxes, and it derived revenues from flax cultivation and sheep husbandry, likewise without exercising exclusive control and using private contractors. Attempts at local monopolies were rather undertaken by professional associations.

The chapter argues for a reading of Parts of Animals I.1, 639b11–640a9 as a continuous argument, divided into 3 main sections. Aristotle’s point in the first section is that teleological explanations should precede non-teleological explanations in the order of exposition. His reasoning is that the ends cited in teleological explanations are definitions, and definitions – which are not subject to further explanation – are appropriate starting points, insofar as they prevent explanations from going on ad infinitum. Aristotle proceeds in the following two sections to criticize certain non-teleological accounts offered by his predecessors on the grounds that they are explanatorily defective: those accounts – unlike teleological explanations – neither begin from appropriate starting points nor entail the phenomena that they purport to explain. Along the way, the chapter proposes an alternative way to understand what “hypothetical necessity” refers to, for Aristotle.

In Parts of Animals II.10, Aristotle introduces an approach to studying the nonuniform parts of animals: “to speak about the human kind first” (656a10). This chapter asks why Aristotle adopts this strategy and how he goes about implementing it. I argue that he selects it because he holds that human bodies offer particularly clear illustrations of some of his scientific concepts, including the relationship between parts and the ends they are for the sake of. As a result, he thinks that beginning with the causal explanations of human parts helps us to develop such explanations for the parts of other animals, especially when it is difficult to do so.

The Ptolemaic ’oil monopoly’ shows extensive control of local economic processes over at least a century and a half. The so-called Revenue Laws lay out strict state control of cultivation, production and distribution, which is confirmed by many other Greek and Demotic papyri. The entire harvest of oil crops had to be sold to the state, oil was produced exclusively in state workshops, and retail was subject to exclusive local concessions. Import restrictions and severe penalties were introduced to safeguard the revenues from this system, which were leased out to private contractors. Although it contributed to the monetisation of the countryside, the ‘oil monopoly’ was a rather inefficient form of organisation. The parallel bureaucracy of officials and contractors created red tape, the confiscation of capital eroded trust, oil crop cultivation proved unpopular, and the resulting shortages in concert with high fixed oil prices led to considerable black market activity, which further disrupted the official circuit. Evidence from the Late Period and the reign of Ptolemy I shows that the ‘oil monopoly’ was a creation of Ptolemy II, representing a remarkable experiment in fiscal policy.

The analogies Aristotle employs in Parts of Animals (PA) are indispensable to the scientific investigation he undertakes in that work. This is because many analogies in PA express relations strong enough to ground a unique variety of unity. What is analogical unity? What sort of relationship must an analogy capture to ground such a unity? What role does analogy play in the scientific study of animals and their parts? I first contrast analogical unity with two different varieties of unity: formal unity and generic unity. I then examine the analogies in PA to discern which of the proportional relationships they express yield analogical unities. The most promising interpretations of these passages risk analogical unity’s collapse into one of the other varieties of unity Aristotle accepts. I argue that Aristotle employs the same concept of analogy in PA and in the Metaphysics and that this consonance allows us to preserve analogical unity’s unique explanatory role.

The last decades witnessed important developments in our understanding of Ptolemaic Egypt. Traditionally seen as a highly centralised state exercising close control over the economy, it is now clear that the king was part of a broader coalition with the primary aim of raising stable revenues. Recent work on land tenure and taxation furthermore challenges the idea of a ‘royal economy’. This book tackles the other major pillar of this model: the so-called state monopolies in industry and trade. Ill-defined and anachronistic, it has been a problematic concept from its inception in the early twentieth century, yet it remains in wide use. Inspired by the famous ‘Revenue Laws’ papyrus, it evokes a centrally planned state economy. The book offers a deconstruction of these ideas and provides the first full assessment of the actual organisation of the sectors involved. The institutions are analysed within the framework of New Institutional Economics, including an analysis of their effect on economic performance. The study takes full account of both the Greek and the Demotic Egyptian sources. The Ptolemaic institutions are, moreover, contextualised within Greek and Egyptian fiscal history.

The Ptolemaic state did not pursue a policy of ‘state monopolies’ in industry and trade. Although state intervention was extensive in some sectors, markets played an important role in others. Fiscal contracts leased out to entrepreneurs shared certain procedures and terminology, but the reality of state control was different in every industry, determined by strategic concerns and practical considerations. Together, these institutions show a pragmatic state concerned primarily with securing revenues from economic activities. While the papyri also highlight the limits of state control and the possibilities to evade regulations, they do not show a general decline of state capacity in the second century. The impact of the regulations on economic performance varied. While the ‘oil monopoly’ caused significant inefficiencies, the same was not necessarily true in other sectors. The regulations stimulated the circulation of coinage, leading to increased market performance, to an extent supported also by state enforcement of agreements and property rights. Finally, the analysis underscores the significant fiscal and economic role of temples and professional associations.

This chapter explores the three levels of material constitution presented in the Part of Animals: (a) elemental powers, (b) uniform and (c) nonuniform animate parts, in order to answer the question whether uniform materials that go into the constitution of animal bodies are produced for the sake of the organism. My answer is negative. At the bottom level, we encounter inanimate mixtures, not just elemental powers, that possess all the non-elemental material properties that may then be used by an animal nature. Aristotle’s chemistry (in the GC and Meteorology) exploits non-teleological processes that explain the dispositions of uniform material bodies. Such materials are then used by animal natures, through the teleological process of concoction, for the constitution of uniform and nonuniform parts of their bodies: the animal kind works within the confines set by the non-elemental material properties. This helps locate the difference between mixis and pepsis (concoction) and to understand why these conceptual tools are used in different contexts by Aristotle.

On the Parts of Animals (PA) is our main source for Aristotle’s explanations of animal character. This he locates in the qualities of an animal’s blood (or it’s analogue), whether it is hot, cold, thick, then, turbid, or pure (PA II.2, 651a16). This chapter sets out the main debate about character in Aristotle’s biological writings, whether it is formal or material, and argues that it is part of an animals’ material nature. While the materials existing in the blood vessels are not put there for the purpose of underlying character, they are often utilised for this end, displaying a complex coordination of material and formal natures. The chapter ends with a detailed analysis of which fluid elements in the body are responsible for underlying character and at which point they emerge in the digestive process. This further clarifies the relationship between animal bodies, nutritive processes, and the character potentials animals possess.

In Parts of Animals IV.10 Aristotle compares the human anatomy to the anatomy of other blooded, live-bearing animals with regard to their external, nonuniform parts. Of all these animals, Aristotle states, human beings alone have hands and arms instead of front-legs due to their erect posture. He associates the erect posture with human beings’ alleged divine nature, exhibited in their intellectual capacities. This poses two challenges that Aristotle addresses in the remainder of PA IV.10: first to show how most distinctive features of the human body (e.g. broad chests, fleshy buttocks, big feet, hands) can ultimately be traced back to the erect posture and second to account for the assumed connection between upright posture and intellectual capacities. Regarding the latter point the present chapter shows why, according to Aristotle, unimpaired thinking requires the upright posture and why the upright posture again requires a certain proportion between the upper and the lower bodily part.

Is mind a proper topic of investigation in Aristotle’s science of nature? The question is surprisingly vexed. Although some evidence suggests that mind should be studied by natural philosophy as well as first philosophy (metaphysics), Parts of Animals I.1 (641a32−b23) presents a series of arguments often construed as decisive evidence that he excludes mind from natural philosophy. This chapter goes through the relevant text and argues that Aristotle presents three arguments to exclude mind from nature but all in the voice of an opponent. Then in a final argument (641b23−642a1) he responds directly to the third argument, with indirect implications for the second argument as well.