Abstract
The paper discusses a key aspect of the influence of the Greek Byzantine commentator Eustratius of Nicaea on the Latin reception of Aristotle’s ethics. It argues that Eustratius’s commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics, Books 1 and 6, composed around 1118, introduced the important Neoplatonist conception of levels of virtue, i.e., in short, the conception that the four cardinal virtues can be acquired on subsequently higher levels, aiming at the Platonic ideal of assimilation to the divine. Traditionally, Macrobius’s commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio is considered the only source for medieval occurrences of this Neoplatonist conception of the virtues, but I argue that Eustratius is a more important channel for such influence, explicitly presenting this as the correct understanding of Aristotle’s account of the virtues.