William Bridgman – Mystical Scriptures

William Bridgman(d. 1847)

English classical translator, best known for publishing small volumes of Greek ethical and 'Pythagorean' material in English—e.g., Translations from the Greek… (1804) and for his 1807 translation of a late antique/Byzantine paraphrase on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, a work then circulating under names like 'Andronicus Rhodius' but now treated as anonymous/misattributed.

2 titles in the Cabinet

on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle; with Greaves's MS. Notes

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Facts and feelings, illustrative of interior religion, accompanied by memorials of madame Guyon, and other spiritual persons, with extr. from their works

The Dial's edition: London, 1807

Aristotle's ethical philosophy rendered accessible, with manuscript annotations by Greaves that reveal how Transcendentalists engaged with classical virtue ethics.

Full textSurvives at Concord Free Public Library

Read by Emerson (see Emerson's Reading) & Emerson (see Emerson's Library)

Translations of Greek Moralists

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Translations from the Greek : viz., Aristotle's synopsis of the virtues and vices : the similitudes of Demophilus : the golden sentences of Democrates : and the Pythagoric symbols with the explanations of Jamblichus

The Dial's edition: London, 1804

This 1804 book, translated by William Bridgman with contributions from Thomas Taylor, is a collection of classical Greek philosophical texts focused on ethics, virtue, and morality. It combines Aristotelian ethics, Pythagorean wisdom, and moral maxims. Listed in The Dial's catalog as "Translations of Grek Moralists."

Full textSurvives at Houghton Library

Read by Thoreau (see Thoreau's Reading)

William Bridgman(d. 1847)

on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle; with Greaves's MS. Notes

Translations of Greek Moralists

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