 The first essay is entitled “Syrianus, the Son of Philoxenus, about the Logical Difficulties and Topics Requiring Discussion in Book Beta of Aristotle’s Metaphysics”. It begins, unusually, with hardly any introductory remarks at all. There is only a swift recapitulation of the subject-matter of books I and II (Α and little α) of the Metaphysics. This suggests that Syrianus had covered those books in earlier lectures. Typically of him, Syrianus goes through the aporiae raised by Aristotle on the subject-matter and methodology of ‘first philosophy’, one by one, and in each case explains briefly how he himself thinks these difficulties ought to be resolved, not how Aristotle resolves them in subsequent books of the Metaphysics.