“I examine my entire day and go back over what I have done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.”
The ἐφημερίς was the day-book: the running record kept alongside the work, of which Alexander’s court journal is the famous case. This shelf keeps that register for the notebook. Where the Topics tree holds passages weighed until they become understanding, the Ephemeris holds the weighing itself — what is on the desk this season, which problems are resisting, what was begun and then abandoned, and why.
The register
Entries here are dated, informal, and provisional by design. They are written quickly, close to the work, and left unrevised — the same rule the Deipnon applies to its verdicts. A claim that survives long enough to be trusted graduates out of the Ephemeris and into the Topics tree; the entry that first recorded it stays behind as the fossil.
Emphases
- studies over circumstances: what is being read and attempted, not where or when
- dead ends recorded with the same care as progress
- entries grouped by season, so a quiet month reads as a quiet month and not an ending