The transmission of the works of Aristotle

Strabo 13.1.54 (64/3 BC – AD 21 at least; geographer)

From Scepsis came that Socratics Erastos and Coriskos and his son, Neleus, - a man who had heard Aristotle and Theophrastus and who had inherited the library of Theophrastus which also included the library of Aristotle.  At any rate, Aristotle gave his [library] to Theophrastus, to whom he also left the school (who is the first man we know of who collected books and who taught the kings of Egypt how to arrange a library).  Theophrastus left it [the library] to Neleus, who,  after carrying it away to Scepsis, left it to his heirs, who were common men, who kept the books locked up but without carefully storing them.  When they heard about the zeal of the Attalid kings, by whom their city was ruled, who were searching for books to establish a library in Pergamum, they hid the books in a sort of underground tunnel, where they were damaged by dampness and moths.  Then,  much later, the family members sold the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus to Apellicon of Teos for a substantial sum.   But Apellicon was a bibliophile rather than a philosopher, and while trying to revise the heavily worm-damaged scrolls, he transferred the writing onto a new scroll, and while he did  not revise the gaps correctly, he published the books full of errors.
So it was that the older Peripatetics after Theophrastus did not have all the books, except for just a few, and most of these were the exoteric works, and thus, not able to philosophize prudently, but only to rhetorically declaim general theses.  However, their successors, from the time that these books became available, were better able to philosophize and Aristotelianize, yet were still obliged to speak randomly because of the significant number of errors.
Rome, too, had a substantial hand in this.  For immediately after Appelicon’s death, Sulla, who had captured Athens, took Appelicion’s library and brought it as  booty here, where the grammarian Tyrannio, who was fond of Aristotele put his hand to it, after paying court to the librarian, and certain librarians used bad scribes and did not collate [the texts], just as also happens with other books that are copied for sale both here and in Alexandria.  Let thus be enough concerning these men.

Plutarch Sulla 26 (before AD 50 – after 120; man of letters)

Having put to sea with all his ships from Ephesus, on the third day he [Sulla] came to anchor in Piraeus.  He was now initiated into the mysteries, and seized for himself the library of Apellicon the Teian, in which were most of the treatises of Aristotle and Theophrastus, at that time not yet well known to the public.  But it is said that after the library was carried to Rome,  Tyrannio the grammarian arranged most of the works in it, and that Andronicus the Rhodian was furnished by him with copies of them, and published them, and drew up the lists now current.  The older Peripatetics were evidently of themselves accomplished and learned mean, but they seem to have had neither a large nor an exact acquaintance with the writings of Aristotle and Theophrasus because the estate of Neleus of Scepsis, to whom Theophrastus bequeathed his books, came into the hands of careless and illiterate people. 

Porphyry, Live of Plotinus 24 (AD 232/3-305)

[Plotinus] entrusted me with the arrangement and editing of his books, and I promised him in his lifetime and gave undertakings to our other friends that I would carry out this task.  So first of all I did not think it right to leave the books in confusion in order of time as they were issued.  I followed the example of Apollodorus of Athens, who collected the works of Epicharmus the comedian into ten volumes, and Andronicus the Peripatetic, who classified the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus according to subject, bringing together the discussions of related topics.