Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/48

34 in it the order was that of the successive schools, and short historical and chronological notices were inserted.

8. A work of this kind was, of course, a godsend to the epitomators and compilers of handbooks, who flourished more and more as the Greek genius declined. These either followed Theophrastos in arranging the subject-matter under heads, or else they broke up his work, and rearranged his statements under the names of the various philosophers to whom they applied. This latter class form the natural transition between the doxographers proper and the biographers, so I have ventured to distinguish them by the name of biographical doxographers.

9. These are now mainly represented by two works, viz. the Placita Philosophorum, included among the writings ascribed to Plutarch, and the Eclogae Physicae of John Stobaios (c. A.D. 470). The latter originally formed one work with the Florilegium of the same author, and includes a transcript of some epitome substantially identical with the pseudo-Plutarchean Placita. It is, however, demonstrable that neither the Placita nor the doxography of the Eclogae is the original of the other. The latter is usually the fuller of the two, and yet the former must be earlier; for it was used by Athenagoras for his defence of the Christians in A.D. 177 (Dox. p. 4). It was also the source of the notices in Eusebios and Cyril, and of the History of Philosophy ascribed to Galen. From these writers many important corrections of the text have been derived (Dox. pp. 5 sqq.).

Another writer who made use of the Placita is Achilles (not Achilles Tatius). For his Εἰσαγωγή to the Phaenomena of Aratos see Maass, Commentariorum in Aratum reliquiae, pp. 25–75. His date is uncertain, but probably he belongs to the third century A.D. (Dox. p. 18).

10. What, then, was the common source of the Placita