Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/49

Rh and the Eclogae? Diels has shown that Theodoret (c. A.D. 445) had access to it; for in some cases he gives a fuller form of statements made in these two works. Not only so, but he also names that source; for he refers us (Gr. aff. cur. iv. 31) Ἀετίου τὴν περὶ ἀρεσκόντων συναγωγήν. Diels has accordingly printed the Placita in parallel columns with the relevant parts of the Eclogae, under the title of Aetii Placita. The quotations from "Plutarch" by later writers, and the extracts of Theodoret from Aetios, are also given at the foot of each page.

11. Diels has shown further, however, that Aetios did not draw directly from Theophrastos, but from an intermediate epitome which he calls the Vetusta Placita, traces of which may be found in Cicero (infra, § 12), and in Censorinus (De die natali), who follows Varro. The Vetusta Placita were composed in the school of Poseidonios, and Diels now calls them the Poseidonian Ἀρέσκοντα (Über das Phys. System des Straton, p. 2). There are also traces of them in the "Homeric Allegorists."

It is quite possible, by discounting the somewhat unintelligent additions which Aetios made from Epicurean and other sources, to form a pretty accurate table of the contents of the Vetusta Placita (Dox. pp. 181 sqq.), and this gives us a fair idea of the arrangement of the original work by Theophrastos.

12. So far as what he tells us of the earliest Greek philosophy goes, Cicero must be classed with the doxographers, and not with the philosophers; for he gives us nothing but extracts at second or third hand from the work of Theophrastos. Two passages in his writings fall to be considered under this head, namely, "Lucullus" (Acad. ii.), 118, and De natura deorum, i. 25-41.

(a) Doxography of the "Lucullus."—This contains a meagre and inaccurately rendered summary of the various opinions held by philosophers with regard to the ἀρχή (Dox. pp. 119 sqq.), and would be quite useless if it did not in one