Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/51

Rh a source similar to that of the best portions of the Philosophoumena. So far as we can judge, they differ chiefly in two points. In the first place, they are mostly taken from the earliest sections of the work, and therefore most of them deal with the primary substance, the heavenly bodies and the earth. In the second place, the language is a much less faithful transcript of the original.

15. The scrap-book which goes by the name of Diogenes Laertios, or Laertios Diogenes (cf. Usener, Epicurea, pp. 1 sqq.), contains large fragments of two distinct doxographies. One is of the merely biographical, anecdotic, and apophthegmatic kind used by Hippolytos in his first four chapters; the other is of a better class, more like the source of Hippolytos' remaining chapters. An attempt is made to disguise this "contamination" by referring to the first doxography as a "summary" (κεφαλαιώδης) account, while the second is called "particular" (ἐπὶ μέρους).

16. Short doxographical summaries are to be found in Eusebios (P. E. x., xiv., xv.), Theodoret (Gr. aff. cur. ii. 9-11), Irenaeus (C. haer. ii. 24), Arnobius (Adv. nat. ii. 9), Augustine (Civ. Dei, viii. 2). These depend mainly upon the writers of "Successions," whom we shall have to consider in the next section.

17. The first to write a work entitled Successions of the Philosophers was Sotion (Diog. ii. 12; R. P. 4 a), about 200 B.C. The arrangement of his work is explained in Dox. p. 147. It was epitomised by Herakleides Lembos. Other writers of Διαδοχαί were Antisthenes, Sosikrates, and Alexander. All these compositions were accompanied by a very meagre doxography, and made interesting by the addition of unauthentic apophthegms and apocryphal anecdotes.

18. The peripatetic Hermippos of Smyrna, known as Καλλιμάχειος (c. 200 B.C.), wrote several biographical works