I. Doxographers Proper

9. These are now represented by two works, viz. the Placita Philosophorum, included among the writings ascribed to Plutarch, and the Eclogae Physicae of John Stobaios (c. 470 A.D.). 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 177 A.D. (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). Extracts from his Εἰσαγωγή to the Phaenomena of Aratos are included in the Uranologion of Petavius, pp. 121-164. 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 and the Eclogae? Diels has shown that Theodoret (c. 445 A.D.) 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) 423to 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 case enable us to verify the exact words of Theophrastos (Chap. I. p. 52, n. 2). The doxography has come through the hands of Kleitomachos, who succeeded Karneades in the headship of the Academy (129 B.C.).

(b) Doxography of the “De natura Deorum.”—A fresh light was thrown upon this important passage by the discovery at 424Herculaneum of a roll containing fragments of an Epicurean treatise, so like it as to be at once regarded as its original. This treatise was at first ascribed to Phaidros, on the ground of the reference in Epp. ad Att. xiii. 39. 2; but the real title, Φιλοδήμου περὶ εὐσεβείας, was afterwards restored (Dox. p. 530). Diels, however, has shown (Dox. pp. 122 sqq.) that there is much to be said for the view that Cicero did not copy Philodemos, but that both drew from a common source (no doubt Phaidros, Περὶ θεῶν) which itself went back to a Stoic epitome of Theophrastos. The passage of Cicero and the relevant fragments of Philodemos are edited in parallel columns by Diels (Dox. pp. 531 sqq.).