C.—BIOGRAPHERS

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 which are frequently quoted. The biographical details are very untrustworthy indeed; but sometimes bibliographical information is added, which doubtless rests upon the Πίνακες of Kallimachos.

19. Another peripatetic, Satyros, the pupil of Aristarchos, wrote (c. 160 B.C.) Lives of Famous Men. The same remarks apply to him as to Hermippos. His work was epitomised by Herakleides Lembos.

20. The work which goes by the name of Laertios Diogenes is, in its biographical parts, a mere patchwork of all 426earlier learning. It has not been digested or composed by any single mind at all. It is little more than a collection of extracts made at haphazard, possibly by more than one successive possessor of the MS. But, of course, it contains much that is of the greatest value.