## 1. Introduction and overview



The term 'doxography' has come to be applied in a much
larger sense than seems to have been intended by its creator Hermann
Diels. This name for the genre, if we may misleadingly call it that,
derives from the Latin neologism 'doxographi' used by
Diels to indicate the authors of a rather strictly specified type of
literature studied and edited in his monumental *Doxographi
Graeci* ('Greek Doxographers') of 1879. His researches
were focused on writings concerned with the *physical* part of
philosophy (including principles, theology, cosmology, astronomy,
meteorology, biology and part of medicine). But today overviews in the
field of ethics are also called doxographical. And scholars speak of
'doxographies' to be found in the dialogues of Plato and
the treatises of Aristotle, although these are works in which issues
of philosophy are addressed, with only ancillary discussion of the
views of others.



The following authors and main works, listed in chronological order,
are representative of doxography in the *broad* as well as in
the *narrower* sense (a complete list of names and titles would
be
 impractical).[1]


* Cicero, 1st c. BCE: one of our indispensable sources for (the debates
among the) schools of Hellenistic philosophy, esp. Stoicism,
Epicureanism, and Academic Skepticism: *Academics* (book two
deals with questions of epistemology from Stoic and Academic Skeptic
angles); *On the Chief Ends of Good and Evil*; *On the
Nature of the Gods* (contrasting Epicurean and Stoic views on
nature and the gods and criticizing them from the viewpoint of
moderate Skepticism); *On Fate* (hellenistic arguments pro and
contra determinism); *On Duties* (largely based on a treatise
of the Middle Stoic Panaetius). (*Broad*)
* Philodemus, 1st c. BCE: works more or less extant on charred papyrus
scrolls: *Arrangement of the Philosophers*, esp. two books
dealing with the Academic and Stoic schools from an institutional
angle; also a polemical treatise *On the Stoics*. A section
from his *On Piety* briefly dealing with the tenets of the
philosophers about the gods is closely parallel to a section in book
one of Cicero's *On the Nature of the Gods*; both
passages printed in parallel columns in Diels 1879.
(*Broad*)
* Ps-Plutarch, 2nd c. CE: *Placita* ('tenets',
'doctrines') dealing with physics in five books ranging
from first principles to diseases and old age. Issues in physical
philosophy are presented in chapters which (as a rule) contrast the
tenets of the philosophers and occasionally of some physicians and
astronomers, in a systematic not a chronological sequence. As a rule
each individual tenet is formulated in an extremely brief way. No
information is provided about individuals later than 1st c. BCE. See
below, section 2, on Aetius' *Placita* of which this
tract is an epitome. Edited as left column of reconstructed
Aetius in Diels 1879. (*Narrow*)
* Arius Didymus, late 1st c. CE: smaller and larger fragments from works
cited as *On Schools*, or as *Abstract*(*s*), in
their present form mainly dealing with Stoic and Peripatetic physics
on the one hand (edited Diels
 1879),[2]
 and Stoic and Peripatetic ethics (extant in Stobaeus, see below) on
the other. (*Narrow*)
* Plutarch, after 45 - after 120 CE: esp. polemical treatises
against Epicureans and Stoics: *That Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life
Impossible,* *Reply to Colotes*, *Is 'Live
Unknown' a Wise Precept?,* and *On Stoic
Self-Contradictions, Against the Stoics on Common Conceptions*.
(*Broad*)
* Clement of Alexandria, late 2nd c. CE, a Christian author:
*Stromateis* ('Patchworks'), numerous passages
adducing, and explaining, the views of poets and prose-writers,
philosophers and others, on a great variety of issues.
(*Broad*)
* Diogenes Laertius, early 3rd c. CE, indispensable for the history
of Greek, esp. Hellenistic, philosophy: *Lives and Maxims of Those
who Have Distinguished themselves in Philosophy and the Doctrines of
Each Sect*, in ten books. As the title shows this work offers a
blend of biography and doxography. Lay-out is according to
philosophical schools: e.g., book seven gives the common
*dogmata* of the Stoic school in the life of its founder.
Ranges from the Seven Sages and the Presocratics to the Hellenistic
schools up to the 2nd - 1st c. BCE. (*Broad*)
* Hippolytus, early 3rd c. CE, a Christian author, *Refutation of All
Heresies*: important esp. as source for Presocratic doctrines (and
fragments!) (Osborne 1987, Mansfeld 1992b). Book one edited Diels
1879. (*Narrow, more or less*)
* Ps-Galen, *Philosophical History*, date uncertain (3rd-5th c.
CE?): mostly a sorry epitome of Ps-Plutarch *Placita*. Edited
Diels 1879, in part Jas 2018. (*Narrow*)
* Stobaeus, 5th c. CE: *Anthology*, of which in the first two
books (*Eclogae*) among other invaluable excerpts chunks of
Aetius (see below, section 2) are preserved; edited as right column
for Aetius in Diels 1879, and also containing large and smaller
abstracts from Arius Didymus (see above). (*Broad*) (Arius
Didymus) and (*narrow*) (Aetius).
* Theodoret, 5th c. CE, Christian bishop: *Cure for the Diseases of
the Greeks*, contains excerpts from Aetius (see below,
section 2) quoted at bottom of Aetian page in Diels 1879 and in
Mansfeld & Runia 2020. (*Narrow*)


## 2. Diels' reconstruction of the narrow doxographical tradition



The starting-point of Diels' (1879) inquiries was a hypothesis
provided by his Bonn teacher and *Doktorvater* Hermann Usener
(who had predecessors himself), concerning the identical or closely
similar language used in reports of pre-Socratic and other
philosophical doctrines contained in two late compendia, the
*Placita* ('Tenets') surviving among our
manuscripts of Plutarch, and the *Eclogae* of the anthologizer
Stobaeus; this hypothesis Diels modified in certain respects, and also
made much more complicated, as he attempted to trace back from
ps-Plutarch and Stobaeus a long line of predecessors, each
successively relied upon by later authors in compiling
philosophers' doctrines, all the way down to ps-Plutarch and
Stobaeus themselves. In a truly magisterial way he gave it the aura of
absolute certainty and unassailability which did much to ensure its
dominating position in the study of ancient philosophy until today.
The hypothesis may be briefly set out as follows.



The tradition of authors of works in the doxography of physics begins
with Aristotle's pupil and successor Theophrastus. In the
catalogue of his oeuvre preserved in his *Life in Diogenes
Laertius* a treatise is listed of '*Physikon
Doxon*, sixteen books'. For the Greek title in the
nominative one has a choice between *Physikon Doxai*
('Tenets of the Natural Philosophers') and *Physikai
Doxai* ('Tenets in Natural Philosophy'). Usener and
Diels opted for the first alternative, but in the opinion of many
scholars today the second option is much more plausible. To this
treatise they attributed a number of fragments dealing with the
principles (*archai*: Thales' water, Heraclitus'
fire, etc.) transmitted for the most part by Simplicius, a
Neoplatonist commentator on Aristotle of the 6th c. CE. That
Simplicius and others explicitly quote from Theophrastus'
*Physics*, a different treatise, did not bother them. They
further posited that a short monograph of Theophrastus, the *De
Sensibus*, dealing with theories concerning the senses and their
objects from Parmenides to Democritus and Plato, is a fragment of this
treatise as well. The simple fact however that Plato, not first and
foremost a philosopher of nature, is treated here on the same level as
Democritus and the other natural philosophers (as is also the case in
the fragments dealing with the principles) should have made them more
hesitant, even within the scope of their own hypothesis, as to the
interpretation of the title of the foundational treatise in sixteen
books. 



The *Metarsiology* attributed to Theophrastus, extant in Syrian
and Arabic translation, was discovered and published too late to be
taken into account by Diels. Doubts about the attribution are
formulated by Bakker 2016. For the text see Daiber 1992, and for the
relation to the *Placita* Mansfeld & Runia 2020,
4.3.1135-37. 



According to Diels' revision of the hypothesis a number of
extant writings (as well as sections of writings) concerned with
doctrines in the fields of natural philosophy ultimately derive from
from the *Physikon Doxai* (as he called the work), via several
intermediary stages. These stages are: 


1. The *Placita* of an otherwise unknown Aetius, who is
mentioned several times by Theodoret; to be dated to the late 1st or
perhaps early 2nd c. CE. Theodoret as source was for the first time
adduced by Diels. This Aetian work, he thought, may be
reconstructed (a) from the *Placita* of ps-Plutarch, (b) from
quotations in the *Anthology* of Stobaeus, and (c) from echoes
in the *Therapy of Greek Diseases* of
 Theodoret[3].
 Ps-Plutarch is an epitome of Aetius. Stobaeus as a rule quotes
verbatim, but has a different systematic lay-out. The
*Anthology*, moreover, has been much abridged and damaged in
the course of transmission, so in a number of cases Stobaean parallels
for ps-Plutarch are no longer extant. Aetius will also have been
used by other authors, whereas ps-Plutarch would have been used by
other authors again. Diels indeed proved that the second part of
ps-Galen *Philosophical History* is an epitome of a version of
ps-Plutarch.
2. In his turn, Aetius would for the most part derive from a
postulated treatise to which Diels gave the name *Vetusta
Placita* ('Older Tenets'), which would have been used
by Cicero, Varro and others. Its latest possible date, accordingly, is
the early 1st c. BCE.



The Aetius hypothesis was new; it has proved to be tenable,
though it has been shown to be in need of revision. Before Diels,
scholars believed in the existence of a single early source, parts of
which would have been taken over and adapted by Cicero as well as much
later by, for instance, ps-Galen. The *Vetusta Placita*
hypothesis, on the other hand, is dubious, and the way back to
Theophrastus is much more complicated and uncertain, if only because
hard evidence is so scarce, than Diels, who just stuck to
Usener's point of view about Theophrastus, wished to consider.




Diels next posited that Theophrastus' treatise, the *Vetusta
Placita*, and Aetius had the same kind of systematic lay-out
as the extant *Placita* of ps-Plutarch, viz. according to
subject. The individual books and sections of books of this tract are
indeed concerned with specific themes, such as for instance book two,
which deals with the cosmos and the heavenly bodies. Within the
framework of a section devoted to a particular subject, e.g., the sun,
or the moon, the individual chapters may be concerned with various
specific issues pertaining to the sun, or the moon, and so on. 



Diels further argued that other reports, in other authors, should also
be connected with Theophrastus' foundational treatise. The
passages dealing with the tenets of Presocratic philosophers in the
history of philosophy by Diogenes Laertius, which is arranged
according to schools and individuals, not subjects, as well as similar
sections of the first book of Hippolytus' *Refutation of All
Heresies* and of the *Stromateis*
('Patchworks') of another ps-Plutarch, in Diels'
view also went back, ultimately, to the *Tenets of the Natural
Philosophers*. He failed to take the difference between treatment
according to subject and that according to person, or school,
sufficiently into account. His argumentation is also dubious in other
respects. From the undeniable fact that there are striking
resemblances between Theophrastus' fragments concerned with the
principles on the one hand, and what is found on that score in
Aetius, Diogenes Laertius, and Hippolytus on the other, it
does not follow that corresponding passages in these later authors for
which we have no Theophrastean parallels derive from Theophrastus too.
This is source criticism, or *Quellenforschung*, at its most
vulnerable. Diels moreover preferred to overlook the equally
undeniable fact that Aristotle's treatment of the principles in
the first book of the *Metaphysics* exhibits equally striking
correspondences with Theophrastus' fragments (Zeller 1877), and
so with the later tradition as well, which could therefore go back
ultimately to Aristotle, and not to Theophrastus.



Diels saw the development from Theophrastus to these later and (in his
view) dependent authors as a decline, and a progressive obfuscation
and deterioration. His cladistic reconstruction of the doxographical
tradition is clearly related to the famous so-called
'Lachmannian' stemma of a group of manuscripts, from later
copies to the lost common ancestor, or archetype, the text of which
(as scholars believed at the time) may be reconstructed in a virtually
mechanical way. Diels was very much aware of this analogy, which
surely was an important factor in convincing him and others that the
splendid results of his investigations were irrefutable. In the 19th
century the method attributed to Lachmann was assumed to be beyond
criticism.



By thus (so to speak automatically) tracing back these mutually
corresponding passages in later authors to the, as he assumed,
faithful reporter Theophrastus, Diels believed he gained access to
reliable information about Presocratic philosophy. Thanks to the
stemmatic method back to the archetype it became possible to bestow
upon a passage (a brief lemma in, for instance, Aetius) dealing
with a tenet of a Presocratic philosopher, the conditional status of
being an attestation which, though still at second hand, should be
early and therefore the more to be trusted. It is with the importance
meted out to such so-called 'fragments' that these
lemmata, removed by Diels' scissors from Aetian chapters
dealing with *subjects*, figure in the chronological series of
chapters devoted to *persons* in two fundamental works he
published. These are the *Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta*
('Fragments of the Poet-Philosophers') of 1901, reprinted
2000, and the famous, several times revised (in later editions by
Diels' collaborator Kranz), and often reprinted *Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker* ('Fragments of the Presocratics',
abbreviated D.-K.), first published in 1903. Scholars indeed still
tend to view these Aetian lemmata as a sort of Theophrastean
fragments, and Theophrastus is believed to be a bona fide source. This
also holds for those passages in Hippolytus, Diogenes Laertius
and other authors in D.-K. which had been traced back to Theophrastus
hypothetically.



However, when one compares Aetian lemmata concerned with tenets
of extant authors, like Plato or Aristotle, with the doctrines found
in the original texts, it becomes clear to what extent these
*doxai* have been adapted and distorted, or
'modernized', in some sense of the word. This consequently
should also hold for lemmata dealing with lost authors, as Xylander
already pointed out in his 16th century edition of Plutarch, which
included the *Epitome* of ps-Plutarch. (For further reading on
this topic, see Mansfeld & Runia 1997, and Runia 1999, 2004.)



The role of Theodoret as a source for Aetius has been questioned
and doubted by Lebedev 1983, Frede 1999, Gourinat 2011, and Bottler
(2015). However, no one doubts that there must be a source PS shared
by ps.Plutarch and Stobaeus. One can also prove that there must be
such a source (TS) shared by Theodoret and Stobaeus. As a final step
one can prove that the PS source and the TS source cannot be
distinguished from each other so are identical. Thus Diels'
original intuition is vindicated. For details see Mansfeld 2018 and
section 8 below.


## 3. Objections to Diels' theory: the Aristotelian background



Usener's influence is also the cause of a fatal blind spot in
Diels. He failed to acknowledge that Theophrastus, too, had a sort of
*Doktorvater*, namely Aristotle. Aristotle, in his treatises,
as a rule lists and discusses the opinions (*doxai*) of men in
general and of the experts (who often are philosophers) in particular,
concerning an issue in metaphysics, or physics, or psychology, and
sometimes ethics, before embarking on his own investigations. These
opinions are ordered according to the method of *diaeresis*, or
division: a classification according to sets, sub-sets and
sub-sub-sets with specific differences. Aristotle checks to what
extent these opinions are in agreement among themselves or contradict
each other, and then tries to establish to what extent one of the
available options may prove acceptable, at least as the starting-point
for further inquiry, or whether some option may be available which
others have failed to consider. We call these exegetical and
evaluative overviews 'dialectical', in the Aristotelian
sense of the word of course. An overview of this nature should
establish which *genus*, or set, is at issue, that is to say
whether we are faced with a theoretical discipline, such as physics
(and then with what *species*, or sub-set, e.g., zoology), or
with a non-theoretical discipline such as poetics. This approach
should also be applied to the sub-sets, or particular objects of
inquiry, embraced by a particular sub-set. According to *Posterior
Analytics* 2.1 various aspects should (or may) be treated
separately, viz.: (1) does the object of the inquiry possess a
particular property or attribute, or not; (2) the reason why it does
possess this attribute; (3) the existence or non-existence of the
object (for instance: do gods exist?--a question one does not
need to ask when humans, or the sun, are at issue); and (4), the
substance or definition of the object. Here an important part is
played by the Aristotelian so-called categories and other kinds of
predicates, because it is of major importance to establish to what
category (viz. substance, or quality, or quantity, or place, or doing
and being-affected etc.) a given object of inquiry and/or its
attributes belong, or whether and in what sense for instance motion
(or rest) may be predicated of it. These four different primary
questions, or types of questions, may moreover be formulated in
respect of each category (viz., not only of substance, but also of
quality, etc.). Take the objects of mathematics. According to
Aristotle these do not belong to the category of substance but to that
of quantity. But within this latter category one may formulate
questions about properties, or attributes, which may belong to them;
enquire whether they exist, and if so, in what way; ask whether they
move or not; and so on.



In his treatise on dialectic and its methods, the *Topics*
(1.14), Aristotle provides instructions on how to select and classify
propositions (*protaseis*) and problems
(*problemata*):



> 
> 
> We should also make selections from the literature and include these
> in separate lists for each set, with separate headings, for instance
> 'On the Good', or 'On the Living
> Being'--that is to say the Good as a whole, starting with
> (the question) 'what is it?' One should cite the
> *doxai* [opinions, tenets] of individual thinkers, e.g., that
> Empedocles said that the elements of bodies are four in number
> [...].
> 
> 
> 
> Of propositions and problems there are--to comprehend the matter
> in outline--three sets: some are ethical, others physical, others
> again logical. Ethical: for instance (the problem) whether one should
> obey one's parents or the law, when these disagree with each
> other. Logical: for instance (the problem) whether the knowledge of
> opposites is the same, or not. Physical: for instance (the problem)
> whether the cosmos is eternal or not.
> 
> 
> 



Consequently, propositions and problems can be, and therefore in some
cases should be, elucidated by means of tenets, or opinions:
*doxai*. As there are three sets of propositions, so there are
three sets of *doxai*: physical, ethical, and
'logical' (i.e., general). An example of such a diaeresis,
or division, of a sub-set which is of fundamental importance for
Aristotle is found at the beginning of his *Physics*. This
division pertains to two categories and one predicate of a different
sort: the number (category of quantity), nature (category of
substance) and motion vs. rest (category of doing and being-affected)
of the principles (*archai*) and elements (*stoicheia*)
posited by Aristotle's predecessors in the field of natural
philosophy. In line with the rule formulated in the *Topics*
names of philosophers are added to some of the *doxai*.
Numerous other examples of this ingredient of the dialectical method
are to be found in Aristotle's writings.



The above-cited passage from the *Topics*, and
Aristotle's general practice, help to determine and explain the
title of the Theophrastean treatise Diels believed to be foundational:
it should be *Physikai Doxai*, i.e., 'Tenets in [the
various fields of] Natural Philosophy'. And one of the rare
extant fragments of this treatise not only proves (because of the
formulation in Greek of the title as quoted) that this title really is
'Physical Tenets', but also demonstrates that such tenets
were criticized according to the rules of dialectic. Theophrastus, we
are informed, cited a tenet of Plato's and then formulated
'the objections' against it. The Greek word for
'objections' found in this fragment, *enstaseis*,
is a technical term in Aristotle's *Topics*. Physical
tenets are tenets, or theses, in the fields of natural philosophy in
the largest sense, ranging from the principles, via cosmology,
astronomy and meteorology etc., to human psychology (including
philosophy of mind), biology, and even nosology or the theory of
diseases. Physical tenets are not only formulated by
*physikoi*, natural philosophers, but also by physicians and
astronomers. Aetius indeed contains a number of
 medical[4]
 and astronomical *doxai*, the oldest of which may derive from
sources that can perhaps be attributed to some of Aristotle's
collaborators. (For further reading on this topic, see Mansfeld 1990,
1992, 1998, 2016a, Mansfeld & Runia 1997, Runia 1999a, Runia 2004,
with criticism in Zhmud 2001 and rejoinder in Mansfeld 2002.) 


## 4. Theophrastus and the *Placita*



Theophrastus applies the diaeretic method in his treatise *De
Sensibus*. The chief division--already found in corresponding
passages in Aristotle--is between those who posit that knowledge
is to be ascribed to similarity ('like knows like') and
those who posit that it is to be ascribed to contrast ('unlike
knows unlike'). Another division, not paralleled in Aristotle,
also plays an important part in classifying and dialectically
discussing the tenets, viz. between those who assume that there is a
difference between thinking and sense-perception, and those who do
not. Finally, within each class the philosophers are treated in a
sequence determined by the number of senses that are posited (category
of quantity). The last philosopher to be discussed is Democritus, not
Plato. This is because Democritus according to Theophrastus assumes
that knowledge comes about through both similarity and contrast.



This presentation, viz. a division, or divisions, of contrasting
tenets (names included) dealing with specific issues, followed by an
exceptional (or compromise) view, which fails to fit this division, is
*not* a standard feature of Aristotle's dialectical
overviews. However we do find partial anticipations of this
methodology in Aristotle, e.g. in the second chapter of *De
Anima* I he opposes three views concerned with the principles that
constitute the soul: some hold that these are corporeal, others that
they are incorporeal, while a third group posits a blend of corporeal
and incorporeal principles. In Aristotle however we do not find the
strings of detailed sortings of individual tenets followed by a
compromise or maverick opinion typical of numerous *Placita*
chapters, while Theophrastus' presentation in the *De
Sensibus* is in this respect close to the *Placita*
routine.
 [5]
 Consequently, we may submit that it is Aristotle's dialectical
methodology, as revised by Theophrastus, which determines the
structure of large sections of the *Placita*. It should be
noted, moreover, that the introduction of ps-Plutarch's
*Placita*, that 'according to Aristotle and Theophrastus
and almost all the Peripatetics a perfect human being should devote
himself to *problems* in the fields of natural philosophy and
ethics'.



Theophrastus *and* Aristotle, then, were used in this way. An
example: The chapters in Aetius (*Placita* 3.9-15)
and Cicero (*Academics* 2.122) dealing with a number of various
and occasionally even bizarre views concerning the position, motion,
shape, etc. of the earth in the last resort patently derive, as to
their main themes and oppositions and even as to some telling details,
from a chapter in Aristotle's *On the Heavens* (2.13)
(Mansfeld 1992). Cicero here mentions Theophrastus by name; he
therefore may well be involved too, as an intermediary source. But we
have no further evidence concerning his contribution in this
particular instance.



It is rather amazing that the great Diels, who clearly was aware of
the importance of the diaeretic method in Aristotle's writings
and in Theophrastus' *De Sensibus*, failed to apply this
insight to the *Placita* literature. The diaphonic
organization, moreover, of chapters containing tenets that are listed
according to criteria determined by various divisions obviously
determines not only the presentation but also, to some extent, the
contents of the material.



It would seem that, just as is the case for Aristotle, also in that of
Theophrastus more than one treatise provided material that ultimately
found a home in the *Placita*, namely at the very least the
*Physikai Doxai*, the *Physics*, the *De
sensibus*, and the *Metarsiology*.


## 5. Using doxographies



When we inquire into the way ancient authors have used the information
provided by Aetius' *Placita*, by its progeny, and
by its post-Theophrastean predecessors, we often find that the
function of these collections of *doxai* is not much different
from the functions of similar overviews in the context of
Aristotle's dialectical discussions. The main objective of these
authors, who are in a position to base themselves on evidence that has
already been provided with a definite structure, is to ascertain
whether a given *doxa* may eventually prove to be useful, and
which *doxai* should be rejected--depending, naturally, on
the point of view of the user (who may be a physician or a
philosopher, a Stoic or an Epicurean, a Platonist or an Aristotelian,
a pagan or a Christian). Sometimes all the *doxai* belonging to
a specific sub-set, or dealing with a specific theme, may turn out to
be unacceptable, or useless, under certain circumstances or to
somebody in particular. The fact should never be lost from view that
the *Placita* merely provides a *status quaestionis*:
material for instruction, discussion and reflection on, say, the shape
of the moon, or the size of the sun, or the causes of earthquakes, or
of the flooding of the Nile, or the various explanations of visual
perception. Neither a suspension of judgement, in the manner of the
Skeptics, nor a positive outcome, in the manner of Aristotle or the
Stoics, is ever formulated, no explicit advice ever given either way.
Only very rarely is there a critical note.



Furthermore, there is a significant difference between
Aristotle's overviews (which we know much better than those of
Theophrastus, so for the sake of clarity one may restrict oneself to
Aristotle) and the corresponding passages and sections in Aetius
and his family. Aristotle's purpose was to make a choice and to
find a solution, and many later authors also wanted this. But numerous
chapters in the *Placita* literature when taken at face-value
seem to make a decision impossible, because the bald diaeretic
contrast between the tenets listed in the lemmata results in a logjam,
or *diaphonia* ('discordance'), as the ancient
Skeptics called it. It might be concluded from this stalemate that the
only remaining option is to suspend one's judgment. It was at
the time impossible, for instance, to find out whether there is one
cosmic system, or more. It is an attractive idea that at least part of
the material (in the course of time naturally updated by the inclusion
of post-Aristotelian tenets) was adapted by Academic Skeptics to
induce the tranquillity of mind which follows upon suspension of
judgment.


## 6. Doxography broad and narrow



Consequently, doxography in the narrower sense (derived from the
nature of the majority of the sources discussed and edited by Diels in
the *Doxographi Graeci*), can be defined as: the normally very
brief presentation according to theme, or subject, of contrasting (or
even bizarre, or compromise) tenets in natural philosophy (or science,
if you wish), which in itself does not provide a decisive answer to
the issue involved although it may assist you to find a solution. The
application of the term 'doxography' to what one finds in
Aristotle (or, on a much more limited scale, in Plato, who
occasionally quotes the views of others to further a discussion) can
therefore be misleading (see Mansfeld 2000).



Turning now to doxography in the broad sense, we observe that
Cicero's leisured and extensive presentations, e.g., in his
*On the Nature of the Gods* of the Epicurean and Stoic
doctrines in the field of theology-cum-physics--presentations
followed by Academic-Skeptical refutations--may be, and have
been, called by the name of doxography. But there are obvious
differences from doxographies of the Aetian type. To be sure, one
might perhaps, with some hesitation, maintain that what we have here
is a sort of blow-up of the dialectical scheme one also finds in the
*Placita* literature, with the skeptical component made
explicit: contrasting doctrines which turn out to be improvable.
Such  a move however  is less valid for Diogenes
Laertius, in spite of the fact that this author several times
makes a distinction between the life (*bios*) of a person
(Plato; the Stoic Zeno of Citium) and the *areskonta* or
*dogmata* of this person, or of his school. It is therefore
perhaps better to classify these overviews in Cicero and Diogenes
Laertius as belonging with an ancient genre which we may view as
a sub-species of doxography, namely the (largely lost) literature
*Peri Haireseon* ('On Schools'), which deals
with philosophical, or medical, schools and eventually may include
arguments against the position of a particular *hairesis*
('school'). Philodemus, and Arius Didymus (on ethics),
belong here as well.



Scholars, as we have noticed, also speak of ethical doxographies. One
could justify this usage by submitting that this is going beyond
Diels, and back to Aristotle. We have seen that Aristotle advised his
pupils (and himself) also to construct lists of ethical propositions
and problems. In his ethical treatises we actually find dialectical
overviews concerning problems in ethics, though on a much more modest
scale than in the physical treatises. But a doxographical literature
in the field of ethics, which as to scale and taxonomy would be even
remotely comparable to physical doxography, never existed. Yet one
occasionally encounters short lists and overviews of ethical tenets in
some later authors. It is therefore possible that modest doxographical
collections of ethical views did circulate, and we may have some
evidence concerned with the circulation (and adaptation) of a
diaeretical overview of tenets about the End, or Highest Good (Algra
1997).


## 7. Reconstructing an old document



A text of Aetius in a single column has now been published (Mansfeld
and Runia 2020), superseding Diels' text in two columns. The
evidence of the primary and secondary sources for the reconstruction
of each individual chapter is cited in full, though for Plutarch and
Stobaeus only in the positive apparatus criticus. A detailed
commentary follows. For each chapter its reconstruction from the
witnesses is explained, its position in the context of the
*Placita* and sometimes of the wider tradition determined, its
contents and structure analyzed, such parallel evidence as is
available, both earlier and later to much later, analyzed, and
problems of interpretation raised by the text and contents of
individual tenets are often separately discussed. Each chapter ends
with a generous collection of further related texts to widen the
horizon and place the topic of the chapter in the context of the
history of ancient philosophy from beginning to end. These
commentaries and collections of texts situate the *Placita* at
a key point in the development over the centuries of Greek philosophy,
looking backwards as well as forward. The existing remains amount to
about six-sevenths of the original (see Jeremiah 2018).


## 8. Conclusion



Finally, it should be pointed out that doxographic works are tools of
a sort. They constitute a type of secondary literature of a fluid and
unstable character, both as to form and as to contents. Shorter and
longer versions may be available alongside each other; in fact, for
all the losses sustained by ancient literature, some still are.
Materials may be added, or lost, or added again in a continuous
process of epitomizing and enlarging and updating--and it
remained possible, of course, to inspect and excerpt original sources
at least in some cases. 



In order the better to understand the value of the available evidence
pertaining to lost philosophical works from Antiquity one therefore
should attempt to understand the traditions and transmissions that are
involved as a whole. One should take the rationale of the extant
overviews into account, and try to discover the intentions of authors
who made use of doxographies. A naive use of the available
collections of philosophical fragments, implying the putting on the
same level of reliability of most of the evidence that remains, does
not always produce good results.