The great majority of Greek (and Roman) philosophical writings havebeen irretrievably lost. But this loss is made good to some extent notonly by quotations from lost works recorded by later writers, but alsoby the varieties of ancient reportage that are extant. The modern namefor these forms of reportage is ‘doxography’, which couldbe translated ‘tenet-writing’. Broadly speaking,doxography encompasses those writings, or parts of writings, in whichthe author presents philosophical views of some or other of theancient philosophers or schools, in some or other areas, or on some orother topics, of philosophy, whether with or without presentation ofthe argumentation or analysis through which they offered philosophicalsupport or reasons in favor of their ‘tenets’, and whetheror not they also include critical evaluations and comments of theauthor's own. In other words, these are works (or sections of works)taking as their subject matter the tenets or doctrines of thephilosophers, rather than independent works of philosophy in which theauthor addresses in the first instance issues or topics of philosophy,with ancillary discussion along the way of the opinions of otherphilosophers. The terms for tenets, or views, in ancient Greek aredoxai ordogmata, in Latinopiniones; thosefor doctrines are, in Greek,areskonta, translated into Latinasplacita. But note that these designations were usedinterchangeably.

• 1. Introduction and overview
• 2. Diels’ reconstruction of the narrow doxographical tradition
• 3. Objections to Diels’ theory: the Aristotelian background
• 4. Theophrastus and thePlacita
• 5. Using doxographies
• 6. Doxography broad and narrow
• 7. Reconstructing an old document
• 8. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Introduction and overview

The term ‘doxography’ has come to be applied in a muchlarger sense than seems to have been intended by its creator HermannDiels. This name for the genre, if we may misleadingly call it that,derives from the Latin neologism ‘doxographi’ used byDiels to indicate the authors of a rather strictly specified type ofliterature studied and edited in his monumentalDoxographiGraeci (‘Greek Doxographers’) of 1879. His researcheswere focused on writings concerned with thephysical part ofphilosophy (including principles, theology, cosmology, astronomy,meteorology, biology and part of medicine). But today overviews in thefield of ethics are also called doxographical. And scholars speak of‘doxographies’ to be found in the dialogues of Plato andthe treatises of Aristotle, although these are works in which issuesof philosophy are addressed, with only ancillary discussion of theviews of others.

The following authors and main works, listed in chronological order,are representative of doxography in thebroad as well as inthenarrower sense (a complete list of names and titles wouldbe impractical).^[1]

• Cicero, 1st c. BCE: one of our indispensable sources for (the debatesamong the) schools of Hellenistic philosophy, esp. Stoicism,Epicureanism, and Academic Skepticism:Academics (book twodeals with questions of epistemology from Stoic and Academic Skepticangles);On the Chief Ends of Good and Evil;On theNature of the Gods (contrasting Epicurean and Stoic views onnature and the gods and criticizing them from the viewpoint ofmoderate Skepticism);On Fate (hellenistic arguments pro andcontra determinism);On Duties (largely based on a treatiseof the Middle Stoic Panaetius). (Broad)

• Philodemus, 1st c. BCE: works more or less extant on charred papyrusscrolls:Arrangement of the Philosophers, esp. two booksdealing with the Academic and Stoic schools from an institutionalangle; also a polemical treatiseOn the Stoics. A sectionfrom hisOn Piety briefly dealing with the tenets of thephilosophers about the gods is closely parallel to a section in bookone of Cicero’sOn the Nature of the Gods; bothpassages printed in parallel columns in Diels 1879.(Broad)

• Ps-Plutarch, 2nd c. CE:Placita (‘tenets’,‘doctrines’) dealing with physics in five books rangingfrom first principles to diseases and old age. Issues in physicalphilosophy are presented in chapters which (as a rule) contrast thetenets of the philosophers and occasionally of some physicians andastronomers, in a systematic not a chronological sequence. As a ruleeach individual tenet is formulated in an extremely brief way. Noinformation is provided about individuals later than 1st c. BCE. Seebelow, section 2, on Aëtius’Placita of which thistract is an epitome. Edited as left column of reconstructedAëtius in Diels 1879. (Narrow)

• Arius Didymus, late 1st c. CE: smaller and larger fragments from workscited asOn Schools, or asAbstract(s), intheir present form mainly dealing with Stoic and Peripatetic physicson the one hand (edited Diels 1879),^[2] and Stoic and Peripatetic ethics (extant in Stobaeus, see below) onthe other. (Narrow)

• Plutarch, after 45 – after 120 CE: esp. polemical treatisesagainst Epicureans and Stoics:That Epicurus Makes a Pleasant LifeImpossible,Reply to Colotes,Is ‘LiveUnknown’ a Wise Precept?, andOn StoicSelf-Contradictions, Against the Stoics on Common Conceptions.(Broad)

• Clement of Alexandria, late 2nd c. CE, a Christian author:Stromateis (‘Patchworks’), numerous passagesadducing, and explaining, the views of poets and prose-writers,philosophers and others, on a great variety of issues.(Broad)

• Diogenes Laërtius, early 3rd c. CE, indispensable for the historyof Greek, esp. Hellenistic, philosophy:Lives and Maxims of Thosewho Have Distinguished themselves in Philosophy and the Doctrines ofEach Sect, in ten books. As the title shows this work offers ablend of biography and doxography. Lay-out is according tophilosophical schools: e.g., book seven gives the commondogmata of the Stoic school in the life of its founder.Ranges from the Seven Sages and the Presocratics to the Hellenisticschools up to the 2nd – 1st c. BCE. (Broad)

• Hippolytus, early 3rd c. CE, a Christian author,Refutation of AllHeresies: important esp. as source for Presocratic doctrines (andfragments!) (Osborne 1987, Mansfeld 1992b). Book one edited Diels1879. (Narrow, more or less)

• Ps-Galen,Philosophical History, date uncertain (3rd-5th c.CE?): mostly a sorry epitome of Ps-PlutarchPlacita. EditedDiels 1879, in part Jas 2018. (Narrow)

• Stobaeus, 5th c. CE:Anthology, of which in the first twobooks (Eclogae) among other invaluable excerpts chunks ofAëtius (see below, section 2) are preserved; edited as rightcolumn for Aëtius in Diels 1879, and also containing large andsmaller abstracts from Arius Didymus (see above). (Broad)(Arius Didymus) and (narrow) (Aëtius).

• Theodoret, 5th c. CE, Christian bishop:Cure for the Diseases ofthe Greeks, contains excerpts from Aëtius (see below,section 2) quoted at bottom of Aëtian page in Diels 1879 and inMansfeld & Runia 2020. (Narrow)

2. Diels’ reconstruction of the narrow doxographical tradition

The starting-point of Diels' (1879) inquiries was a hypothesisprovided by his Bonn teacher andDoktorvater Hermann Usener(who had predecessors himself), concerning the identical or closelysimilar language used in reports of pre-Socratic and otherphilosophical doctrines contained in two late compendia, thePlacita (‘Tenets’) surviving among ourmanuscripts of Plutarch, and theEclogae of the anthologizerStobaeus; this hypothesis Diels modified in certain respects, and alsomade much more complicated, as he attempted to trace back fromps-Plutarch and Stobaeus a long line of predecessors, eachsuccessively relied upon by later authors in compilingphilosophers’ doctrines, all the way down to ps-Plutarch andStobaeus themselves. In a truly magisterial way he gave it the aura ofabsolute certainty and unassailability which did much to ensure itsdominating 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 beginswith Aristotle’s pupil and successor Theophrastus. In thecatalogue of his oeuvre preserved in hisLife in DiogenesLaertius a treatise is listed of ‘PhysikônDoxôn, sixteen books’. For the Greek title in thenominative one has a choice betweenPhysikôn Doxai(‘Tenets of the Natural Philosophers’) andPhysikaiDoxai (‘Tenets in Natural Philosophy’). Usener andDiels opted for the first alternative, but in the opinion of manyscholars today the second option is much more plausible. To thistreatise they attributed a number of fragments dealing with theprinciples (archai: Thales’ water, Heraclitus’fire, etc.) transmitted for the most part by Simplicius, aNeoplatonist commentator on Aristotle of the 6th c. CE. ThatSimplicius and others explicitly quote from Theophrastus’Physics, a different treatise, did not bother them. Theyfurther posited that a short monograph of Theophrastus, theDeSensibus, dealing with theories concerning the senses and theirobjects from Parmenides to Democritus and Plato, is a fragment of thistreatise as well. The simple fact however that Plato, not first andforemost a philosopher of nature, is treated here on the same level asDemocritus and the other natural philosophers (as is also the case inthe fragments dealing with the principles) should have made them morehesitant, even within the scope of their own hypothesis, as to theinterpretation of the title of the foundational treatise in sixteenbooks.

TheMetarsiology attributed to Theophrastus, extant in Syrianand Arabic translation, was discovered and published too late to betaken into account by Diels. Doubts about the attribution areformulated by Bakker 2016. For the text see Daiber 1992, and for therelation to thePlacita Mansfeld & Runia 2020,4.3.1135–37.

According to Diels’ revision of the hypothesis a number ofextant writings (as well as sections of writings) concerned withdoctrines in the fields of natural philosophy ultimately derive fromfrom thePhysikôn Doxai (as he called the work), viaseveral intermediary stages. These stages are:

1. ThePlacita of an otherwise unknown Aëtius, who ismentioned several times by Theodoret; to be dated to the late 1st orperhaps early 2nd c. CE. Theodoret as source was for the first timeadduced by Diels. This Aëtian work, he thought, may bereconstructed (a) from thePlacita of ps-Plutarch, (b) fromquotations in theAnthology of Stobaeus, and (c) from echoesin theTherapy of Greek Diseases of Theodoret^[3]. Ps-Plutarch is an epitome of Aëtius. Stobaeus as a rule quotesverbatim, but has a different systematic lay-out. TheAnthology, moreover, has been much abridged and damaged inthe course of transmission, so in a number of cases Stobaean parallelsfor ps-Plutarch are no longer extant. Aëtius will also have beenused by other authors, whereas ps-Plutarch would have been used byother authors again. Diels indeed proved that the second part ofps-GalenPhilosophical History is an epitome of a version ofps-Plutarch.
2. In his turn, Aëtius would for the most part derive from apostulated treatise to which Diels gave the nameVetustaPlacita (‘Older Tenets’), which would have been usedby Cicero, Varro and others. Its latest possible date, accordingly, isthe early 1st c. BCE.

The Aëtius 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 ofwhich would have been taken over and adapted by Cicero as well as muchlater by, for instance, ps-Galen. TheVetusta Placitahypothesis, on the other hand, is dubious, and the way back toTheophrastus is much more complicated and uncertain, if only becausehard evidence is so scarce, than Diels, who just stuck toUsener’s point of view about Theophrastus, wished toconsider.

Diels next posited that Theophrastus’ treatise, theVetustaPlacita, and Aëtius had the same kind of systematic lay-outas the extantPlacita of ps-Plutarch, viz. according tosubject. The individual books and sections of books of this tract areindeed concerned with specific themes, such as for instance book two,which deals with the cosmos and the heavenly bodies. Within theframework of a section devoted to a particular subject, e.g., the sun,or the moon, the individual chapters may be concerned with variousspecific issues pertaining to the sun, or the moon, and so on.

Diels further argued that other reports, in other authors, should alsobe connected with Theophrastus’ foundational treatise. Thepassages dealing with the tenets of Presocratic philosophers in thehistory of philosophy by Diogenes Laërtius, which is arrangedaccording to schools and individuals, not subjects, as well as similarsections of the first book of Hippolytus’Refutation of AllHeresies and of theStromateis(‘Patchworks’) of another ps-Plutarch, in Diels’view also went back, ultimately, to theTenets of the NaturalPhilosophers. He failed to take the difference between treatmentaccording to subject and that according to person, or school,sufficiently into account. His argumentation is also dubious in otherrespects. From the undeniable fact that there are strikingresemblances between Theophrastus’ fragments concerned with theprinciples on the one hand, and what is found on that score inAëtius, Diogenes Laërtius, and Hippolytus on the other, itdoes not follow that corresponding passages in these later authors forwhich we have no Theophrastean parallels derive from Theophrastus too.This is source criticism, orQuellenforschung, at its mostvulnerable. Diels moreover preferred to overlook the equallyundeniable fact that Aristotle’s treatment of the principles inthe first book of theMetaphysics exhibits equally strikingcorrespondences with Theophrastus’ fragments (Zeller 1877), andso with the later tradition as well, which could therefore go backultimately to Aristotle, and not to Theophrastus.

Diels saw the development from Theophrastus to these later and (in hisview) dependent authors as a decline, and a progressive obfuscationand deterioration. His cladistic reconstruction of the doxographicaltradition is clearly related to the famous so-called‘Lachmannian’ stemma of a group of manuscripts, from latercopies to the lost common ancestor, or archetype, the text of which(as scholars believed at the time) may be reconstructed in a virtuallymechanical way. Diels was very much aware of this analogy, whichsurely was an important factor in convincing him and others that thesplendid results of his investigations were irrefutable. In the 19thcentury the method attributed to Lachmann was assumed to be beyondcriticism.

By thus (so to speak automatically) tracing back these mutuallycorresponding passages in later authors to the, as he assumed,faithful reporter Theophrastus, Diels believed he gained access toreliable information about Presocratic philosophy. Thanks to thestemmatic method back to the archetype it became possible to bestowupon a passage (a brief lemma in, for instance, Aëtius) dealingwith a tenet of a Presocratic philosopher, the conditional status ofbeing an attestation which, though still at second hand, should beearly and therefore the more to be trusted. It is with the importancemeted out to such so-called ‘fragments’ that theselemmata, removed by Diels’ scissors from Aëtian chaptersdealing withsubjects, figure in the chronological series ofchapters devoted topersons in two fundamental works hepublished. These are thePoetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta(‘Fragments of the Poet-Philosophers’) of 1901, reprinted2000, and the famous, several times revised (in later editions byDiels’ collaborator Kranz), and often reprintedFragmenteder Vorsokratiker (‘Fragments of the Presocratics’,abbreviated D.-K.), first published in 1903. Scholars indeed stilltend to view these Aëtian lemmata as a sort of Theophrasteanfragments, and Theophrastus is believed to be a bona fide source. Thisalso holds for those passages in Hippolytus, Diogenes Laërtiusand other authors in D.-K. which had been traced back to Theophrastushypothetically.

However, when one compares Aëtian lemmata concerned with tenetsof extant authors, like Plato or Aristotle, with the doctrines foundin the original texts, it becomes clear to what extent thesedoxai have been adapted and distorted, or‘modernized’, in some sense of the word. This consequentlyshould also hold for lemmata dealing with lost authors, as Xylanderalready pointed out in his 16th century edition of Plutarch, whichincluded theEpitome of ps-Plutarch. (For further reading onthis topic, see Mansfeld & Runia 1997, and Runia 1999, 2004.)

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

3. Objections to Diels’ theory: the Aristotelian background

Usener’s influence is also the cause of a fatal blind spot inDiels. He failed to acknowledge that Theophrastus, too, had a sort ofDoktorvater, namely Aristotle. Aristotle, in his treatises,as a rule lists and discusses the opinions (doxai) of men ingeneral and of the experts (who often are philosophers) in particular,concerning an issue in metaphysics, or physics, or psychology, andsometimes ethics, before embarking on his own investigations. Theseopinions are ordered according to the method ofdiaeresis, ordivision: a classification according to sets, sub-sets andsub-sub-sets with specific differences. Aristotle checks to whatextent these opinions are in agreement among themselves or contradicteach other, and then tries to establish to what extent one of theavailable options may prove acceptable, at least as the starting-pointfor further inquiry, or whether some option may be available whichothers have failed to consider. We call these exegetical andevaluative overviews ‘dialectical’, in the Aristoteliansense of the word of course. An overview of this nature shouldestablish whichgenus, or set, is at issue, that is to saywhether we are faced with a theoretical discipline, such as physics(and then with whatspecies, or sub-set, e.g., zoology), orwith a non-theoretical discipline such as poetics. This approachshould also be applied to the sub-sets, or particular objects ofinquiry, embraced by a particular sub-set. According toPosteriorAnalytics 2.1 various aspects should (or may) be treatedseparately, viz.: (1) does the object of the inquiry possess aparticular property or attribute, or not; (2) the reason why it doespossess this attribute; (3) the existence or non-existence of theobject (for instance: do gods exist?—a question one does notneed to ask when humans, or the sun, are at issue); and (4), thesubstance or definition of the object. Here an important part isplayed by the Aristotelian so-called categories and other kinds ofpredicates, because it is of major importance to establish to whatcategory (viz. substance, or quality, or quantity, or place, or doingand being-affected etc.) a given object of inquiry and/or itsattributes belong, or whether and in what sense for instance motion(or rest) may be predicated of it. These four different primaryquestions, or types of questions, may moreover be formulated inrespect of each category (viz., not only of substance, but also ofquality, etc.). Take the objects of mathematics. According toAristotle these do not belong to the category of substance but to thatof quantity. But within this latter category one may formulatequestions about properties, or attributes, which may belong to them;enquire whether they exist, and if so, in what way; ask whether theymove or not; and so on.

In his treatise on dialectic and its methods, theTopics(1.14), Aristotle provides instructions on how to select and classifypropositions (protaseis) and problems(problêmata):

We should also make selections from the literature and include thesein separate lists for each set, with separate headings, for instance‘On the Good’, or ‘On the LivingBeing’—that is to say the Good as a whole, starting with(the question) ‘what is it?’ One should cite thedoxai [opinions, tenets] of individual thinkers, e.g., thatEmpedocles said that the elements of bodies are four in number[…].

Of propositions and problems there are—to comprehend the matterin outline—three sets: some are ethical, others physical, othersagain logical. Ethical: for instance (the problem) whether one shouldobey one’s parents or the law, when these disagree with eachother. Logical: for instance (the problem) whether the knowledge ofopposites 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 somecases should be, elucidated by means of tenets, or opinions:doxai. As there are three sets of propositions, so there arethree sets ofdoxai: physical, ethical, and‘logical’ (i.e., general). An example of such a diaeresis,or division, of a sub-set which is of fundamental importance forAristotle is found at the beginning of hisPhysics. Thisdivision pertains to two categories and one predicate of a differentsort: the number (category of quantity), nature (category ofsubstance) 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 naturalphilosophy. In line with the rule formulated in theTopicsnames of philosophers are added to some of thedoxai.Numerous other examples of this ingredient of the dialectical methodare to be found in Aristotle’s writings.

The above-cited passage from theTopics, andAristotle’s general practice, help to determine and explain thetitle of the Theophrastean treatise Diels believed to be foundational:it should bePhysikai Doxai, i.e., ‘Tenets in [thevarious fields of] Natural Philosophy’. And one of the rareextant fragments of this treatise not only proves (because of theformulation in Greek of the title as quoted) that this title really is‘Physical Tenets’, but also demonstrates that such tenetswere criticized according to the rules of dialectic. Theophrastus, weare 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’sTopics. Physicaltenets are tenets, or theses, in the fields of natural philosophy inthe largest sense, ranging from the principles, via cosmology,astronomy and meteorology etc., to human psychology (includingphilosophy of mind), biology, and even nosology or the theory ofdiseases. Physical tenets are not only formulated byphysikoi, natural philosophers, but also by physicians andastronomers. Aëtius indeed contains a number of medical^[4] and astronomicaldoxai, the oldest of which may derive fromsources that can perhaps be attributed to some of Aristotle’scollaborators. (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 thePlacita

Theophrastus applies the diaeretic method in his treatiseDeSensibus. The chief division—already found in correspondingpassages in Aristotle—is between those who posit that knowledgeis to be ascribed to similarity (‘like knows like’) andthose who posit that it is to be ascribed to contrast (‘unlikeknows unlike’). Another division, not paralleled in Aristotle,also plays an important part in classifying and dialecticallydiscussing the tenets, viz. between those who assume that there is adifference between thinking and sense-perception, and those who donot. Finally, within each class the philosophers are treated in asequence determined by the number of senses that are posited (categoryof quantity). The last philosopher to be discussed is Democritus, notPlato. This is because Democritus according to Theophrastus assumesthat knowledge comes about through both similarity and contrast.

This presentation, viz. a division, or divisions, of contrastingtenets (names included) dealing with specific issues, followed by anexceptional (or compromise) view, which fails to fit this division, isnot a standard feature of Aristotle’s dialecticaloverviews. However we do find partial anticipations of thismethodology in Aristotle, e.g. in the second chapter ofDeAnima I he opposes three views concerned with the principles thatconstitute the soul: some hold that these are corporeal, others thatthey are incorporeal, while a third group posits a blend of corporealand incorporeal principles. In Aristotle however we do not find thestrings of detailed sortings of individual tenets followed by acompromise or maverick opinion typical of numerousPlacitachapters, while Theophrastus’ presentation in theDeSensibus is in this respect close to thePlacitaroutine.^[5] Consequently, we may submit that it is Aristotle’s dialecticalmethodology, as revised by Theophrastus, which determines thestructure of large sections of thePlacita. It should benoted, moreover, that the introduction of ps-Plutarch’sPlacita, that ‘according to Aristotle and Theophrastusand almost all the Peripatetics a perfect human being should devotehimself toproblems in the fields of natural philosophy andethics’.

Theophrastusand Aristotle, then, were used in this way. Anexample: The chapters in Aëtius (Placita 3.9–15)and Cicero (Academics 2.122) dealing with a number of variousand occasionally even bizarre views concerning the position, motion,shape, etc. of the earth in the last resort patently derive, as totheir main themes and oppositions and even as to some telling details,from a chapter in Aristotle’sOn the Heavens (2.13)(Mansfeld 1992). Cicero here mentions Theophrastus by name; hetherefore may well be involved too, as an intermediary source. But wehave no further evidence concerning his contribution in thisparticular instance.

It is rather amazing that the great Diels, who clearly was aware ofthe importance of the diaeretic method in Aristotle’s writingsand in Theophrastus’De Sensibus, failed to apply thisinsight to thePlacita literature. The diaphonicorganization, moreover, of chapters containing tenets that are listedaccording to criteria determined by various divisions obviouslydetermines not only the presentation but also, to some extent, thecontents of the material.

It would seem that, just as is the case for Aristotle, also in that ofTheophrastus more than one treatise provided material that ultimatelyfound a home in thePlacita, namely at the very least thePhysikai Doxai, thePhysics, theDesensibus, and theMetarsiology.

5. Using doxographies

When we inquire into the way ancient authors have used the informationprovided by Aëtius’Placita, by its progeny, andby its post-Theophrastean predecessors, we often find that thefunction of these collections ofdoxai is not much differentfrom the functions of similar overviews in the context ofAristotle’s dialectical discussions. The main objective of theseauthors, who are in a position to base themselves on evidence that hasalready been provided with a definite structure, is to ascertainwhether a givendoxa may eventually prove to be useful, andwhichdoxai should be rejected—depending, naturally, onthe point of view of the user (who may be a physician or aphilosopher, a Stoic or an Epicurean, a Platonist or an Aristotelian,a pagan or a Christian). Sometimes all thedoxai belonging toa specific sub-set, or dealing with a specific theme, may turn out tobe unacceptable, or useless, under certain circumstances or tosomebody in particular. The fact should never be lost from view thatthePlacita merely provides astatus quaestionis:material for instruction, discussion and reflection on, say, the shapeof the moon, or the size of the sun, or the causes of earthquakes, orof the flooding of the Nile, or the various explanations of visualperception. Neither a suspension of judgement, in the manner of theSkeptics, nor a positive outcome, in the manner of Aristotle or theStoics, is ever formulated, no explicit advice ever given either way.Only very rarely is there a critical note.

Furthermore, there is a significant difference betweenAristotle’s overviews (which we know much better than those ofTheophrastus, so for the sake of clarity one may restrict oneself toAristotle) and the corresponding passages and sections in Aëtiusand his family. Aristotle’s purpose was to make a choice and tofind a solution, and many later authors also wanted this. But numerouschapters in thePlacita literature when taken at face-valueseem to make a decision impossible, because the bald diaereticcontrast between the tenets listed in the lemmata results in a logjam,ordiaphonia (‘discordance’), as the ancientSkeptics called it. It might be concluded from this stalemate that theonly remaining option is to suspend one’s judgment. It was atthe time impossible, for instance, to find out whether there is onecosmic system, or more. It is an attractive idea that at least part ofthe material (in the course of time naturally updated by the inclusionof post-Aristotelian tenets) was adapted by Academic Skeptics toinduce the tranquillity of mind which follows upon suspension ofjudgment.

6. Doxography broad and narrow

Consequently, doxography in the narrower sense (derived from thenature of the majority of the sources discussed and edited by Diels intheDoxographi Graeci), can be defined as: the normally verybrief presentation according to theme, or subject, of contrasting (oreven bizarre, or compromise) tenets in natural philosophy (or science,if you wish), which in itself does not provide a decisive answer tothe issue involved although it may assist you to find a solution. Theapplication of the term ‘doxography’ to what one finds inAristotle (or, on a much more limited scale, in Plato, whooccasionally quotes the views of others to further a discussion) cantherefore be misleading (see Mansfeld 2000).

Turning now to doxography in the broad sense, we observe thatCicero’s leisured and extensive presentations, e.g., in hisOn the Nature of the Gods of the Epicurean and Stoicdoctrines in the field of theology-cum-physics—presentationsfollowed by Academic-Skeptical refutations—may be, and havebeen, called by the name of doxography. But there are obviousdifferences from doxographies of the Aëtian type. To be sure, onemight perhaps, with some hesitation, maintain that what we have hereis a sort of blow-up of the dialectical scheme one also finds in thePlacita literature, with the skeptical component madeexplicit: contrasting doctrines which turn out to be improvable. Sucha move however is less valid for Diogenes Laërtius, in spite ofthe fact that this author several times makes a distinction betweenthe life (bios) of a person (Plato; the Stoic Zeno of Citium)and theareskonta ordogmata of this person, or ofhis school. It is therefore perhaps better to classify these overviewsin Cicero and Diogenes Laërtius as belonging with an ancientgenre which we may view as a sub-species of doxography, namely the(largely lost) literaturePeri Haireseôn (‘OnSchools’), which deals with philosophical, or medical, schoolsand eventually may include arguments against the position of aparticularhairesis (‘school’). Philodemus, andArius Didymus (on ethics), belong here as well.

Scholars, as we have noticed, also speak of ethical doxographies. Onecould justify this usage by submitting that this is going beyondDiels, and back to Aristotle. We have seen that Aristotle advised hispupils (and himself) also to construct lists of ethical propositionsand problems. In his ethical treatises we actually find dialecticaloverviews concerning problems in ethics, though on a much more modestscale than in the physical treatises. But a doxographical literaturein the field of ethics, which as to scale and taxonomy would be evenremotely comparable to physical doxography, never existed. Yet oneoccasionally encounters short lists and overviews of ethical tenets insome later authors. It is therefore possible that modest doxographicalcollections of ethical views did circulate, and we may have someevidence concerned with the circulation (and adaptation) of adiaeretical overview of tenets about the End, or Highest Good (Algra1997). Seneca presesents Stoic ethical doctrines in a systematicmanner after the pattern of physical doxography (Wildberger 2020).

7. Reconstructing an old document

A text of Aëtius in a single column has now been published(Mansfeld and Runia 2020), superseding Diels’ text in twocolumns. The evidence of the primary and secondary sources for thereconstruction of each individual chapter is cited in full, though forPlutarch and Stobaeus only in the positive apparatus criticus. Adetailed commentary follows. For each chapter its reconstruction fromthe witnesses is explained, its position in the context of thePlacita and sometimes of the wider tradition determined, itscontents and structure analyzed, such parallel evidence as isavailable, both earlier and later to much later, analyzed, andproblems of interpretation raised by the text and contents ofindividual tenets are often separately discussed. Each chapter endswith a generous collection of further related texts to widen thehorizon and place the topic of the chapter in the context of thehistory of ancient philosophy from beginning to end. Thesecommentaries and collections of texts situate thePlacita ata key point in the development over the centuries of Greek philosophy,looking backwards as well as forward. The existing remains amount toabout six-sevenths of the original (see Jeremiah 2018). An editiominor has now been published in the Loeb Classical Library.

8. Conclusion

Finally, it should be pointed out that doxographic works are tools ofa sort. They constitute a type of secondary literature of a fluid andunstable character, both as to form and as to contents. Shorter andlonger versions may be available alongside each other; in fact, forall the losses sustained by ancient literature, some still are.Materials may be added, or lost, or added again in a continuousprocess of epitomizing and enlarging and updating—and itremained possible, of course, to inspect and excerpt original sourcesat least in some cases.

In order the better to understand the value of the available evidencepertaining to lost philosophical works from Antiquity one thereforeshould attempt to understand the traditions and transmissions that areinvolved as a whole. One should take the rationale of the extantoverviews into account, and try to discover the intentions of authorswho made use of doxographies. A naïve use of the availablecollections of philosophical fragments, implying the putting on thesame level of reliability of most of the evidence that remains, doesnot always produce good results.

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