Antipater of Tyre

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Antipater (Greek: Ἀντίπατρος) of Tyre was a Stoic philosopher, and a contemporary of Cato the Younger. Antipater is said to have befriended Cato when the latter was a young man.[1] He appears to be the same as the Anti­pater of Tyre mentioned by Strabo. [2].

He lived after, or was at least younger than, Panaetius. Cicero, [3] in speaking of him, says, that he died "recently at Athens", which must mean shortly before 45 BC. From this pas­sage we can infer that Antipater wrote a work on Duties (Latin: de Officiis), and Diogenes Laërtius [4] refers to a work by him on the Universe (Greek: περὶ κόσμου), of which he quotes the eighth book:

And thus the whole world, being a living thing, endowed with a soul and with reason, has the aether as its dominant principle.[4]

Leonhard Schmitz, in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, stated that the Antipater of Tyre who was the friend of Cato, was a different, earlier Antipater of Tyre to the one mentioned by Cicero, without giving any clear reasons for this claim.[5]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Plutarch, Cato the Younger. 4.
  2. ^ Strabo, xvi. p. 757.
  3. ^ Cicero, de Off. ii. 24
  4. ^ a b Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, VII 70 ff.
  5. ^ Smith W., Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Page 204. (1849).

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).

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