Sotion

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Sotion of Alexandria (fl. c. 200 BC – 170 BC) was a Greek doxographer and biographer, and an important source for Diogenes Laertius. None of his works survive; they are known only indirectly. His principal work, the Διαδοχή or Διαδοχαί (the Successions), was the first history known to have organized philosophers into schools of successive influence: e.g., the so-called Ionian school of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes (a modern, presumably more accurate, analogue is the Mathematics Genealogy Project). Sotion's Successions likely consisted of thirteen books, and at least partly drew on the doxography of Theophrastus. The Successions was influential enough to be abridged by Herakleides Lembos in the mid-second century B.C., and works by the same title were subsequently written by Sosicrates of Rhodes and Antisthenes of Rhodes.