Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Greek: Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντων) is a biography of the Greek philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, written in Greek, perhaps in the first half of the third century AD.
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The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, was written in Greek and professes to give an account of the lives and sayings of the Greek philosophers. The work doesn't have an exact title in the manuscripts and appears in various lengthy forms.
Although it is at best an uncritical and unphilosophical compilation, its value, as giving us an insight into the private lives of the Greek sages, led Montaigne to write that he wished that instead of one Laërtius there had been a dozen.[1] On the other hand, modern scholars have advised that we treat Diogenes' testimonia with care, especially when he fails to cite his sources: "Diogenes has acquired an importance out of all proportion to his merits because the loss of many primary sources and of the earlier secondary compilations has accidentally left him the chief continuous source for the history of Greek philosophy."[2]
Laërtius treats his subject in two divisions which he describes as the Ionian and the Italian schools. The biographies of the former begin with Anaximander, and end with Clitomachus, Theophrastus and Chrysippus; the latter begins with Pythagoras, and ends with Epicurus. The Socratic school, with its various branches, is classed with the Ionic; while the Eleatics and sceptics are treated under the Italic. He also includes his own poetic verse, albeit pedestrian, about the philosophers he discusses.
The work contains incidental remarks on many other philosophers, and there are useful accounts concerning Hegesias, Anniceris, and Theodorus (Cyrenaics);[3] Persaeus (Stoic);[4] and Metrodorus and Hermarchus (Epicureans).[5] Book VII is incomplete and breaks off during the life of Chrysippus. From a table of contents in one of the manuscripts (manuscript P), this book is known to have continued with Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes, Apollodorus, Boethus, Mnesarchides, Mnasagoras, Nestor, Basilides, Dardanus, Antipater, Heraclides, Sosigenes, Panaetius, Hecato, Posidonius, Athenodorus, another Athenodorus, Antipater, Arius, and Cornutus. The whole of Book X is devoted to Epicurus, and contains three long letters written by Epicurus, which explain Epicurean doctrines.
His chief authorities were Favorinus and Diocles of Magnesia, but his work also draws (either directly or indirectly) on books by Antisthenes of Rhodes, Alexander Polyhistor, and Demetrius of Magnesia, as well as works by Hippobotus, Aristippus, Panaetius, Apollodorus, Sosicrates, Satyrus, Sotion, Neanthes, Hermippus, Antigonus, Heraclides, Hieronymus, and Pamphila[6][7] From the statements of the pseudo-Burlaeus, in the 14th-century work De vita et moribus philosophorum, the text of Diogenes seems to have been much fuller than that which we now possess.
There are many extant manuscripts of the Lives, although none of them are especially old, and they all descend from a common ancestor, because they all lack the end of Book VII.[8] The three most useful manuscripts are known as B, P, and F. Manuscript B (Codex Borbonicus) dates from the 12th century, and is in the National Library of Naples.[9] Manuscript P (Paris) and manuscript F (Florence) are probably a little younger.[10]
There seem to have been some early Latin translations, which have no longer survived. A 10th century work entitled Tractatus de dictis philosophorum shows some knowledge of Diogenes.[11] Henry Aristippus, in the 12th century, is known to have translated at least some of the work into Latin, and in the 14th century an unknown author made use of a Latin translation for his De vita et moribus philosophorum[11] (attributed erroneously to Walter Burley).
The first printed editions were Latin translations. The first, Laertii Diogenis Vitae et sententiae eorum qui in philosophia probati fuerunt (Romae: Giorgo Lauer, 1472), printed the translation of Ambrogio Traversari (whose manuscript presentation copy to Cosimo de' Medici was dated February 8, 1433[12]) and was edited by Elio Francesco Marchese.[13] The Greek text of the lives of Aristotle and Theophrastus appeared in the third volume of the Aldine Aristotle in 1497. The first edition of the whole Greek text was that published by Hieronymus Froben in 1533.[14]
The first critical edition of the entire text, by H.S. Long in the Oxford Classical Texts, was not produced until 1964;[8] this edition was superseded by Miroslav Marcovich's Teubner edition, published between 1999 and 2002. A new edition, by Tiziano Dorandi, is to be published by Cambridge University Press (see T. Dorandi, Laertiana Berlin, Walter de Gruyter 2009).
There have been three English translations of the complete Lives. The first was a late 17th-century translation by ten different persons.[15] A better translation was made by Charles Duke Yonge (1853),[16] but although this was more literal, it still contained many inaccuracies.[17] The translation by Robert Drew Hicks (1925) for the Loeb Classical Library,[18] remains the definitive translation, although it is slightly bowdlerized.