1. Aristotle, Sense And Sensibilia, None (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
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2. Cicero, Academica, 1.34, 2.21, 2.51 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 1.34. Nam Strato eius auditor quamquam fuit acri ingenio tamen ab ea disciplina omnino semovendus est; qui cum maxime necessariam partem philosophiae, quae posita est in virtute et in in om. mgf moribus, reliquisset totumque se ad investigationem naturae contulisset, in ea ipsa plurimum dissedit a suis. Speusippus autem et Xenocrates, qui primi Platonis rationem auctoritatemque susceperant, et post eos Polemo Polemon *g et Crates unaque Crantor Cranto p 2 wg 2 Cratero g 1 Crator *g*d in Academia congregati diligenter ea eis px quae a superioribus acceperant tuebantur. utebantur *d Iam Polemonem audiverant assidue Zeno et Arcesilas. Archesilaus x | |
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3. Cicero, On Duties, 1.13 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 1.13. In primisque hominis est propria veri inquisitio atque investigatio. Itaque cum sumus necessariis negotiis curisque vacui, tum avemus aliquid videre, audire, addiscere cognitionemque rerum aut occultarum aut admirabilium ad beate vivendum necessariam ducimus. Ex quo intellegitur, quod verum, simplex sincerumque sit, id esse naturae hominis aptissimum. Huic veri videndi cupiditati adiuncta est appetitio quaedam principatus, ut nemini parere animus bene informatus a natura velit nisi praecipienti aut docenti aut utilitatis causa iuste et legitime imperanti; ex quo magnitudo animi exsistit humanarumque rerum contemptio. | |
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4. Mishnah, Avot, 1 (1st cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
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5. Sextus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.36 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
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6. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 4.4, 9.112, 9.115-9.116 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
| 4.4. Plutarch in the Lives of Lysander and Sulla makes his malady to have been morbus pedicularis. That his body wasted away is affirmed by Timotheus in his book On Lives. Speusippus, he says, meeting a rich man who was in love with one who was no beauty, said to him, Why, pray, are you in such sore need of him? For ten talents I will find you a more handsome bride.He has left behind a vast store of memoirs and numerous dialogues, among them:Aristippus the Cyrenaic.On Wealth, one book.On Pleasure, one book.On Justice,On Philosophy,On Friendship,On the Gods,The Philosopher,A Reply to Cephalus,Cephalus,Clinomachus or Lysias,The Citizen,of the Soul,A Reply to Gryllus 9.112. The first deals with the same subjects, except that the poem is a monologue. It begins as follows:Ye sophists, ye inquisitives, come! follow!He died at the age of nearly ninety, so we learn from Antigonus and from Sotion in his eleventh book. I have heard that he had only one eye; indeed he used to call himself a Cyclops. There was another Timon, the misanthrope.Now this philosopher, according to Antigonus, was very fond of gardens and preferred to mind his own affairs. At all events there is a story that Hieronymus the Peripatetic said of him, Just as with the Scythians those who are in flight shoot as well as those who pursue, so, among philosophers, some catch their disciples by pursuing them, some by fleeing from them, as for instance Timon. 9.115. Asked once by Arcesilaus why he had come there from Thebes, he replied, Why, to laugh when I have you all in full view! Yet, while attacking Arcesilaus in his Silli, he has praised him in his work entitled the Funeral Banquet of Arcesilaus.According to Menodotus he left no successor, but his school lapsed until Ptolemy of Cyrene re-established it. Hippobotus and Sotion, however, say that he had as pupils Dioscurides of Cyprus, Nicolochus of Rhodes, Euphranor of Seleucia, and Pralus of the Troad. The latter, as we learn from the history of Phylarchus, was a man of such unflinching courage that, although unjustly accused, he patiently suffered a traitor's death, without so much as deigning to speak one word to his fellow-citizens. 9.116. Euphranor had as pupil Eubulus of Alexandria; Eubulus taught Ptolemy, and he again Sarpedon and Heraclides; Heraclides again taught Aenesidemus of Cnossus, the compiler of eight books of Pyrrhonean discourses; the latter was the instructor of Zeuxippus his fellow-citizen, he of Zeuxis of the angular foot, he again of Antiochus of Laodicea on the Lycus, who had as pupils Menodotus of Nicomedia, an empiric physician, and Theiodas of Laodicea; Menodotus was the instructor of Herodotus of Tarsus, son of Arieus, and Herodotus taught Sextus Empiricus, who wrote ten books on Scepticism, and other fine works. Sextus taught Saturninus called Cythenas, another empiricist. |
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7. Strabo, Geography, 13.1.54
| 13.1.54. From Scepsis came the Socratic philosophers Erastus and Coriscus and Neleus the son of Coriscus, this last a man who not only was a pupil of Aristotle and Theophrastus, but also inherited the library of Theophrastus, which included that of Aristotle. At any rate, Aristotle bequeathed his own library to Theophrastus, to whom he also left his school; and he is the first man, so far as I know, to have collected books and to have taught the kings in Egypt how to arrange a library. Theophrastus bequeathed it to Neleus; and Neleus took it to Scepsis and bequeathed it to his heirs, ordinary people, who kept the books locked up and not even carefully stored. But when they heard bow zealously the Attalic kings to whom the city was subject were searching for books to build up the library in Pergamum, they hid their books underground in a kind of trench. But much later, when the books had been damaged by moisture and moths, their descendants sold them to Apellicon of Teos for a large sum of money, both the books of Aristotle and those of Theophrastus. But Apellicon was a bibliophile rather than a philosopher; and therefore, seeking a restoration of the parts that had been eaten through, he made new copies of the text, filling up the gaps incorrectly, and published the books full of errors. The result was that the earlier school of Peripatetics who came after Theophrastus had no books at all, with the exception of only a few, mostly exoteric works, and were therefore able to philosophize about nothing in a practical way, but only to talk bombast about commonplace propositions, whereas the later school, from the time the books in question appeared, though better able to philosophise and Aristotelise, were forced to call most of their statements probabilities, because of the large number of errors. Rome also contributed much to this; for, immediately after the death of Apellicon, Sulla, who had captured Athens, carried off Apellicon's library to Rome, where Tyrannion the grammarian, who was fond of Aristotle, got it in his hands by paying court to the librarian, as did also certain booksellers who used bad copyists and would not collate the texts — a thing that also takes place in the case of the other books that are copied for selling, both here and at Alexandria. However, this is enough about these men. |
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