H. P. GRICE (M. A. LIT. HUM.) E LA STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA ROMANA ANTICA

 As Grice notes, the term ‘doxography’ has come to be applied in a much larger sense than seems to have been intended by its creator Hermann Diels. 

This name for the 'genre,' if we may misleadingly call it that, derives from the Latin neologism ‘doxographus,' used by Diels to indicate an author of a rather strictly specified type of literature studied and edited in his monumental Doxographi of 1879. 

Diels's researches were focused on writings concerned with the physical part of philosophy (including principles, theology, cosmology, astronomy, meteorology, biology and part of medicine). 

Today overviews in the field of ethics may also be called "doxographical."

And philosophers speak of a ‘doxography’ to be found in the dialogues of Plato and the treatises of Aristotle, although these are works in which issues of philosophy are addressed, with only ancillary discussion of the views of others.  

The following authors and main works, listed in chronological order, are representative of doxography in the broad as well as in the narrower sense (a complete list of names and titles would be impractical).

[1]  

Cicero -- CICERONE -- .

One of our indispensable sources for the debates among the schools of Hellenistic philosophy, especially Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Academic Skepticism: 

Cicero's "Academics (book two deals with questions of epistemology from Stoic and Academic Skeptic angles); 

"On the Chief Ends of Good and Evil"; 

"On the Nature of the Gods": contrasting Epicurean and Stoic views on nature and the gods and criticizing them from the viewpoint of moderate Skepticism); 

"On Fate": hellenistic arguments pro and contra determinism); 

"On Duties" -- largely based on a treatise of the Middle Stoic Panaetius). (Broad) 

Philodemus covers works more or less extant on charred papyrus scrolls: 

Arrangement of the Philosophers, esp. two books dealing with the Academic and Stoic schools from an institutional angle.

Also a polemical treatise On the Stoics. 

A section from his On Piety briefly dealing with the tenets of the philosophers about the gods is closely parallel to a section in book one of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods.

Both passages printed in parallel columns in Diels 1879. (Broad)  

Pseudo-Plutarch:

Placida, 'tenets’, ‘doctrines’ dealing with physics in five books ranging from first principles to diseases and old age. 

Issues in physical philosophy are presented in chapters which (as a rule) contrast the tenets of the philosophers and occasionally of some physicians and astronomers, in a systematic not a chronological sequence. 

As a rule, each individual tenet is formulated in an extremely brief way. 

No information is provided about individuals later than 1st c. BCE. 

See below, section 2, on Aëtius’ Placita of which this tract is an epitome. 

Edited as left column of reconstructed Aëtius in Diels 1879. (Narrow)  

Arius Didymus

Smaller and larger fragments from works cited as On Schools, or as Abstract(s), in their present form mainly dealing with Stoic and Peripatetic physics on the one hand (edited Diels 1879),[2] and Stoic and Peripatetic ethics (extant in Stobaeus, see below) on the other. (Narrow)  

Plutarch, esp. polemical treatises against Epicureans and Stoics: That Epicurus Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible, Reply to Colotes, Is ‘Live Unknown’ a Wise Precept?, and On Stoic Self-Contradictions, Against the Stoics on Common Conceptions. (Broad)  

Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis (‘Patchworks’), numerous passages adducing, 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 history of Hellenistic, philosophy: Lives and Maxims of Those who Have Distinguished themselves in Philosophy and the Doctrines of Each Sect, in ten books. 

As the title shows this work offers a blend of biography and doxography. 

Lay-out is according to philosophical schools: e.g., book seven gives the common dogmata of the Stoic school in the life of its founder. 

Ranges from the Seven Sages and the Presocratics to the Hellenistic schools up to the 2nd – 1st c. BCE. (Broad)  

Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies: important esp. as source for Presocratic doctrines (and fragments!) (Osborne 1987, Mansfeld 1992b). 

Book one edited Diels 1879. (Narrow, more or less)  

Pseudo-Galen, Philosophical History, mostly a sorry epitome of Pseudo-Plutarch Placita. Edited Diels 1879, in part Jas 2018. (Narrow)  

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

(Arius Didymus) and (narrow) (Aëtius).  

Theodoret, Cure for the Diseases of the Greeks, contains excerpts from Aëtius (see below, section 2) quoted at bottom of Aëtian page in Diels 1879 and in Mansfeld & Runia 2020. (Narrow)