Title

Philosophical Lives: The Academics

Authors

Jorgen Mejer, University of Copenhagen

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-30-1986

Abstract

No modern account of the history of the Academy as a whole exists. For the early history of the Academy, the last 3 1/2 centuries BC, we are in an unusual situation, as compared with the other schools of philosophy, that two historical accounts are preserved: Papyrus Herculanensis 1021, the Index Academicorum, and Book 4 of Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of the Philosophers. Comparison of these two sources gives us a better possibility of determining what belongs to the main tradition and what is peculiar to each source.

Notes

Jörgen Mejer presented “Philosophical Lives: The Academics” to the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy at is meeting with the American Philological Association December 1986 in San Antonio. A revised and expanded version was published as “Diogenes Laertius and the transmission of Greek philosophy” in W. Haase and H. Temporini, eds. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II 36.5, de Gruyter 1992, pp. 3556–3662.

For information about the author, see for example Noctes Atticae, a festschrift offered to Mejer on his 60th birthday.

Recommended Citation

Mejer, Jorgen, "Philosophical Lives: The Academics" (1986). The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter. 141.
https://orb.binghamton.edu/sagp/141