Diogenes Laërtius
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Diogenes Laërtius was a Roman writer from the 3rd century who compiled biographies of famous Greek philosophers. His work is important because it preserved many stories and details about these ancient thinkers that would otherwise have been lost to history.
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Person · Open Library
- Born
- 3d cent. B.C.
- Died
- 0240-00-00
- Works
- 87
Top works
- Les vies d'Epicure, de Platon, et de Pythagore
- Omnia opera Aristotelis Stagiritae omnia, qvae extant, opera, nvnc primvm selectis translationibvs, emendationibvs ex collatione græcorum exemplarium ...
- De vitis, dogmatis & apophthegmatis eorum qui in philosophia claruerunt libri X.
- Adversus mathematicos, hoc est, adversus eos qui profitentur disciplinas
- Aristotelous vios ek tōn Laertiou
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Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
Article
Diogenes Laërtius (/daɪˌɒdʒɪniːz leɪˈɜːrʃiəs/ dy-OJ-in-eez lay-UR-shee-əs; Ancient Greek: Διογένης Λαέρτιος, romanized: Diogénēs Laértios, IPA: [di.o.ɡé.nɛːs laː.ér.ti.os]; fl. 3rd century CE) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving work, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, remains a primary source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy. His reputation is controversial among scholars because he often repeats information from his sources without critically evaluating it. In many cases, he focuses on insignificant details of his subjects' lives while ignoring important details of their philosophical teachings and he sometimes fails to distinguish between earlier and later teachings of specific philosophical schools. However, unlike many other ancient secondary sources, Diogenes Laërtius tends to report philosophical teachings without trying to reinterpret or expand on them, and so his accounts are often closer to the primary sources. Due to the loss of so many of the primary sources on which Diogenes relied, his work has become the foremost surviving source on the history of Greek philosophy.
Life