The articles collected here are based for the most part on papers read at the Colloquium âThe Placita of Aëtius: Foundations for the Study of Ancient Philosophy,â held in Melbourne in December 2015. The Placita, a first century CE collection of systematically organised tenets in natural philosophy ranging from first principles to human physiology is incompletely extant in several later sources. Its laborious reconstruction and the identity of its author are discussed from various angles. The text of the treatise is further elucidated by a novel statistical exploration of what is extant and what is missing. Its relation to various currents in the history of Greek philosophy and its reliability are also examined in some detail.
Jaap Mansfeld is emeritus professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy in the University of Utrecht. He has published numerous papers and several monographs on ancient philosophy, among which (together with David T. Runia) the three previous volumes of Aëtiana.
David T. Runia is Director of the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University, and also Professorial Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. He has written widely on ancient philosophy, with a particular focus on the thought of Philo of Alexandria.
List of Figures and Tables List of Abbreviations Notes on Contributors
Introduction
âJaap Mansfeld and David T. Runia
Reconstructing and Editing the Placita
1 Dielsâ Whodunit: The Reliability of the Three Mentions of Aëtius in Theodoret
âJean-Baptiste Gourinat
2 Arius Didymus as a Doxographer of Stoicism: Some Observations
âKeimpe Algra
3 Pythagorean Cosmology in Aëtius: An Aristotelian Fragment and the Doxographical Tradition
âOliver Primavesi
4 Towards a Better Text of Ps.Plutarchâs Placita Philosophorum: Fresh Evidence from the Historia Philosopha of Ps.Galen
âMareike Jas
5 The Text of Stobaeus: The Manuscripts and Wachsmuthâs Edition
âJames R. Royse
6 Theodoret as a Source for the Aëtian Placita
âJaap Mansfeld