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The Origin and Transmission of the Doxographical Tradition Placita Philosophorum (Arius Didymus, Ps.Plutarch, Stobaeus, Theodoret, Nemesius, Porphyrius)
In the frst part we will recuperate and reinforce our arguments against Diels’ Aëtius hypothesis. We will also discuss the nature and purpose of the extant Ps.Plutarch’s De placitis philosophorum and will argue that in its present form it is a truncated copy of the original handbook of physics (παραδώσειν!) with only 6 authorial definitions remaining from many more in the original. We assign to this «better Plutarch» the siglum P+. The archetype of the P tradition was probably a personal copy of a Christian apologist who was interested only in diaphoniaof the Hellenes and therefore dropped most of the apodictic definitions and other authorial remarks and explanations as worthless. The second main complex of problems we will address is the relation between P+ and Stobaeus (S) on the one hand, and between both of them and Arius Didymus, on the other. We will refute Göransson’s claim that Arius the doxographer should be distinguished from Arius the court philosopher. We add to 8 known authorial definitions in P and S two neglected ones from Stobaeus. One of them (on ἀνάγκη, Ι,4,7b) we connect with the lemma Διδύμ<ου>. Which means that P+ was known to Stobaeus as a work o Arius Didymus. Tertlullian is the second independent source who quotes P+ as «apud Arium». Finally we will present the new stemma of doxographical sources that emerges from our research in which the central role is accorded neither to Dielsian hypothetical «Theophrastus», not to the ficticious writer «Aëtius», but to the real giant of Post-Hellenistic philosophy Arius Didymus from Alexandria, the teacher of the emperor Augustus.