The original 1983 manuscript of the paper "Did the doxographer Aetius ever exist?" published in microfiche form in: Philosophie et Culture, Acts/Proceedings. XVII Congres mondiale de philosophie. Montreal 1983 Edited by Venant... more
The original 1983 manuscript of the paper "Did the doxographer Aetius ever exist?" published in microfiche form in: Philosophie et Culture, Acts/Proceedings. XVII Congres mondiale de philosophie. Montreal 1983 Edited by Venant Cauchy, Ed.du Beffroi/Ed.Montmorency, v.3 (1988 ) pp. 813 - 817. Note that that each microfiche "page number" covers 2 pages of the original manuscript.
Diels's attribution of the supposed common source of Ps.Plutarch's De placitis philosophorum and Stobaeus' Eclogae to a certain Aëtius is a mistake based on the misreading of three passages in 5th century A.D. Christian apologist Theodoretus’ Curatio. Theodoretus never quotes Aëtius as a source of any single placitum of a specified Greek philosopher. He only mentions his name in a group of three authors (Porphyrius, Plutarch and Aëtius) as a kind of general bibliography of his sources for the opinions of Greek philosophers. Diels’s attribution is based primarily on two assumptions. 1) Theodoretus is lying, his only real source is Aëtius, the addition of two famous names of Porphyrius and Plutarch is allegedly a pretentious fake (splendoris gratia). 2) The combination of particles καὶ μέντοι καί in CAG V, 16, by which the name of Aetius is introduced, allegedly has emphatic meaning ‘and especially’ thus singling him out as the main source. But the analysis of the context of the passages in CAG II and IV ff. (which Diels has never undertaken!) demonstrates that Theodoret is not lying: he indeed quotes from three stylistically different pagan sources, whereas the name of Aëtius does not correspond to the quotations from SP-Placita, and so even Theodoret himself does not ascribe SP-Placita to a writer called Aëtius. Equally unfounded is the second claim of Diels. The analysis of Theodoretus’ usage (never undertaken by Diels!) demonstrates that none out of the 80 instances of this combination in Theodoretus’ CAG has emphatic meaning assumed by Diels, it regularly introduces an additional point or example in a series (‘and also’, ‘as well as’), often of secondary importance.
