What is it about?
Diogenes Laertius' Lives of eminent philosophers (ca. 200-250 AD) is one of the prominent extant biographical works on the history of philosophy. Among other things, it features a group of letters attributed mainly to sixth-century sages and philosophers – like Thales, Solon and Pythagoras – which were written trying to reproduce the homeland dialect of each supposed sender. This study is concerned with assessing previous scholarship on these texts and illustrating the strategies displayed by their anonymous composer(s). This allows to give a new foundation to future investigations on these letters, and to set a useful example for parallel research.
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Why is it important?
This study shows how differently the superficial, linguistic coherence of a group of texts can be interpreted, and to what extent the 'fragmentary' perspective can influence scholars in their attempts to make sense of those same texts.
Perspectives
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Andrea Salomone
Universita degli Studi Roma Tre
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This page is a summary of: On Tyrants, Sages and Philosophers, April 2026, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004736696-003.
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