ABSTRACT
Let me begin with a longish quotation from the relevant parts of von Arnim’s discussion of Arius Didymus’ Doxography or Epitome (translations from the German are my own): 1
(Pages 4–6) Before I examine the individual evidence for the prevailing view, which leads to seeing in Arius only a witness for the eclecticism of Antiochus, not at all for the doctrine of the Peripatetics, or at most (if we follow the more moderate view of Diels and Meurer) for the doctrine of the latest Peripatics, wholly sickened in addition by Stoicizing ecclecticism, I would like to stress that the procedure of Arius, as it is presented in accordance with the prevailing view, is a striking and barely comprehensible one. He who devoted a special book in a 294doxographical work to Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic philosophy, obviously does not proceed from the point of view, represented by Antiochus, that these three systems of philosophy agree in the fact of the matter (apart from secondary points) and differ only in manner of expression. Had Arius endorsed the tendency of Antiochus, which emphasizes the commonality of the three systems sprung from the Socratic, he would hardly have chosen this form, which was bound to lead to the presentation three times in three separate books of essentially the same philosophy. This form was better suited to developing the inner coherence of each system and the distinctness of its doctrines. Arius Didymus confessed himself an adherent of the Stoic sect, as the index of Stoics in cod. Laur. 69,35 of Diogenes Laertius shows. If, as an eclectic Stoic, he did hold close to the standpoint of Antiochus, this should have shown itself above all in his outline of Stoic ethics. That this is not the case, that rather only the theory of the old Stoics and not of Panaetius and Posidonius is taken by him into account, is well known. Is it really credible that he would have placed the old Stoic doctrine side by side with the later Academic doctrine of Antiochus and with the later Peripatetic doctrine of Stoicizing Peripatetics? The only section we still have of his book On the Opinions of Plato (Dox. Gr. p. 447) does not give this impression; the opening words, “How he dealt with the Ideas”, show already that the author is claiming to give Plato’s own teaching. Antiochus as an Academic, precisely because he maintained the identity of the Peripatetic teaching with the Academic, could not be held by Arius to be a classical witness for the Peripatetic doctrine, which he (Arius) wanted to present in a special book of his Epitome as different from the Academic. Hardly could such a fraud by his court philosopher have been kept hidden from the Emperor Augustus. In a Peripatetic school that had been returned by Andronicus to the study of its chief leader [Aristotle] there must have been many men in Augustus’ time who knew what was set down in Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ own writings. Arius would hardly have dared then to construct his portrayal of Peripatetic philosophy from a non-Peripatetic source.
