ABSTRACT
In the introduction to his Doxographi Graeci 1 Diels argued that ps.-Plutarch https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781351316569/970a35c8-615d-43fc-bd02-bc90612531ca/content/in5_u001.tif"/>—usually latinized as Placita philosophorum rather than as Placita physica—and substantial excerpts concerned with natural philosophy to be found in Stobaeus’ Eclogae physicae and Theodoret’s Graecarum affectionum curado derive from a common source, to be dated to the 1st cent. CE, which he ascribed to a certain Aëtius. 2 He also argued that substantial sections of ps.-Galen’s https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781351316569/970a35c8-615d-43fc-bd02-bc90612531ca/content/in5_u002.tif"/> derive from a somewhat fuller version of ps.-Plutarch 3 and so, ultimately, from Aëtius as well. Adducing a plurality of other sources (such as Cicero, Aenesidemus ap. Soranus ap. Tertullian, Aenesidemus ap. Sextus Empiricus, and Varro ap. Censorinos), 4 Diels further argued that Aëtius and others had used an earlier doxographic work to be dated to the 1st cent. BCE, to which he gave the name “Vetusta placita”. 5
