ABSTRACT
Diogenes’ Lives and Opinions of the Outstanding Philosophers contains ten books, of which the fifth is devoted to Peripatetic philosophers. The Vita Aristotelis naturally comes first (5.1-35) and is followed by the Vita Theophrasti (5.36-57). While the former has recently been given special attention by Ingemar Düring, whose 1957 edition is readily available in his Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, the latter has not received the attention it deserves. Indeed, it has not received special treatment since 1497, when it appeared, together with the Vita Aristotelis, in the second volume of the Aldine Aristotle. The text of Aldus’ edition is quite unsatisfactory, for it is based on a reading of an inferior manuscript 1 and embodies many conjectural emendations. Hermann Usener did publish an edition of Diogenes’ catalogue of Theophrastean writings (5.42-50) in his Analecta Theophrastea (Diss. Bonn 1858), but he, too, neglected much of the manuscript evidence, only consulting Cobet's collation of a few manuscripts and some early editions and translations. 2 The complete life of Theophrastus has, of course, been included in all editions of the whole of Diogenes’ work, but the text has never been adequately supplied with textual apparatus. My aim, then, is to provide scholars with an edition of the Vita Theophrasti which is complete with upper and lower apparatus and generally meets the standards of modern philology.
