DIOGENES LAERTIUS

Form: of Laerte in Cilicia.

A Greek author, who flourished about 150 A.D., the author of a work, in ten books, on the lives and doctrines of celebrated Greek philosophers. It is an uncritical compilation from books of earlier and later date, but the richness of the material gathered from lost writings gives it inestimable value for the history of philosophy. Books 1-7 embrace the Ionic philosophers from Thales onwards, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics down to Chrysippus. Books 8, 9 treat of the philosophers whom he includes under the name of Italian, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, the Eleatics and Atomists, Protagoras, Pyrrho and Epicurus, to the last of whom the whole tenth book is devoted.