278 HEIDEL. 



accepted name: "All the treatises of the ancients were entitled Uepl 

 </)uo-ecos, — those of Melissus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Alcmaeon, 

 Gorgias and Prodicus, and all the rest." This is no rational classi- 

 fication: it is an omnibus label which gives no guaranty of the con- 

 tents of any particular work to which it may be applied. 



Hence we attach no importance to the fact that Themistius calls 

 Anaximander the first Greek who to our certain knowledge ven- 

 tured to WTite a treatise entitled Ilept ^icrecos, and that Suidas reports 

 the same title alongside the others, which we have already mentioned, 

 — To2V of the Earth, On the Fixed Stars, and Sphere. One is as well 

 attested as the other; but all the other titles have tliis advantage over 

 Ilept (t>vaecos that they suggest something definite, and likewise true, of 

 the contents of Anaximander's book. Regarding this work we may 

 say with confidence that it was conceived as a single whole and was 

 presumably brief in comparison with the treatise of Hecataeus. The 

 peculiar way in which Eratosthenes speaks of Anaximander in con- 

 trast with Hecataeus does, however, suggest the ciuestion whether 

 the distinctly historico-geographical part of his book, which might 

 properly be called Tovr of the Earth, had not, like the similar portion 

 of Hecataeus' work, become detached and had so come to lead for a 

 time a separate existence until reclaimed for its author by ApoUo- 

 dorus, who discovered in it historical data calculated both to fix its 

 author's date and to place his identity beyond question. 



III. 



We have spoken of the doxographic tradition and noted briefly its 

 scope. Deriving immediately from Theophrastus, who was con- 

 cerned with the (pvatKol, it revealed the conception he had of them 

 and of the interests which properly characterized them. He does not 

 expressly call them philosophers, but as such of course he regards 

 them. ^Ye have already pointed out how closely the scheme of the 

 ^vffLKwv do^aL followed the order of topics in the systematic works of 

 Aristotle and have remarked that in substance also, that is to say in his 

 interpretation of the data regarding the early thinkers, Theophrastus 

 (except possibly in a few instances) adhered to the views of his master. 

 This was the more natural because Aristotle himself was wont to report 

 briefly the opinions of his predecessors as furnishing the proper basis 

 for a discussion of the several questions with which he had to deal. 

 It is almost as if Aristotle had had at hand for the purposes of his 

 lectures a brief digest of the earlier history of philosophy. What 



