A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

Smith, William

A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. William Smith, LLD, ed. 1890

(Διογένης ὁ Λαέρτιος or Λαερτιεύς, sometimes also Λαέρτιος Διογένης), the author of a sort of history of philosophy, which alone has brought his name down to posterity. The surname, Laertius, was derived according to some from the Roman family which bore the cognomen Laertius, and one of the members of which is supposed to have been the patron of an ancestor of Diogenes. But it is more probable that he received it from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, which seems to have been his native place. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. v. p. 564, note). A modern critic (Ranke, de Lex. Hesych. p. 59, &c., 61, &c.) supposes that his real name was Diogenianus, and that he was the same as the Diogenianus of Cyzicus, who is mentioned by Suidas. This supposition is founded on a passage of Tzetzes, (Chil. 3.61,) in which Diogenes Laertius is mentioned under the name of Diogenianus. (Vossius, de Hist. Graec. p. 263, ed. Westermann.) We have no information whatever respecting his life, his studies, or his age. Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus and Saturninus are the latest writers he quotes, and he accordingly seems to have lived towards the close of the second century after Christ Others, however, assign to him a still later date, and place him in the time of Alexander Severus and his successors, or even as late as the time of Constantine.

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