Sosigenes criticized both
Aristotle and
Eudoxus for their imperfect theory of
celestial spheres and also the use of
epicycles, which he felt to be inconsistent with Aristotle's philosophical postulates. He pointed out that the
planets varied markedly in brightness, and that
solar eclipses are sometimes
total and sometimes
annular, suggesting that the distances between the
Sun,
Moon and
Earth were not the same at different eclipses. Sosigenes is perhaps called "the
Peripatetic" only because of his connection with Alexander. Some ancient evidence may be taken to suggest that he was, in fact, a
Stoic. As John Patrick Lynch has written:The other two teachers of Alexander may actually have been the philosophers whom ancient sources called Stoics; in both cases, Herminos/Sosigenes "the Stoic" have been distinguished from Herminos/Sosigenes "the Peripatetic" only on the grounds that the two latter men were teachers of Alexander of Aphrodisias. But it is not improbable that Alexander of Aphrodisias studied with two Stoic teachers and that these two pairs of homonymous contemporaries are actually only two Stoic philosophers. He is often confused with the astronomer
Sosigenes of Alexandria, who advised
Julius Caesar on the reform of the
Roman calendar. ==Notes==