A great many philosophical works have been lost; our limited knowledge of such
lost works comes chiefly through the doxographical works of later philosophers, commentators, and biographers. The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists the following works as being representative doxographies: •
Cicero -
Academica,
De Finibus,
De Natura Deorum,
De Fato,
De Officiis •
Aetius -
Vetusta Placita •
Clement of Alexandria -
Stromata •
Diogenes Laertius -
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers •
Hippolytus of Rome -
Refutation of All Heresies Philosophers such as
Plato and
Aristotle also act as doxographers, as their comments on the ideas of their predecessors indirectly tell us what their predecessors' beliefs were. Plato's
Defense of Socrates, for example, tells us much of what we know about the natural philosophy of
Anaxagoras.
Successions of Philosophers Successions of Philosophers were works whose purpose was to depict the philosophers of different schools in terms of a line of succession of which they were a part. From the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC there were
Successions () written by
Antigonus of Carystus,
Sotion,
Heraclides Lembos (an epitome of Sotion),
Sosicrates,
Alexander Polyhistor,
Jason of Nysa,
Antisthenes of Rhodes, and
Nicias of Nicaea. The surviving
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by
Diogenes Laërtius (3rd century AD) draws upon this tradition. In addition to these, there were often histories of single schools. Such works were created by
Phaenias of Eresus (
On the Socratics),
Idomeneus of Lampsacus (
On the Socratics),
Sphaerus (
On the Eretrian Philosophers), and
Straticles (
On Stoics). Among the
papyri found at the
Villa of the Papyri at
Herculaneum, there are works devoted to the successions of the
Stoics,
Academics, and
Epicureans. In a later period,
Plutarch produced
On the First Philosophers and their Successors and
On the Cyrenaics, and
Galen wrote ''On
Plato's Sect
and On the Hedonistic Sect'' (Epicureans). There were often biographies of individual philosophers with a brief description of his successors. Of such nature were
Aristoxenus's
Life of Pythagoras,
Andronicus's
Life of Aristotle,
Ptolemy's
Life of Aristotle, and
Iamblichus's
Life of Pythagoras. ==In other traditions==