Preface

In 1925 the Loeb Classical Library published its first edition of Diogenes Laertius with an Introduction, text and translation by Robert Drew Hicks, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and well known for his work on ancient philosophy, which included editions of Aristotle’s Politics (1894) and De Anima (1907), and the book “Stoic and Epicurean” (1910), as well as a number of articles. After some hesitation, since several scholars had announced that they were working on or planning critical editions of Diogenes, in whole or in part, Hicks decided to complete his own edition in the belief that “the text of the biographies is hardly likely to undergo radical reconstruction.” He accordingly prepared “an eclectic text based largely on the Didot edition, . . . confident that, whatever the less important parts may lose or gain by later revision, the text of what is most valuable, namely the fragments, will undergo little alteration, failing the discovery of fresh ms. material.” Hicks accompanied his eclectic text with a delightfully readable version that hits off Diogenes’ various manners, now serious and straightforward, now banal and fatuous, to a T.

Cobet’s Didot edition unfortunately had no apparatus criticus. It was thus not immediately clear that