Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

DK I, 447.3), some scholars date him in the fourth century (Heath. History 1, 94;
Becker, O.
Das mathematische Denken der Antike, Göttingen 1957, 43f.; cf. Burkert.
L & S, 442 n. 92). Diels, however, considered it impossible to date Thymaridas’
epanthem and definition of number so early (
DK I, 447.3n.). Federspiel, M. Sur
“l’épanthème de Thymaridas”,
LEC 67 (1999) 354, suggests that Thymaridas could
be a younger contemporary of Eudoxus. If Thymaridas did live before Eudemus, his
absence from the
History of Geometry could still be explained: his puzzle is purely
arithmetical.
57
Spengel, L.
Eudemi Rhodii Peripatetici fragmenta quae supersunt, Berlin 1865, IX;

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Chapter 5: The history of geometry
180
not mention Eudemus in connection with the
 Catalogue, he refers (In Eucl.,
68.4) to “those who compiled histories of geometry” (oî tà~ îstoría~ @na-
gráyante~) before Euclid. Besides, Eudemus’ fragments, including those
quoted by Proclus himself, coincide thematically with the
 Catalogue: they tell
us about the development of geometry from Thales to Eudoxus’ students
(fr. 134–141). However, in the last few decades, this
opinio communis has been
challenged. Lasserre, in particular, on the basis of the similarities between the
Catalogue and the passage from Philodemus discussed above (3.1), considered
Philip, to whom he ascribed this passage, to be the author of the
Catalogue as
well
.
58
Indeed, against the background of Eudemus’ fragments, the passages of
the
Catalogue concerning Plato and Philip look rather odd. Eudemus could not
regard Philip’s preoccupation with problems connected with Platonic philos-
ophy as his foremost contribution to mathematics. And was it really relevant for
the history of geometry that Plato’s writings were “thickly sprinkled with math-
ematical terms”? Eudemus could have claimed the same for his teacher’s works
as well. These two passages can hardly belong to a Peripatetic. They are much
more likely to come from the Platonist whom Lasserre considered to be the
author of the papyrus passage, i.e. Philip. Hence, Lasserre concluded that Phil-
ip is the author not only of the second part of the
 Catalogue, which begins with
Plato and ends with Philip himself, but of the entire
Catalogue.
Reasonable as many of Lasserre’s observations may seem, I believe that
there are no grounds for such a conclusion. First, it is far from evident that Phil-
ip was the author of the passage cited by Philodemus (3.2). Second, the
Cata-
logue contains too much detailed information on the early Greek geometers
that is not related to Plato. It is hard to explain why Philip’s book
On Plato
began with the Egyptians and Thales and, even more strangely, ended with
Eudoxus’ students, who were more than half a century younger than Plato.
Third, although Plato could not have been a reference point in the history of the
fourth-century geometry written by a Peripatetic, both Academics and Neopla-
tonists could have considered him one. Thus, it is possible to come up with the
following alternatives: either the
 Catalogue was taken from a book by one of
Plato’s students and does not have any connection with Eudemus, or it was
compiled on the basis of Eudemus’ work and its Platonic features can be ex-
plained by later Neoplatonic redaction. In the latter case, the Neoplatonic re-
dactors could have added to it the material borrowed from the writings of
Plato’s disciples. The second alternative seems to me preferable, being favored
by the following facts.
The traces of Neoplatonic redaction are also discernible in the first part of
the