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

Catalogue, which is not related to Plato at all, e.g. in the passage where the
Tannery. Eudème, 171f.; Allman,
op. cit., 2; van Pesch, op. cit., 80: “inter omnes
viros doctos constat originem id ab Eudemi historia duxisse”.
58
Lasserre.
Léodamas, 611f. Earlier he attributed the Catalogue to Eudemus (Eudox.
fr. 22).

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3. The
Catalogue of geometers: from Eudemus to Proclus
181
discovery of the five regular solids is attributed to Pythagoras (
In Eucl.,
65.15f.)
59
and typically Neoplatonic terms are encountered (@Ülw~ kaì noe-
rõ~). Another such trace is the reference to the late pseudo-Platonic Anterastai
(66.3), which can belong neither to Philip, nor to Eudemus. Furthermore, if the
Catalogue has the same origin as Philodemus’ passage, he must have known
this text. However, in his list of Plato’s students, only two of the twelve math-
ematicians of the fourth century listed in the
 Catalogue are named: Amyclas of
Heraclea and Archytas,
60
whereas Philip is inexplicably missing! Both of these
names also occur in the source of Diogenes Laertius’ list of Plato’s students
61
and can be thus traced back to a common tradition that has no connection with
the
 Catalogue, where Archytas is not called Plato’s student.
We know that Eudemus wrote of Archytas and Theaetetus (fr. 141–141.I),
the evidence for the duplication of the cube by Eudoxus and Menaechmus also
goes back to him, and his
History of Astronomy mentions Eudoxus and Callip-
pus (fr. 148–149). Thus, it is hardly possible to exclude Eudemus from the
Catalogue’s sources, i.e., not to number him among those who had been writing
the history of geometry before Euclid. Was the author of the quotation in Phil-
odemus also among them? Eudemus might have used the Academics’ writings,
but it seems unlikely that he should have simply copied the descriptions of
Plato and Philip from them. There are many more reasons to relate them to a
Neoplatonic redactor. The description of Philip as a faithful disciple of Plato
and the fact that Philip is the last mentioned in the
Catalogue were among Las-
serre’s major arguments. Lasserre, however, like many others, overlooked the
fact that the Platonizing tendency in the
Catalogue does not end with Philip, it
includes Euclid as well. Proclus, once again uniting all the previous mathema-
ticians around Plato, says:
Euclid was later than the mathematicians around Plato (tõn perì Plátwna), but
earlier than Eratosthenes and Archimedes… He belonged to the Platonic school
and was at home in this philosophy, and this is why he thought the goal of the
 El-
ements as a whole to be the construction of the so-called Platonic figures (68.17f.,
transl. after G. Morrow).
For simple chronological reasons, this phrase could come neither from Eude-
mus nor from any of Plato’s students. It is revealing, however, that it is as simi-
lar to the description of Philip as if the two passages were written by the same
hand. Both mathematicians worked under Plato’s guidance (although in Eu-
59
Eudemus, as we remember, ascribed the first three solids to Pythagoreans, the oc-
tahedron and the icosahedron to Theaetetus (
Schol. In Eucl., 654.3). See above, 174.
60
Gaiser.
Academica, 110 f., 439 ff.; Dorandi. Filodemo, 135 (col. VI). Cf. above, 100
n. 93.
61
Diogenes’ list (III, 46) goes back to Plato’s biography written by Theon of Smyrna
(Gaiser.
Academica, 439 f., 444). Theon’s list, preserved in Arabic, contains both
Amyclas and Archytas, whereas Archytas is omitted in Diogenes, since for him
Archytas belonged to the Pythagoreans.

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Chapter 5: The history of geometry
182
clid’s case this guidance was not direct), and for both Platonic philosophy was
the final goal in mathematics.
62
This proves that the whole historical digression
in Proclus’ commentary, of which the