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

Catalogue, after Eudoxus’ students and their younger contemporaries,
whereas in fact he belonged to Eudoxus’ and Aristotle’s generation, if not to an
earlier one.
64
This confirms again that the passages on Plato and Philip, as we
know them, were inserted in the
Catalogue later. The ‘final’ position of Philip
is not a mark of his authorship, but a result of Neoplatonic redaction.
In an article on the
Catalogue, Eggers Lan also points out many passages
where Neoplatonic influence is clearly observed, but this leads him to com-
pletely different conclusions: that Proclus himself compiled the
Catalogue and
that, except for two or three references, it does not go back to Eudemus, either
directly or indirectly.
65
To be sure, in addition to all the aforesaid, the late com-
position of the entire historical digression in Proclus (
In Eucl., 64.16–68.23) is
evident from the fact that, besides Euclid, it mentions Archimedes and Eratos-
thenes. This, however, does not mean that we should exclude Eudemus from its
main sources. Even if we did not know about his
History of Geometry, we could
infer the existence of such a work from the
Catalogue’s detailed information on
pre-Euclidean geometry. The very fact that it contains names of geometers
from the fourth century, practically unknown to us from other sources, as well
63
The only big lacuna in Eudemus’ chronology is between Pythagoras (born ca. 570)
and Anaxagoras (born ca. 500). It could have emerged due to the disappearance from
the
Catalogue of Pythagoras’ student Hippasus (born ca. 530). Other mathema-
ticians are separated from each other by no more than a generation.
64
In the
Suda, Philip is characterized as Socrates’ and Plato’s student who lived in the
time of Philip of Macedon (Lasserre.
 Léodamas, 20 T 1). His chronology was ac-
cordingly considered to be ca. 419–340 (Tarán.
Academica, 127f.). Lasserre. Léo-
damas, 594, changes the date of his birth to 385/80, making him an exact contem-
porary of Philip of Macedon (382–336). To this end, he had to assume that the So-
crates mentioned in the
Suda was Socrates the Younger! But even then, contradic-
tions remain unresolved. To date somebody at the time of Philip of Macedon means
to relate this person to the date of Philip’s death (336), not of his birth. A person who
died 15–20 years after Philip of Macedon would rather be related to Alexander’s
time. But if Philip of Opus was the
Catalogue’s author, he must have lived at least till
the 320s to be able to describe achievements of Eudoxus’ students. Well, Philip
could have been born ca. 385/80 and could have lived till the end of the century, but
how can one reconcile this chronology with the fact that in the
Catalogue he is
named
after Eudoxus’ students? Obviously, it is impossible to date Philip on the
basis of the
Catalogue.
65
Eggers Lan,
op. cit., 154f.

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Chapter 5: The history of geometry
184
as precise chronological indications on them, suggests its early origin. Where,
if not in Eudemus, could a later author get the information that Neoclides was
younger than Leodamas (66.18) and that his student Leon was a little older than
Eudoxus (67.2), if Neoclides and Leon are not mentioned elsewhere?
Considering Eudemus the main source of the
Catalogue, the scholars re-
plied differently to the questions whether his
History of Geometry was avail-
able to Proclus and whether Proclus himself could have been the compiler of
the