DIogenes Laertius, so called from Laerta in Cilicia where he was born, an ancient Greek author, who wrote ten books of the Lives of the Philosophers, still extant. In what year he flourished, is not easy to determine. The oldest writers who mention him are Socrates Alexandrinus, who lived in the time of Constantine the Great, and Hesychius Milesius, who lived under Justinian. Diogenes often speaks in terms of approbation of Plutarch and Phavorinus; and therefore, as Plutarch lived under Trajan, and Phavorinus under Hadrian, it is certain that he could not flourish before the reigns of those emperors. Menage has fixed him to the time of Severus; that is, about the year of Christ 200. From certain expressions in him, some have fancied him to have been a Christian; but, as Menage observes, the immoderate praises he bestows upon Epicurus will not suffer us to believe this, but incline us rather to suppose that he was an Epicurean. He divided his Lives into books, and inscribed them to a learned lady of the Platonic school, as he himself intimates in his life of Plato. Montaigne was so fond of this author, that instead of one Laertius he wishes we had a dozen; and Vossius says, that his work is as precious as gold. Without doubt we are greatly obliged to him for what we know of the ancient philosophers: and if he had been as exact in the writing part as he was judicious in the choice of his subject, we had been more obliged to him still. Bishop Burnet, in the preface to his Life of Sir Matthew Hale, speaks of him in the following proper manner: "There is no book the ancients have left us (says he), which might have informed us more than Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers, if he had had the art of writing equal to that great subject which he undertook: for if he had given the world such an account of them as Gassendus has done of Peiresc, how great a stock of knowledge might we have had, which by his unskillfulness is in a great measure lost! since we must now depend only on him, because we have no other and better author who has written on that argument." There have been several editions of his Lives of the Philosophers; but the best is that printed in two volumes 4to, at Amsterdam, 1693. This contains the advantages of all the former, besides some peculiar to itself: the
VOL. VII. Part I.
Greek text and the Latin version corrected and amended by Meibomius; the entire notes of Henry Stephens, both the Casaubons, and of Menage; 24 copperplates of philosophers elegantly engraved: to which is added The History of the Female Philosophers, written by Menage, and dedicated to Madame Dacier. Besides this, Laertius wrote a book of Epigrams upon illustrious Men, called Pammetrus, from its various kinds of metre; but this is not extant.