Letters, Testament and Transmitted Poems
Diogenes Laertius preserves a will, a hymn to Virtue and an epigram for Hermias. His catalogue mentions letters to Philip, Alexander, Antipater, Mentor, Ariston, Olympias, Hephaestion, Themistagoras and Philoxenus, alongside other collections; it does not reproduce a complete correspondence.
Understanding the text
Surviving documents and titles of lost collections must remain distinct. Pseudepigraphic letters to Alexander have separate textual histories.
Key points
- 01
Testament
Arrangements for family, dependants and burial illuminate an ancient household without removing questions about documentary authenticity.
- 02
Poetry
The hymn connects virtue, effort and Hermias’s memory in a form markedly different from school treatises.
- 03
Correspondence
Naming an addressee in a catalogue neither counts individual letters nor reconstructs their text.
How to read it
Read the documents in Diogenes Laertius V.6–16 and the catalogue in V.27; do not convert mentions into surviving letters.
Editions & sources
- Consult the reference 1raw.githubusercontent.comnew tab
- Consult the reference 2plato.stanford.edunew tab
- Consult the reference 3classics.mit.edunew tab
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗