EDITOR'S NOTES

Book Notes:

The Naples publishing house of Bibliopolis, which is responsible for the journal Elenchos, is currently producing some excellent volumes on ancient philosophy. Their books are elegantly designed, and they are marketed at prices which must be accounted modest. I have been asked to draw attention to a new Bibliopolis series, under the general editorship of Marcello Gigante, entitled La scuola di Platone. The first volume - Margherita Isnardi Parente's Speusippo - appeared in 1980, thus pipping Tardn's Speusippus to the publishing post. The second volume, again edited by Isnardi Parente, collects the fragments of Xenocrates (and also those of Hermodorus). Four further volumes are said to be 'in prepa- ration' : From Leodamas to Philip of Opus (F. Lasserre), Polemo, Crates, Crantor (M. Gigante), A rcesilaus (A. A. Long), and Carneades (J. Glucker). The testimonia on Xenocrates have not been assembled since Heinze's edition of 1892. Heinze published 109 'fragments' in 40 pages, Isnardi Parente publishes 268 in 100 pages. But the advance in our knowledge of Xenocrates is considerably less than those numbers might suggest. There are, by my count, 93 passages present in Isnardi Parente but absent from Heinze. Of those, more than 70 are biographical in nature, and therefore did not fall within the self-imposed limits of Heinze's edition. The other new texts are mostly of very uncertain value. For Isnardi Parente prints several passages (e.g. Alexander, in Met 79.15-83.26 [in fact, 25 selected = = lines from those pages] F 92; Sextus, M X 250-262 F 120) which do not mention Xenocrates by name: they are present because some scholars have suggested that they show signs of Xenocratean influence or that they have an ultimately Xenocratean ancestry. In fact, the new edition contains only two philosophical texts not in Heinze which uncontroversially bear upon Xenocrates. One is an interesting piece of Numenius (frag. 24 des = Places F 77), reporting that the Academy under Xenocrates did not stray, at least in essentials, from the true Platonic philosophy. Heinze knew

307 the passage and presumably did not judge it sufficiently interesting (or serious) to include in his edition. The other text (F 121) is a piece of Alexander preserved only in an Arabic translation and first published by Pines in 1961. It was thus not available to Heinze. The text - which is only a couple of lines long - deals with the relation between genus and species. It does appear to offer us something which we do not happen to find in any - other source. How reliable the report is and how significant it is if reliable - are further questions. But if Isnardi Parente offers us little in the way of new texts, that should not be supposed to derogate from the timely utility of her work. It is good, in any case, to have the texts reprinted and set in a legible type. It is good, too, to have the biographical material prefixed to the philosophical texts. In addition, there is a helpful translation (which inconveniently follows rather than faces the texts) and a learned and informative set of notes. I wish to quarrel over one point. Isnardi Parente's title is wrong. We possess a couple of short fragments of Hermodorus, but not a single fragment of Xenocrates. The texts which Isnardi Parente collects are all testimonia. No doubt it is now common practice to use the word 'fragment' in a large and loose sense. I hope that all good scholars will join pedants like me in fighting against that usage. There is a substantial difference between a testimonium and a fragmentum - it should not be suppressed or fudged by lax language. I hope that the second edition of this work will be entitled 7?7/AMHellenistic philosophy, but his posture - which was obscure even to Cicero - is remarkably difficult to discern. Wisniewski's edition of the testimonia (sic). though useful, is.not complete, and there is in any event a need for a larger and more sophisticated commentary. Meanwhile, scholars work on in the gloom. Dr. Klever has just published a short monograph on Carneades' epistemology. His book has three chapters: Carneades in Cicero, Carneades in Sextus, Carneades in the history of philosophy. His discussion is lucid, and his last chapter in particular contains some interesting references. But the work seems to me to be flawed. First - and less importantly - Klever is apparently un- familiar with most of the recent work on Carneades and the New Academy. Secondly - and more importantly - his general plan is misconceived: it is not sensible, in the case of a figure such as Carneades. to single out one part of his philosophical activity and to disregard the question of his general philosophical aims (Klever does not mention the Roman speeches, the sorites arguments, the dispute over fate, etc): and it is a mistake to speak at

308