In some key areas of ethics and psychology, Seneca is at pains to distinguish his views from those of the Peripatetic followers of Aristotle. While he probably does not know Aristotle’s works at first hand, Seneca shows some knowledge of the doctrines that were favored by most Peripatetics, gleaned from secondhand discussions in such writers as Posidonius and from at least one summary account that was similar in style to Stobaean Doxography “C,” attributed to Arius Didymus. Passing references throughout his works show a consistent effort to differentiate his Stoic positions from Peripatetic views, especially on the value of externals and on the emotions. Recognition of this fact aids with the interpretation of Epistulae morales 92, which responds point for point to a list of Peripatetic doctrines. In particular, the first paragraph of that letter should be read as accommodating the Peripatetic tripartition of soul to Seneca’s Stoic commitments rather than the other way around.

Early prehistoric accounts of water cycling in nature refer only to, or hint at, the atmospheric phase of the water cycle. Wherever evaporation is alluded to, it is mostly assumed to take place from rivers and the sea. Speculations on the origin of these streams or on whether or how their water returns to where the streams originated, came later in Greek antiquity. This era produced essentially four competing theories on this, namely the seawater filtration theory, the underground condensation theory, the concept of pre-existing underground primal water, likely based on mythology and less accepted by the philosophers, and the rainfall percolation theory. Although the latter contains the essence of our present understanding, it took nearly another 23 centuries before it became the only remaining one to be fully accepted. In recorded history it can be followed as a thread running through the works of the pre-Socratics, the post-Aristotelian Peripatetics, Vitruvius in ancient Rome, Buridan and other medieval Schoolmen, Bartas, Palissy, and Gassendi in the Renaissance, Mariotte, Ray, and Van Musschenbroek at the dawn of modern science, and finally Dalton in the early nineteenth century.

This chapter examines the range, scope, generic roots and poetics of Hellenistic paradoxographical collections. The cultural context surrounding the production of the first paradoxographical collections in Ptolemaic Alexandria is thoroughly explored. The relationships between paradoxography, wonder and previous traditions of Greek ethnographic writing and contemporary Peripatetic scientific writing are outlined through the examination of Antigonus of Carystus’ Collection of Marvellous Investigations, Ps. Aristotle’s On Marvellous Things Heard, Herodotus’ Histories, Callimachus’ Aitia and Aristotle’s biological writings.

At first glance, Plotinus’ arguments for the immortality of the human soul, principally in Ennead IV 7 (2), constitute a straightforward defense of Plato against Peripatetic and Stoic attacks. And yet, his close reading of his predecessors, especially Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias, led him to confront the following deep problem. The best arguments for immortality rest upon the immateriality of intellect and hence its immunity from destruction along with the body. But, following Aristotle, Plotinus maintains that the nature of intellection is such that the contents of the objects of intellection both identify the agent of intellection and further will be identical for every disembodied intellect. For this reason, it is not clear what it would mean to insist on the personal immortality of anyone. Without personal immortality, though, the ethical dimension of Platonism is, for Plotinus, severely undermined. In the light of this difficulty Plotinus developed an apparently original doctrine that was repudiated by virtually all his successors. He argued that there are Forms of individuals, that is, of individual intellects, and that, since they are eternal Forms, they are ‘undescended’. He argued that the personal identity of any human soul is found paradigmatically in an undescended intellect.