Sotion of

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandr ...

( grc-gre, Σωτίων, ''gen''.: Σωτίωνος; fl. c. 200 – 170 BC) was a Greek doxographer and biographer, and an important source for

Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal sour ...

. None of his works survive; they are known only indirectly. His principal work, the Διαδοχή or Διαδοχαί (the '' Successions''), was one of the first history books to have organized philosophers into schools of successive influence: e.g., the so-called Ionian School of

Thales Thales of Miletus ( ; grc-gre, Θαλῆς; ) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard ...

, Anaximander and Anaximenes. It is quoted very frequently by Diogenes Laërtius, and

Athenaeus Athenaeus of Naucratis (; grc, Ἀθήναιος ὁ Nαυκρατίτης or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; la, Athenaeus Naucratita) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of t ...

. Sotion's ''Successions'' likely consisted of 23 books, and at least partly drew on the doxography of

Theophrastus Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routle ...

. The ''Successions'' was influential enough to be abridged by

Heraclides Lembus Heraclides Lembus ( grc-gre, Ἡρακλείδης Λέμβος, ''Hērakleidēs Lembos'') was an Ancient Greek statesman, historian and philosophical writer. Heraclides was an Egyptian civil servant who lived during the reign of Ptolemy VI Philom ...

in the mid-2nd century BC, and works by the same title were subsequently written by Sosicrates of Rhodes and Antisthenes of Rhodes. He was also, apparently, the author of a work, ''On Timon's Silloi'', and of a work entitled ''Refutations of Diocles''.Diogenes Laërtius, x. 4

Notes

2nd-century BC writers Ancient Alexandrians Ancient Greek biographers Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown {{AncientGreece-bio-stub