Sotion of Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

 (fl. c. 200 BC – 170 BC) was a Greek doxographer and biographer, and an important source for Diogenes Laërtius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

. None of his works survive; they are known only indirectly. His principal work, the Διαδοχή or Διαδοχαί (the Successions

Successions of Philosophers

Successions of Philosophers or Philosophers' Successions was the name of several lost works from the Hellenistic era. Their purpose was to depict the philosophers of different schools in terms of a line of succession of which they were a part...

), 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

Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition...

, Anaximander

Anaximander

Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia; Milet in modern Turkey. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales...

 and Anaximenes

Anaximenes

Anaximenes may refer to:*Anaximenes of Lampsacus , Greek rhetorician and historian*Anaximenes of Miletus , Greek pre-Socratic philosopher*Anaximenes , a lunar crater...

. It is quoted very frequently by Diogenes Laërtius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

, and Athenaeus

Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...

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

Theophrastus

Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He came to Athens at a young age, and initially studied in Plato's school. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle. Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus his writings, and...

. The Successions was influential enough to be abridged by Heraclides Lembus in the mid-2nd century BC, and works by the same title were subsequently written by Sosicrates of Rhodes

Sosicrates

Sosicrates of Rhodes was a Greek historical writer. Sosicrates was born on the island Rhodes and is noted, chiefly, for his frequent mention by Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers — referencing Sosicrates as the sole authority behind such facts as Aristippus having...

 and Antisthenes of Rhodes

Antisthenes of Rhodes

Antisthenes of Rhodes was a Greek historian who lived c. 200 BCE. He took an active part in the political affairs of his country, and wrote a history of his own time, which, notwithstanding his bias towards his native island, is spoken of in terms of high praise by Polybius...

.

He was also, apparently, the author of a work, On Timon's Silloi, and of a work entitled Refutations of Diocles.