The Greek philosophical schools according to Europe's earliest history of philosophy. Towards a new pioneering critical edition of Philodemus' Arrangement of the Philosophers

Our knowledge about Greek philosophical schools is mostly second-hand and based on Diogenes Laërtius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers (3rd century AD) and Philodemus' Arrangement of the Philosophers (75-50 BC), a treatise in several books which represents the earliest 'history of philosophy' to have reached us directly from antiquity. From this work exclusively preserved by the Herculaneum papyri we may derive a virtually systematic account of the history of Greek philosophical schools, which is unique in its kind.