Dissoi Logoi (ca 400 BCE)
Short anonymous treatise, written in Doric and transmitted in the MSS on the folii following
the text of S E, currently known by the initial words, Dissoi Logoi (Double
Arguments). H. Estienne published it in 1570 under the title Dialexeis; Diels included it in the
Early Sophistic.
According to most scholars, the treatise was composed about 400 BCE (ca 403 – 395
according to Robinson). The first five of the treatise’s nine brief chapters treat moral (good/
bad, beautiful/ugly, just/unjust), epistemological (true/false) and ontological questions
(being/not being). The next four chapters refer to topics discussed by the sophists, such as
whether virtue and wisdom can be taught, the assignment of offices by lot, the ideal of the
wise man, and a short praise of memory.
The fact that the author could have been a student summarizing the controversy between
two sophists expounding opposite viewpoints on the same topic would account for its
imperfect literary form.
Although philosophically controversial, the Dissoi Logoi shows some interesting scientific
aspects. The first five chapters expound two theses, the first of which, like P’
work, could be described as relativistic for two reasons: firstly, because it makes use of
ethnographic accounts depicting the variation and opposition between ways of life and
cultural and moral values in different societies or different social groups. Secondly, because
it employs a language of dyadic predicates (good, beautiful for.. .) in one case and of
complex propositions (just, true if.. .) in the other case. The second thesis, Socratic in
character, develops arguments against the relativistic thesis. Therefore, the controversy
concerns both anthropology and logic.
In the dispute between the defenders of both theses, some refined discursive devices show
the high level attained in the art of criticism, such as the use of thought experiments (2.18,
6.12) or the distinction between the premises and the conclusion of an argument (6.13).
Ed.: DK 90; T.M. Robinson, Contrasting Arguments. An Edition of the Dissoi Logoi (1979).
DPA 2 (1994) 888–889, M. Narcy; M. Untersteiner, I Sofisti 3 (1967) 148–191.
José Solana Dueso
D O T ⇒ D P
Doarios (325 – 540 CE)
A A 12.47 (p. 681 Cornarius) cites Doarios the bishop for a gout-remedy
containing shelf-fungus, parsley, gentian, etc. The name seems otherwise unattested, and is
likely corrupt: besides “Dareios,” or else an ethnic based on Euhe ̄meros’ mythical land Do ̄a
(D S 5.44.6–7), perhaps most likely is Daorsios, from the Hellenized Illyr-
ian town of Daorsi, cf. P Book 32, fr.9.2, S 7.5.5, and BNP 4 (2004) 78–79.
Fabricius (1726) 145.
PTK
Domitius Nigrinus (ca 10 BCE – ca 90 CE)
A in G, CMGen 7.12 (13.1021 K.), cites his powerful akopon, containing,
among much else, mandrake and euphorbia (i.e., post I).
PIR2 D-155.
PTK
DISSOI LOGOI