Chapter 2 Helping the Reader: The Paratextual Elements in the Placita in the Context of their Genre
In: Received Opinions: Doxography in Antiquity and the Islamic World
Author:
Jaap Mansfeld
Jaap Mansfeld
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Abstract
Though doubts have been expressed, the tables of contents and intratextual chapter headings of Aëtius, found in the manuscripts of Ps.-Plutarch and in part confirmed in those of Stobaeus, can safely be retained. The numbered chapter headings prove to be indispensable. Tables of contents, needed for a first orientation, are found in important representatives of literature other than belles lettres, even in some which do not yet have intratextual headings. Several authors are explicit about their tables of contents and, when they have them, the intratextual headings, and tell us why these have been added. It would be odd if they were absent from the Placita.