Les converses dels filòsofs en la biografia grega antiga o quan els filòsofs parlen en vers

Abstract

Ancient Greek philosophers, as it is well known, used many literary genres in their works: epic, lyric, drama, dialogue, epistles and, of course, treatises in prose. In their biographies, however, philosophers always appear talking to anonymous interlocutors or to each other using quick-witted answers in adverse situations, and they speak mainly in apothegms and maxims, syllogisms and more or less facetious word games or, specially, using quotations borrowed from verses by all kinds of poets¿verses which preceded, but sometimes also followed the philosophers themselves who were supposed to cite them. These expressive forms allow for an interesting approach to the image of philosophers in non-philosophical environments, essentially in the field of rhetoric schools, which is where they very plausibly originated.