Clearco e il dibattito nella biografia peripatetica su Platone

Clearchus and the Debate in the Peripatetic Biography on Plato · The subject of this paper is an anecdote told by Claudius Aelianus about Plato, who is portrayed as displaying traits of humility and modesty at the Olympic games. The form, with the fulmen after the dynamic articulation of occasio and provocatio, suggests an origin in the Peripatetic biography, and more specifically in the so-called Chamaileon method, which ultimately derives from Plato, from the theory of μίμησις in the Politeia. Diogenes Laertius bears witness to an ancient debate between the hostile tradition, which, developed by Diogenes of Sinope and perhaps already by Antisthenes, attributed boastful personality, τῦφος, to Plato, and the positive tradition, which bloomed in the Academy, in the works of Speusippus, and found fertile ground in the attention of the Peripatetic biography. More precisely, the anecdote told by Claudius Aelianus can be traced back to Clearchus, possibly to his Encomium of Plato or better to his study On Kinds of Life.