Successions of Philosophers or Philosophers' Successions was the name of several lost works from the Hellenistic era. Their purpose was to depict the philosophers of different schools in terms of a line of succession of which they were a part. From the 3rd to the 1st centuries BC there were Successions written by Antigonus of Carystus

Antigonus of Carystus

Antigonus of Carystus , Greek writer on various subjects, flourished in the 3rd century BC. After some time spent at Athens and in travelling, he was summoned to the court of Attalus I of Pergamum...

, Sotion

Sotion

Sotion of Alexandria was a Greek doxographer and biographer, and an important source for Diogenes Laërtius. None of his works survive; they are known only indirectly...

, Heraclides Lembos (an epitome of Sotion), Sosicrates

Sosicrates

Sosicrates of Rhodes was a Greek historical writer. Sosicrates was born on the island Rhodes and is noted, chiefly, for his frequent mention by Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers — referencing Sosicrates as the sole authority behind such facts as Aristippus having...

, Alexander Polyhistor

Alexander Polyhistor

Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor was a Greek scholar who was enslaved by the Romans during the Mithridatic War and taken to Rome as a tutor. After his release, he continued to live in Italy as a Roman citizen...

, Jason of Nysa

Jason of Nysa

Jason of Nysa, a Stoic philosopher, son of Menecrates, and, on his mother's side, grandson of Posidonius, of whom also he was the disciple and successor at the Stoic school at Rhodes. He therefore flourished after the middle of the 1st century BC...

, Antisthenes of Rhodes

Antisthenes of Rhodes

Antisthenes of Rhodes was a Greek historian who lived c. 200 BCE. He took an active part in the political affairs of his country, and wrote a history of his own time, which, notwithstanding his bias towards his native island, is spoken of in terms of high praise by Polybius...

, and Nicias of Nicaea

Nicias of Nicaea

Nicias of Nicaea, was a biographer and historian of ancient Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, he may have lived in the 1st century BC or AD. He is repeatedly referred to by Athenaeus. His principal work seems to have been a Successions , a history of the various schools of...

. The surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a biography of the Greek philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, written in Greek, perhaps in the first half of the third century AD.-Overview:...

by Diogenes Laërtius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

 (3rd century AD) draws upon this tradition.

In addition to these, there were often histories of single schools. Such works were created by Phanias of Eresus

Phanias of Eresus

Phaenias of Eresus was a Greek philosopher from Lesbos, important as an immediate follower of and commentator on Aristotle. He came to Athens about 332 BCE, and joined his compatriot, Theophrastus, in the Peripatetic school. His writings on logic and science appear to have been commentaries or...

 (On the Socratics), Idomeneus of Lampsacus

Idomeneus of Lampsacus

Idomeneus of Lampsacus was a friend and disciple of Epicurus. We have no details of his life, except that he married Batis of Lampsacus, the sister of Metrodorus, and he was a court dignitary at Lampsacus around 306-301 BC...

 (On the Socratics), Sphaerus

Sphaerus

Sphaerus of Borysthenes or the Bosphorus, was a Stoic philosopher.He studied first under Zeno of Citium, and afterwards under Cleanthes. He taught in Sparta, where he acted as advisor to Cleomenes III. He moved to Alexandria at some point, where he lived in the court of Ptolemy IV Philopator...

 (On the Eretrian philosophers), and Straticles (On Stoics). Among the papyri found at the Villa of the Papyri

Villa of the Papyri

The Villa of the Papyri is a private house in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum . Situated north-west of the township, the residence sits halfway up the slope of the volcano Vesuvius without other buildings to obstruct the view. The villa suburbana was owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law,...

 at Herculaneum

Herculaneum

Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town destroyed by volcanic pyroclastic flows in AD 79, located in the territory of the current commune of Ercolano, in the Italian region of Campania in the shadow of Mt...

, there are works devoted to the successions of the Stoic

STOIC

STOIC was a variant of Forth.It started out at the MIT and Harvard Biomedical Engineering Centre in Boston, and was written in the mid 1970s by Jonathan Sachs...

s, Academics

Platonic Academy

The Academy was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Athens. Aristotle studied there for twenty years before founding his own school, the Lyceum. The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC...

, and Epicureans. In a later period, Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

 produced On the First Philosophers and their Successors and On the Cyrenaics, and Galen

Galen

Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamon , was a prominent Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher...

 wrote On Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

's Sect and On the Hedonistic Sect (Epicureans). There were often biographies of individual philosophers with a brief description of his successors. Of such nature were Aristoxenus

Aristoxenus

Aristoxenus of Tarentum was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musical treatise, Elements of Harmony, survives incomplete, as well as some fragments concerning rhythm and...

's Life of Pythagoras, Andronicus

Andronicus of Rhodes

Andronicus of Rhodes was a Greek philosopher from Rhodes who was also the eleventh scholarch of the Peripatetic school.He was at the head of the Peripatetic school at Rome, about 58 BC, and was the teacher of Boethus of Sidon, with whom Strabo studied...

's Life of Aristotle, Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...

's Life of Aristotle, and Iamblichus's Life of Pythagoras.