Hermann Diels

Hermann Alexander Diels , born with Biebrich the May 18th 1848 and died in Berlin-Dahlem the June 4th 1922, is a German Philologue , specialist in ancient natural philosophy.

Diels and its professor, Hermann Usener, had noticed the similarities between the Placita , text in the past allotted to Plutarque, and the Eclogae of Jean de Stobée, a Doxographe of the 5th century. Thinking of a single source, Diels tries to reconstitute the history of their successive copies. It publishes the fruit of its research in Doxographi graeci , thus clarifying all the history of the doxography.

In 1903, it publishes Fragmente der Vorsokratiker , the first true corpus of ancient philosophers. In 1934 appears an increased edition, and in 1952 the version improved by Walther Kranz appears, integrating the Wortindex , an organized marking system where each author corresponds to a number and where the entries are divided into three groups:

a: testimonia , testimonys on the life of the authors and their doctrines
b: ipsissima , fragments
C: imitations , texts apocryphal books taking an author like model

The corpus of the Présocratique S published by the Bibliothèque of the Pleiad was worked out by Jean-Paul Dumont in 1988 starting from the work of Diels.

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