intro
Apollonides, the third speaker, is at once identified as expert in geometry (920 F), and Lamprias indicates that the scope and limitations of his specialty coincide with those of Hipparchus, the great astronomer (921 d, cf. 925 A). He puts forward objections to Lamprias’s explanation of the face based upon astronomical terminology and calculations (933 f, 935 d-e). An Apollonides appears at Quaest Conviv. 650 F along with Sulla; but he is called o( taktiko\s *)apollwni/dhs, and there is no compelling reason to identify the two.Ziegler (Plutarchos von Chaironeia, 34) says that the sentence at 927 B, οὐ γὰρ ἐν στρατορέδῳ τακτικῶν ὄφελος κτλ., is spoken obviously with reference to the interlocutor Apollonides; but this is pretty obviously not true. Lamprias is not here speaking in answer to Apollonides; and his subsequent words, οὐδὲ κηρουρῶν οὐδ’ οἰκοδόμων, certainly have reference to none of the present company. These are in fact stock examples of the argument from design. Prickard may well be right in saying that the name Apollonides here was used by Plutarch to mean one of the clan of Apollonius, i.e. a mathematician who, like Apollonius,Apollonius of Perga; cf. Hultsch, R. E. ii. 151-160. is interested in astronomical theory.
intro
Certainly Aristotle, who puts forward the orthodox Peripatetic theory of the heavenly bodies (928 E ff.), is only a name chosen by Plutarch to signify the school that he represents (cf. 920 F), even as the representative Epicurean in Sera Numinis Vindicta is called Epicurus.There is no reason to change Ἐπίκουρος of the MSS. in 548 A to Ἐπικούρειος, as Fabricius did. Aristotle here supports Epicurus there.
