Abstract

A philosopher named Hierocles is mentioned five times in the Synagoge. Prächter identified him with Hierocles the Stoic (1st–2nd century AD), on the basis of various arguments, none of which are really decisive. In this paper, I will first try to account for the presence of Hierocles’ fragments in the Synagoge: these are likely to have been added to the so-called Cyril’s lexicon (i. e., the Synagoge’s main source) by an anonymous compiler between approximately the 5th and the 8th century – that is, roughly the termini post quos for the compilation of Cyril’s lexicon and the Synagoge respectively. I will then suggest that Hierocles of Alexandria (5th century AD), a Neoplatonic philosopher whose style and eloquence were particularly appreciated in antiquity, is a better candidate than the one indicated by Prächter. Indeed, Hierocles of Alexandria was skilled in aemulatio Platonica – something which is particularly important to our purpose here, given that the lemmas of the Synagoge which are the object of this study partly deal with expressions that are peculiar to Plato.