Syriac Sayings of Greek Philosophers

Syriac "Sayings of Greek Philosophers" (SGP) is a corpus of sentences
preserved in a number of Syriac manuscripts in the form of different
collections and under different titles (until now these sentences were
mainly referred to as "On the Soul"). SGP consists of two main blocks of
sentences represented by two gnomic anthologies, the "Dublin
Florilegium", consisting of short maxims, and the "Tur ʿAbdin
Florilegium", including longer expositions in moral philosophy, or
"counsels". The first introductory part of the book not only describes
the textual witnesses of SGP, but also surveys all other extant gnomic
materials attributed to Greek philosophers and poets (the Seven Sages,
Homer, Plato, Menander, Pythagoras, Theano, etc.), including gnomologia,
florilegia, exempla, and doxography. Two chapters of the introduction
focus on the pedagogical use of the gnomic materials mainly connected
with the new Christian forms of rhetorical education based on the study
of the Bible and on the texts of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of
Nazianzus. The second part of the book contains a critical edition of
SGP on the basis of 15 manuscripts.