Diogenes Laertius

Little is known of Diogenes’ life. Besides the Lives, he wrote Epigrams in Various Metres, known today only in fragments. The selection of his topics in the Lives indicates he wrote after 200 CE. Diogenes was a Greek philosopher interested in the development of Hellenic thought as it expanded throughout the Mediterranean world. It is possible that he was one of the many philosophers (such as Philostratus) who were sponsored by the empress Julia Domna in the early third century.

Russell M. Lawson, Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004), 65.