¹ The terms φαντασία and φανταστικόν are derived from the verb φαντάζειν, which means ‘to show, to make visible’. They occur in a philosophical context for the first time in Plato. He understood φαντασία as a representational mental state which is equal or very closely related to sensation (αἴσθησις; cf. Tht. 152c; Soph. 264b). On the other hand, φανταστικόν is used in the Sophist (263c) as an adjective referring to the φανταστικὴ τέχνη, the skill in producing φαντάσματα, images that resemble things but are not exact reproductions of these things. Aristotle uses φανταστικόν in the context of describing the part of the soul (φανταστικὸν μόριον, De an. 432a31) responsible for the production of φαντασία, which is in turn understood as that in virtue of which a mental image (φάντασμα) arises in us (De an. 428a1–2). Later authors mostly follow Aristotle in taking τὸ φανταστικόν to refer to the psychic capacity for producing φαντασία (e.g. Alex. Aphr. De an. 66.9–73.11; Plotinus, Enn. 4.3.29–31; Procl. In Ti. 1.194.15–195.8; etc.). This makes Chrysippus’ sharp distinction between φαντασία and φανταστικόν in Aet. 4.12 rather unusual.

² Diels, H., Doxographi Graeci (Berlin, 1879)Google Scholar.

³ This situation is not helped by the fact that the two recent systematic treatments of Chrysippus’ philosophy—Gould, J.B., The Philosophy of Chrysippus (Albany, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Bréhier, E., Chrysippe et l'ancien stoïcisme (Paris, 1971 ³)Google Scholar—neither discuss Chrysippus’ theory of imagination nor offer any detailed analysis of Aet. 4.12.

⁴ The Greek follows Mau's, J. Teubner edition (Plutarchi Moralia, vol. 5.2.1 [Leipzig, 1971])Google Scholar with the emendations of Long, A.A. and Sedley, D. (The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. [Cambridge, 1987]Google Scholar = abbreviated as LS from hereon) at 2.239 (LS 39 B). For ‘light’ as a possible etymological origin of φαντασία, see Arist. De an. 429a3–4. The two literary references near the end of the passage are to Eur. Or. 255–9 and (probably) Hom. Od. 20.350–7, as I discuss in Stojanović, P., ‘On the status of natural divination in Stoicism’, Theoria 63 (2020), 5–16, at 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Cf. Diog. Laert. 7.50: ‘There is a difference between an appearance and a phantasm. Phantasm is a supposition of thought (δόκησις διανοίας) of the sort that arises in sleep, while appearance is an imprint in the soul, or in other words an alteration, as Chrysippus proposes in the second book of his On the Soul.’ This lends some support—although by no means conclusive—to the hypothesis that the distinctions summarized in Aet. 4.12 were originally discussed in Chrysippus’ work On the Soul. The fact that, unlike Aetius, Diogenes Laertius contrasts appearance with phantasm and not with imagination does not seem to be significant, and is probably the result of the brevity of Diogenes’ report.

⁶ The verb ἐνδείκνυσθαι here probably has a technical sense, which the Stoics used to describe both the ability of appearances to directly reveal ‘plain’ (ἐναργῆ) and ‘clear’ (τρανῆ) things and their ability to reveal ‘obscure’ (ἄδηλα) things indirectly via sign-inference (cf. Sext. Emp. Math. 7.161–3, 7.172, 7.194, 8.143). For a more detailed discussion of the potential significance of ἐνδείκνυσθαι in this passage, see Stojanović (n. 4), 12–14.

⁷ A word of caution is necessary here. Although Aetius reports that Chrysippus made a sharp distinction between φαντασία and φανταστικόν, our main sources on Stoicism or even the later members of the Stoic school did not follow Chrysippus in this, as it seems. Authors such as Sextus Empiricus, Cicero, Plutarch, Nemesius, etc. regularly portray the Stoics as talking about ‘empty φαντασίαι’ and use the word φαντασία to refer to psychic states entertained in dreams, madness, etc. which according to Chrysippus’ distinction in Aetius would be classified among imaginations. In other words, a vast majority of our sources suggest that, except for Chrysippus, the Stoics treated imagination as a species of the general genus of appearance. This need not really be a problem if we assume that Chrysippus’ intention in the Aetius passage was to emphasize that, although both the psychic states that are and those that are not caused by external objects can loosely be called φαντασίαι, only the former should be taken as φαντασίαι in the strict sense of the word. In my discussion, I will often follow the sources in treating imagination as a species of appearance, but in such cases I will endeavour to emphasize that we are talking about the kind of φαντασία which Chrysippus would strictly classify as φανταστικόν.

⁸ The expression διάκενος ἑλκυσμός also appears in Sextus Empiricus’ account of the Stoic epistemology in Math. 7.241 and 7.245, as well as in Philo, Cher. 69, suggesting that the Stoics used it as a technical term. A variation on this expression, διάκενος or κενὴ φαντασία, which was apparently also used by the Stoics (see note 7 above), is referred to in Sext. Emp. Math. 8.67 and in P.Berol. inv. 16545 (see the reconstruction in Backhouse, T., ‘Antipater of Tarsus on false “phantasiai” [PBerol inv. 16545]’, Studi e testi per il corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini 10: Papiri filososofici, Miscellanea di Studi 3 [Florence, 2000], 7–31)Google Scholar, and occurs in Cicero's Acad. post. 47–54 and 88–90 in its Latin translation, uisum inane.

⁹ This sentence is identical in Ps.-Galen's De hist. phil. 93, while the version in Nemesius’ De nat. hom. 55.21–2 is slightly (but, as I will argue below, importantly) different: φάντασμα δὲ ὃ ἐφέλκομεν κατὰ τὸν φανταστικὸν διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν. The concurrence of Ps.-Plutarch and Ps.-Galen is probably not a coincidence, since there are compelling reasons to think that, at least for the part of Aetius’ text under discussion here, Ps.-Galen used Ps.-Plutarch's text as its source, unlike Nemesius who appears to have had independent access to Aetius’ text (see Mansfeld, J. and Runia, D.T., Aëtiana: The Method and Intellectual Context of a Doxographer Volume I: The Sources [Leiden, 1997], 141–52Google Scholar). If this is indeed so, then Ps.-Galen's text offers no additional support to Ps.-Plutarch over Nemesius in respect to the reliability of reproduction of Aetius’ original text.

¹⁰ For the former translation, see LS 39 B, as well as Bett, R., Sextus Empiricus: Against the Logicians (Cambridge, 2005), 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Sext. Emp. Math. 7.241) and 50 (Math. 7.245); for the latter, see Inwood, B. and Gerson, L., The Stoics Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia (Indianapolis, 2008), 22Google Scholar.

¹¹ P.Herc. 1020 col. 112, lines 16–30: δεῖ γὰρ | τὸν ἀπρόπτωτον | ἀ[ν]έλκυστόν τε εἶ|ναι ὑπὸ φαντασίας | ἀκαταλήπτου καὶ | ἰσχύειν ἐν ταῖς φαν|τασίαις, ὥστε μὴ ἕλ|κεσθαι ἀπὸ φαντα|σιῶ̣ν̣ ἀκαταλήπτων | καὶ κρατεῖν τῶν | συγκαταθέσεων ὥσ|τε μὴ ἕλ|κεσθα̣ι ἤ μὴ | ἀ[κ]ο̣λ̣ουθε̣[ῖν] φαντα̣|[σίαις μὴ κατα]λ̣η̣π̣[τι|καῖς……]. The Greek text is from the latest reconstruction of P.Herc. 1020 edited by M. Alessandrelli and G. Ranocchia in 2015, ‘Stoici scriptoris anonymi Opus incertum (PHerc. 1020), coll. 104–112’, published online at http://www.pherc.eu/publications.html. Cf. also LS 41 D.

¹² According to the standard definition, the apprehensive appearance is ἀπὸ ὑπάρχοντος καὶ κατ’ αὐτὸ τὸ ὑπάρχον ἐναπομεμαγμένη καὶ ἐναπεσφραγισμένη, ὁποία οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο ἀπὸ μὴ ὑπάρχοντος (Sext. Emp. Math. 7.248; cf. also 7.402, 7.410, 7.426; Pyr. 2.4; Diog. Laert. 7.50). The key term in the definition, the participle ὕπαρχον derived from the verb ὑπάρχειν, has proven difficult to translate into English, not least because the Stoics used it in several different senses (cf. Long, A.A., ‘Language and thought in Stoicism’, in id. [ed.], Problems in Stoicism [London, 1971], 75–113, at 89Google Scholar). Because of this, the interpretation of the phrase ἀπὸ ὑπάρχοντος in the definition has been highly controversial, and scholars are divided into those that take it to mean that the apprehensive appearance is caused by a real object (e.g. Rist, J.M., Stoic Philosophy [Cambridge, 1969], 136–7Google Scholar; Hankinson, R.J., ‘Stoic epistemology’, in Inwood, B. [ed.], The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics [Cambridge, 2003], 59–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nawar, T., ‘The Stoic account of apprehension’, Philosopher's Imprint 14[29] [2014], 1–21Google Scholar) and those who argue that it means that the apprehensive appearance must be true (e.g. Frede, M., ‘Stoics and skeptics on clear and distinct appearances’, in Burnyeat, M. [ed.], The Skeptical Tradition [Berkeley, 1983], 65–93Google Scholar; Sedley, D., ‘Zeno's definition of phantasia kataleptike’, in Scaltsas, T. and Mason, A.S. [edd.], The Philosophy of Zeno: Zeno of Citium and his Legacy [Larnaca, 2002], 133–54Google Scholar). For reasons that are too complex to elaborate here and which I have presented elsewhere (see Stojanović, P., ‘Zeno of Citium's causal theory of apprehensive appearances’, AncPhil 39 [2019], 151–74Google Scholar), I favour a modified version of the causal reading of ἀπὸ ὑπάρχοντος according to which ὕπαρχον refers not to an existing external object simpliciter but to an external object that is spatiotemporally present for the subject in the situation in which the appearance is received. This implies that the apprehensive appearance is ‘from what is present, and moulded and sealed in accordance with that present thing itself, such that it would not arise from what is not present’.

¹³ Plut. St. rep. 1056F = LS 41 E; cf. also Sext. Emp. Math. 7.151–7.

¹⁴ The ‘younger Stoics’ mentioned here can be identified with some certainty as Antipater and those around him; cf. LS 2.250 (comment on 40 K) and Brittain, C., Cicero: On Academic Scepticism (Indianapolis, 2006), 13 n. 21Google Scholar.

¹⁵ ἐνθένδε οὐχ ἁπλῶς κριτήριον γίνεται τῆς ἀληθείας ἡ καταληπτικὴ φαντασία, ἀλλ’ ὅταν μηδὲν ἔνστημα ἔχῃ. αὕτη γὰρ ἐναργὴς οὖσα καὶ πληκτικὴ μόνον οὐχὶ τῶν τριχῶν, φασί, λαμβάνεται, κατασπῶσα ἡμᾶς εἰς συγκατάθεσιν, καὶ ἄλλου μηδενὸς δεομένη εἰς τὸ τοιαύτη προσπίπτειν ἢ εἰς τὸ τὴν πρὸς τὰς ἄλλας διαφορὰν ὑποβάλλειν.

¹⁶ The passage suggests that the apprehensive appearance's ability to drag one into assent is related to its being ‘plain’ (ἐναργής). The role of this property of representational mental states that is related to assent will be discussed in more detail below.

¹⁷ In addition to plainness mentioned in the previous footnote, the Stoics thought that ‘persuasiveness’ (πιθανότης) is another property of representational states related to their ability to induce our assent; cf. Sext. Emp. Math. 7.242–3, discussed in more detail below.

¹⁸ This is, for example, similar to how Graver, M. interprets Aet. 4.12.5 in Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago, 2007), 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Orestes is “attracted” to his Furies, not of course in the sense of wanting to pursue them, but in that the nature of his mental experience entices him to believe that they are really there and to pursue a course of action in relation to them.’ In general, this approach is consistent with interpreting ἑλκυσμός in the expression διάκενος ἑλκυσμός as conveying the sense of English expression ‘to be/get carried away’ by one's imagination, which is, for example, suggested by Telfer, W., Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa (Westminster, 1995), 321 n. 7Google Scholar.

¹⁹ The reason to think that ἑλκυστικά here include imaginations is Epictetus’ description of the subject of the third topic necessary for moral progress in Diss. 3.2.5: ‘it has to do with infallibility in the matters which have just been mentioned, so that even in dreams, or drunkenness, or a state of melancholy, one may not be taken unawares by an unexamined appearance.’ According to the Stoics, representational states that always occur in sleep, and frequently in drunken and melancholic states, are precisely ‘empty’ appearances or Chrysippean imaginations (cf. Cic. Acad. post. 47–54).

²⁰ I am thankful to the anonymous referee for pointing out this possibility.

²¹ Sext. Emp. Math. 7.242–3. According to Sextus Empiricus, the Stoics thought that persuasive appearances produce ‘smooth movement’ (λεῖον κίνημα) in the soul. Similarly, Diogenes Laertius reproduces the following Stoic definition: ‘Persuasive proposition is one that leads us into assent’ (πιθανὸν δέ ἐστιν ἀξίωμα τὸ ἄγον εἰς συγκατάθεσιν, 7.75). Carneades, who is almost certainly following the Stoics closely here, apparently held that persuasiveness of a representational state depends on whether it is ‘clear’ (τρανής) or ‘plain’ (ἐναργής) (Sext. Emp. Math. 7.172). Note the remarkable similarity between Carneades’ formulation εἰς συγκατάθεσιν ἐπισπᾶσθαι in Math. 7.172 and the phrase κατασπῶσα ἡμᾶς εἰς συγκατάθεσιν in Sextus’ report about the ‘younger Stoics’ in Math. 7.257 cited above.

²² Lucullus, who mostly represents the Stoic epistemological views in Cicero's Academica posteriora, in response to the Academic objection in 51 says that perspicuitas—which earlier in 17 is introduced as his Latin translation of the Stoic concept of ἐνάργεια—is ‘absent’ (abesse) from all imaginations, including those that are entertained in abnormal states such as drunkenness, madness, sleep, and others. probabilitas, which is Cicero's rendering of πιθανότης, is not mentioned explicitly in 51, but is discussed a few paragraphs earlier (47–9) in the same context of indistinguishability of empty and apprehensive appearances, which suggests that the Stoics probably thought that imaginations lack persuasiveness too. Furthermore, although this is by no means conclusive, Acad. post. 87–8 suggests that the strategy of claiming that imaginations lack plainness can be traced back to Chrysippus himself. The Stoics were likely driven to adopt this position by their strong empiricist and materialist philosophical framework in which the subjective ‘look’ of an appearance produced by the immediate causal impact of an external corporeal object on our senses can never be matched exactly by an appearance produced internally, solely through the activity of our mind.

²³ The Greek text cited is from Morani's, M. Teubner edition (Nemesius De natura hominis [Leipzig, 1987])Google Scholar. There is some disagreement among manuscripts regarding the first part of the sentence that may be pertinent to our discussion, so it should be addressed here. Namely in his critical apparatus on page 55 Morani notes that, while most extant Greek manuscripts (as well as early Latin and Aramaic translations) of Nemesius read φάντασμα δὲ ὃ ἐφέλκομεν κατὰ τὸν φανταστικὸν διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν, a few of them offer two alternative versions, (a) φάντασμα δὲ [sic], ᾧ ἐφελκόμεν [sic] κατὰ τὸ φανταστικὸν διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν (‘Phantasm is that by which we draw in imagination's empty drawing’, BN Gr. 1268; Sächsische LB Da 57) and (b) φάντασμα δὲ [sic], ὡς ἐφελκόμενον τον [sic] κατὰ τὸ φανταστικὸν διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν (‘Phantasm, as what is drawn in imagination's empty drawing’, British Library, Harley MS 5685). Both of these versions, however, are problematic. Regarding version (a), if κατὰ τὸ φανταστικὸν διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν is taken as a single unit, then the sentence is grammatically awkward because ἐφελκόμεν does not have an object. Alternatively, if we take διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν as the object of ἐφελκόμεν and treat κατὰ τὸ φανταστικόν as a separate adverbial phrase (I am thankful to the anonymous referee for pointing out this grammatical possibility), we get ‘Phantasm is that with which, in [virtue of] imagination, we draw an empty drawing.’ This implies that phantasms somehow play an active role in the process of ‘empty drawing’ which is involved in imagining. But, according to the Stoics, every phantasm occurring in a human soul represents a ‘concept’ (ἐννόημα, Ps.-Plut. Placita 900A–D = Aet. 4.11), and concepts are mental entities that result from the corporeal psychic process called ‘conception’ (ἔννοια) which consists in thinking about a concept (cf. LS 1.182). This implies that the role of phantasms is passive: they are produced by the processes such as thinking and imagining, and not the other way around as the latter reading of (a) requires. The problem with version (b), on the other hand, is that the text is highly unreliable; it is clearly visible in the Harley manuscript that the scribe first wrote ὡς ἐφελκόμεν κατὰ τὸ φανταστικὸν διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν, and then made two corrections—changed the verb ἐφελκόμεν to the participle ἐφελκόμενον by adding the suffix –ον, and then added τον before κατά—probably in an attempt to make sense of the ὡς whose presence here is almost certainly an error. Nevertheless, presumably based on the idea that both version (a) and version (b) suggest the presence of the letter ω before the verb ἐφέλκειν, and on Ps.-Plutarch's version of the same sentence in Aet. 4.12.5—which, as we saw above, uses the verb ἕλκειν in the passive voice (ἑλκόμεθα)—Matthaei in the Oxford edition of 1802 (later reprinted in J.-P. Migne's Patrologia Graeca vol. 40, from 1858) emends this into ᾧ ἐφελκόμεθα (page 634), in which he is followed by Diels ([n. 2], 402). However, Morani's version, which gives the verb ἐφέλκειν in the active voice, is more likely to be accurate than Matthaei's passive reading for a number of reasons. First, the former is in accordance with a larger number of manuscripts. Second, it is not plagued by problems such as those we mentioned in relation to versions (a) and (b) above. Third, Morani's version is more likely from the perspective of internal coherence of Nemesius’ text, since in another passage where imagination is mentioned again (70.22–3, discussed further below), although the verb Nemesius uses is ἕλκειν and not ἐφέλκειν, the voice of the verb is active (ἕλκουσι), not passive. Finally, as I will argue below, the use of ἕλκειν/ἐφέλκειν in non-passive voices is attested in contexts that refer to imaginations.

²⁴ Cf. Sext. Emp. Math. 8.57. That Sextus’ discussion in Math. 8.56–60 relies on the views formulated (or at least adopted; cf. Diog. Laert. 10.32 = LS 15 F) by the Stoics is confirmed by Diog. Laert. 7.53, who also cites a number of methods of creation and manipulation of conceptual content.

²⁵ Here I am setting aside the issue whether the process of creating the concept of a Fury by composition is occurring in Orestes’ soul at the moment he is imagining it, or whether he had created this concept earlier (e.g. when he first heard a story about the Furies) and is now merely recalling it from memory. Both of these psychological processes would amount to the act of ‘drawing a phantasm’ according to the interpretation I am proposing.

²⁶ This is suggested by Diog. Laert. 7.61 (= LS 30 C2), where phantasm is characterized as a ‘re-imprint’ (ἀνατύπωμα) of something perceived before, like, for example, when the phantasm of a horse arises even though there is no actual horse present.

²⁷ The example with Dion is from Sext. Emp. Math. 7.245, and for my interpretation of it see Stojanović (n. 12). The Stoics viewed memory as a set of permanently stored appearances, which give rise to conceptions (Aet. 4.11.1–2 = LS 39 E_1–2; Plut. Com. not. 1084F–1085A = LS 39 F).

²⁸ Chrysippus’ view would thus be very similar to the Peripatetic position found in commentaries on Aristotle, according to which imagination, memory and remembering all crucially include the process in which ‘the soul brings forward phantasms from [within] itself’ (προβάλλουσα τὰ φαντάσματα ἀφ’ αὑτῆς ἡ ψυχή, Them. in Ar. de an. par. 28.13–14; cf. also Simpl. in Ar. de an. 214.9; Prisc. Metaph. in Theoph. 24.12).

²⁹ In ancient medicine, phrenitis (φρενῖτις) was a mental derangement caused by excess yellow bile and accompanied by fever that can cause hallucinations.

³⁰ ἄλλοι δὲ διάκενον ἕλκουσι φαντασίαν ὁρᾶν οἰόμενοι τὰ μὴ ὁρώμενα, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα φρονοῦσι κατὰ λόγον. In De loc. aff. 8.226–7, Galen illustrates this second type of phrenitis by an episode from his own life, when while suffering from high fever it appeared to him that little sticks of straw were protruding from his mattress and little pieces of wool from his gown when there were none.

³¹ See n. 12 above.

³² The Stoics thought that one of the crucial characteristics of the apprehensive appearance is that it is ‘clear’ (τρανής) and ‘distinct’ or ‘thoroughly imprinted’ (ἔκτυπος), and that this has to do with the requirement that this appearance is ‘such that it would not come about from what is not present’ (see Frede [n. 12]). The type of appearance which is caused by an external object but which (contrary to the clear and distinct one) is ‘faint’ (ἀμυδρά) and represents its object in a ‘mixed-up’ (συγκεχυμένως) way is mentioned in Math. 7.171–2. See also Diog. Laert. 7.46 and Alex. Aphr. De an. 71.13.

³³ Melancholy (μελαγχολία) was also a type of mental derangement commonly considered in ancient medicine to be caused by excess black bile which, unlike phrenitis, is not accompanied by fever, but which, like phrenitis, can also cause hallucinations.

³⁴ According to Hom. Od. 20.350–7, during a banquet attended by Penelope's suitors Theoclymenus predicts that they will all be dead by the end of the night, which later indeed happens. For the Stoic distinction between ‘technical’ or ‘artificial’ and ‘non–technical’ or ‘natural’ divination, see Ps.-Plut. Vit. Hom. 2.2592–7; Cic. Diu. 1.11–12, 1.34, 1.70–2, 1.109–10, 1.127–9, 2.26–7; cf. also Stojanović (n. 4).

³⁵ Although ἐφέλκεσθαι corresponds both to middle and to passive, the voice of the verb here is middle because it is accompanied by a direct object in the accusative case (δόξας κενὰς καὶ ἀλλοκότους).

³⁶ We cannot completely rule out the possibility that the verb in Aetius’ original text in 4.12.5 was ἐφελκόμεθα in the middle voice instead of Nemesius’ ἐφέλκομεν in the active voice, giving something like φάντασμα δὲ ὃ ἐφελκόμεθα κατὰ τὸν φανταστικὸν διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν (‘phantasm is that which we draw for ourselves in imagination's empty drawing’). Plutarch's use of the middle voice ἐφέλκεσθαι in Dion 2.4 which is cited above lends some support to this possibility. If ὃ ἐφελκόμεθα was indeed in Aetius’ original text, then ἐφ’ ὃ ἑλκόμεθα in Ps.-Plutarch may have easily been an orthographic mistake of taking ἐφ from ἐφελκόμεθα and writing it before ὃ, made by the author of the text or perhaps later during the process of copying the manuscript. On the other hand, in this case Nemesius’ ὃ ἐφέλκομεν in the active voice was probably a simplification of Aetius’ ὃ ἐφελκόμεθα, one which compared to Ps.-Plutarch's version preserved Aetius’ original sense more faithfully.