Scholars have long recognised the interest of the Stoics' thought on geometrical limits, both as a specifi c topic in their physics and within the context of the school's ontological taxonomy. Unfortunately, insuffi cient textual evidence remains for us to reconstruct their discussion fully. Th e sources we do have on Stoic geometrical themes are highly polemical, tending to reveal a disagreement as to whether limit is to be understood as a mere concept, as a body or as an incorporeal. In my view, this disagreement held among the historical Stoics, rather than simply refl ecting a doxographical divergence in transmission. Th is apparently Stoic disagreement has generated extensive debate, in which there is still no consensus as to a standard Stoic doctrine of limit. Th e evidence is thin, and little of it refers in detail to specifi c texts, especially from the school's founders. But in its overall features the evidence suggests that Posidonius and Cleomedes diff ered from their Stoic precursors on this topic. Th ere are also grounds for believing that some degree of disagreement obtained between the early Stoics over the metaphysical status of shape. Assuming the Stoics did so disagree, the principal question in the scholarship on Stoic ontology is whether there were actually positions that might be called "standard" within Stoicism on the topic of limit. In attempting to answer this question, my discussion initially sets out to illuminate certain features of early Stoic thinking about limit, and then takes stock of the views off ered by late Stoics, notably Posidonius and Cleomedes. Attention to Stoic arguments suggests that the school's founders developed two accounts of shape: on the one hand, as a thought-construct, and, on the other, as a body. In an attempt to resolve the crux bequeathed to them, the school's successors suggested that limits are incorporeal. While the authorship of this last notion cannot be securely identifi ed on account of the absence of direct evidence, it may be traced back to Posidonius, and it went on to have subsequent infl uence on Stoic thinking, namely in Cleomedes' astronomy.

Stoic biology made a distinction between nature and soul, classifying natural bodies into soulless plants and ensouled animals. The clearest influence of this classification, starting from the third century B.C., was in its embryological claim that the foetus, being directed by nature, is not an animal, a Stoic innovation upon Platonic and Aristotelian biology. The mid-second-century A.D. Stoic Hierocles reaffirmed this in his brief account of embryology, but, apart from textual difficulties raised by the surviving papyrus of his book, the question arises: does nature cease or remain in the animal after birth? More specifically, should the animal's faculties of nutrition and growth be classified as parts of soul after this has been formed? It appears that the Stoics' debate about the issue to some degree turned on concepts of competing divisions of the soul's parts or faculties. Unfortunately, insufficient textual evidence remains to illuminate their debate; and how the debate was conducted by Stoics from Panaetius on is uncertain, despite some secondhand reports that may help us to reconstruct it. Our one relevant late Stoic source is the opening of Hierocles' book, but he is entirely silent on it in his ensuing treatment of embryology. 1 Even some degree of doxographical disagreement exists on the issue. Calcidius, at In Platonis Timaeum 220, reports a Stoic doctrine, attributed to Chrysippus, that the animal's nutrition and growth are taken over by the parts of soul after birth. 2 Galen, at Adversus Iulianum 5, and ps.-Galen, at Introductio 13 (that the latter refers to the Stoics is hardly in doubt), cite another Stoic doctrine, that the animal is governed both by nature and by soul (see below). Under the circumstances, it is hard to determine whether this disagreement was actually one between the historical Stoics, or merely reflects a doxographical divergence in transmission, and whether Chrysippus differed from the other Stoics on the issue. Moreover, the question whether (and if so how) those two Stoic doctrines are fully compatible needs closer scrutiny. Below I shall argue that the Stoics held to a belief in the continuation of nature in the animal, and that any impression of a disagreement, on this view, is likely to derive from Calcidius' misreporting. Even if Calcidius were right to attribute to Chrysippus the opinion that the soul's parts include provision for nutrition and growth in the animal, it would be probable that this opinion belonged at best to Chrysippus and some Chrysippeans. But 97

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Resumen Se abordan tres cuestiones sobre el estudio de las saunas del NO peninsular. Primero se comentan algunas novedades