According to Diogenes Laertius (7.49–51), the concept of ‘appearance’ (φαντασία) played a central role in Stoic philosophy. As staunch corporealists, the Stoics believed that appearances are physical structures in our corporeal soul which provide the foundation for all our thoughts (Sext. Emp. Math. 7.228–41). One of the crucial features of appearance is that it is a representational mental state that has the ability to provide us with accurate awareness of the world through causal interaction between our senses and external objects, and thus supply the means for acquiring knowledge about the reality. However, the Stoics recognized that we can also be aware and think of objects that are real but are not presently affecting our senses, as well as objects that are altogether fictional and thus incapable of ever interacting with our senses. Because of this, it was important for them to distinguish between representational mental states which are and those which are not caused by external objects at the moment in which they are formed. Chrysippus was one of the Stoics who paid special attention to this distinction; in a key text, Aet. 4.12, he is reported as reserving the name ‘appearance’ (φαντασία) only for the former states, while for the latter he used a different term, ‘imagination’ (φανταστικόν).Footnote ¹

Aetius’ original text itself did not survive, but it has been reconstructed in the seminal work by Hermann Diels from several extant secondary sources, all of which appear to summarize the same common text.Footnote ² The reconstruction of chapter 4.12 relies on three such sources, Ps.-Plutarch's Placita 900D–901A, Ps.-Galen's De historia philosophiae 93 and Nemesius’ De natura hominis 55.13–22, of which the first is the longest and most detailed. According to Ps.-Plutarch, Chrysippus made two claims about imagination, first, that it is a mental state that involves a ‘phantasm’ (φάντασμα), a mental image which at the time of being entertained does not represent a present external object, and second, that it is a state in which the subject is ‘drawn towards a phantasm’. The first claim is relatively straightforward and easy to understand given the main theme of the passage, which is the distinction between the way appearance and imagination arise as mental states and what they represent. The second claim, however, is quite obscure and, as closer analysis will show, problematic. Namely, given what we know about Stoic psychology, it is not clear what exactly Chrysippus might have meant by saying that imagination consists in the subject's being drawn towards a phantasm, and it seems that the best attempt at making sense of this idea is destined to fail.Footnote ³ This threatens to leave us without a satisfactory interpretation of Aet. 4.12 and a clear understanding of Chrysippus’ view on imagination. We need not, however, accept this pessimistic result. The summary of the same passage from Nemesius’ De natura hominis suggests an interpretation of Chrysippus’ view on imagination that I believe is better than the interpretation based on Ps.-Plutarch. Namely Nemesius suggests that Chrysippus viewed imagination not as a state in which we are drawn towards a phantasm but as a state in which we are drawing a phantasm from our mind. I shall argue that, by this, Chrysippus meant to say that imagination involves drawing a mental image, that is, pulling it from the memory or conjuring it up by combining previously acquired concepts. I shall also argue that, compared to Ps.-Plutarch, Nemesius seems to be a more reliable source on this section of Aetius’ text and consequently on Chrysippus’ actual view on imagination too.

Let us begin by analysing the most comprehensive source for Aet. 4.12.1–6, which explains Chrysippus’ distinction between appearance and imagination, Ps.-Plutarch's Placita 900D–901A:

According to Ps.-Plutarch, Chrysippus distinguished between ‘appearance’ (φαντασία) and ‘apparent’ (φανταστόν) on the one hand, and between ‘imagination’ (φανταστικόν) and ‘phantasm’ (φάντασμα) on the other.Footnote ⁵ Appearance is an affection (πάθος) in the soul which ‘reveals’ (ἐνδείκνυται) not only itself but also ‘that which made it’ (τὸ πεποιηκός).Footnote ⁶ The latter, we are told, is the apparent thing—an external object with its corporeal qualities (τὸ λευκόν, τὸ ψυχρόν)—which has the capacity to ‘activate’ (κινεῖν) our soul, or in other words to interact causally with it through the sense organs and thus produce an appearance that represents the object that appears. Imagination, on the other hand, is an affection in the soul which is not caused by a present external object.Footnote ⁷ Although this is not stated directly in the text, the implication seems to be that imagination does not reveal its actual cause. Instead, it makes us aware of a phantasm, a mental image that represents an object which, at the time the imagination is entertained, is purely the product of thought. Presumably, this is the reason for Chrysippus’ characterization of imagination as διάκενος ἑλκυσμός:Footnote ⁸ the expression διάκενος or ‘empty’ seems to refer to the fact that imagination is not directly caused by an external object which corresponds to the phantasm. However, the precise meaning of the expression ἑλκυσμός here is less obvious. Its purpose seems to be to provide a description of the main psychological activity involved in the process of imagining. In Ps.-Plutarch, this activity is alluded to in the following sentence (Placita 901F 4–5 = Aet. 4.12.5):

The presence of the preposition ἐπί in the form of ἐφ’ before the relative pronoun ὃ suggests that the voice of ἑλκόμεθα here is passive, which conveys the sense of us being drawn towards or being attracted by the phantasm. Ps.-Plutarch's report thus suggests that Chrysippus understood imagination as a mental state in which we are drawn towards or attracted by its intentional object. Accordingly, all major English translations render the expression διάκενος ἑλκυσμός as ‘empty attraction’ or ‘groundless attraction’.Footnote ¹⁰

But precisely how we are supposed to understand this view about imagination is far from clear. What exactly would being drawn towards or attracted by a phantasm mean in this context? Without a satisfactory answer to this question, our understanding of Chrysippus’ view would remain woefully incomplete. Unfortunately, Ps.-Plutarch's text is not particularly revealing in this regard, and contemporary scholars and commentators who accept Ps.-Plutarch's version of Aetius as reliable are equally unforthcoming. In what follows, I will try to reconstruct what I take to be the best possible interpretation in favour of Ps.-Plutarch's version that can be supported by the extant texts of Stoic provenance.

Since the key to Ps.-Plutarch's suggestion that Chrysippus thought that imagination is a representational state in which the subject is drawn towards a phantasm is the verb ἕλκειν in the passive voice, it is logical to base this interpretation on other Stoic passages where this verb, its cognates or other verbs of similar meaning are used in the same way in the context of discussing representational mental states. Four pieces of textual evidence seem particularly relevant here. The first is a fragment from the anonymous Stoic treatise preserved in a Herculaneum papyrus, P.Herc. 1020 col. 112. While explaining one of the Stoic virtues of dialectic, ‘non–precipitancy’ (ἀπροπτωσία), the author writes:

Like in Ps.-Plutarch's Placita, in this somewhat repetitive passage the verb ἕλκειν is in the passive voice (ἕλκεσθαι). It conveys the sense of the subject being pulled by or drawn toward a particular kind of appearance, the ‘non-apprehensive appearance’ (φαντασία ἀκατάληπτος). The Stoics considered the ‘apprehensive appearance’ (φαντασία καταληπτική) to be the paradigm case of an appearance which is caused by a present external object and which accurately represents that object.Footnote ¹² They thought that assent (συγκατάθεσις) to apprehensive appearance constitutes ‘apprehension’ (κατάληψις), a favourable epistemic state that provides a necessary step in the process of achieving knowledge (ἐπιστήμη), while assent to non-apprehensive appearances constitutes an unfavourable epistemic state of mere opinion (δόξα).Footnote ¹³ Thus, according to the author of P.Herc. 1020, one who possesses the virtue of non–precipitancy would avoid being pulled by non-apprehensive appearances into assent, and thereby avoid holding mere opinions.

The second text is from Sextus Empiricus, who, while reporting the position of the ‘younger Stoics’Footnote ¹⁴ on the criterial role of the apprehensive appearance, says (Math. 7.257):

The ‘obstacle’ mentioned here refers to other (non-apprehensive) appearances that we have previously entertained which are inconsistent with the apprehensive appearance in question and which can prevent us from assenting to the latter (Math. 7.253–6). Thus, according to Sextus, some later Stoics thought that, when there are no obstacles, the apprehensive appearance has the effect of ‘dragging’ (κατασπῶσα) us into assent.Footnote ¹⁶ Although the verb ἕλκειν does not occur in this passage, the active participle κατασπῶσα of the verb κατασπᾶν (‘to drag down’) conveys a similar idea as the passive ἕλκεσθαι in P.Herc. 1020: certain appearances—this time the apprehensive ones—under right conditions have the ability to drag us to assent to them.

Third, ἕλκειν and its cognates occur in the sense relevant for our discussion in two passages in Epictetus’ Discourses. While explaining how to avoid assenting to an appearance leading to improper desires through practising the mind to entertain noble thoughts, Epictetus says in 2.18.23: ‘If you set these [thoughts] against it, you will overpower the appearance, and you will not be drawn by it’ (ταῦτα ἀντιθεὶς νικήσεις τὴν φαντασίαν, οὐχ ἑλκυσθήσῃ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς). In 3.12.14–15, Epictetus also says that one of the three topics (τόποι, 3.2.1–2) crucial for moral progress is ‘the one which has to do with assents, concerned with things persuasive and attractive (τὰ πιθανὰ καὶ ἑλκυστικά)’, that is, concerned with persuasive and attractive appearances.Footnote ¹⁷

Finally, there are similar occurrences of ἕλκειν in the writings of Philo of Alexandria and Clement of Alexandria, who admittedly are not Stoics, but are often influenced by their technical philosophical terminology. In De uita Mosis 2.236, while describing Moses’ reaction to the plea of five daughters to inherit the land of their deceased father, Philo uses the passive participle ἑλκόμενος in the sense of one being pulled away from assent by an appearance: ‘he admired the prudence of the maidens and their loyalty to their parent but suspended his assent being pulled by another appearance (ὑφ’ ἑτέρας ἑλκόμενος φαντασίας), that men should divide inheritances among themselves (…)’. Similarly, Clement says (Paed. 2.12.118.2): ‘For to chase after stones that are transparent and of peculiar colours and after stained glass is for none other than thoughtless people who are drawn by things that give off a striking appearance (ὑπὸ τῶν πληκτικὴν ἐχόντων φαντασίαν ἑλκομένων)’.

What is common to all these texts is that ἕλκειν and similar verbs in the passive voice are used to describe how someone is (or can be) drawn or dragged to assent. Given the central role which ἕλκειν in the passive voice plays in Ps.-Plutarch's version of Aet. 4.12.5, it seems that the best chance of making sense of the passage is to interpret it along the same lines. According to this interpretation, by defining imagination as an ‘empty attraction’, a mental state in which we are drawn towards or attracted by a phantasm, Chrysippus was trying to point out that we are drawn to assent to the phantasm which is represented by the imagination. To use the example from Aetius, when Orestes is imagining the Furies as bloody-looking dragon-shaped girls, this means that he is being drawn to assent that the Furies are attacking him.Footnote ¹⁸

Initially, this interpretation seems quite plausible. Careful examination, however, suggests that it is plagued by several problems. First, unlike the texts talking about dragging one to assent cited above, the focus of Chrysippus’ attention in Aet. 4.12 is explaining the difference between appearance and imagination in terms of how these mental states arise and what they do or do not reveal, and not in terms of what kind of effect they can have on our assent. Chrysippus makes two main points: first, that unlike appearance, which is a representational state that arises from an external corporeal object, imagination is a representational state which does not immediately arise from something external; second, and relatedly, that while appearance reveals not only itself but also the thing that appears—the external object that immediately caused the appearance—imagination does not reveal its cause but makes us aware of a phantasm instead. The issue of assent does not seem to be relevant to these points, which is why characterizing imagination in terms of drawing us to assent in this context would be a strange and unmotivated interpolation on Chrysippus’ part.

Second, none of the instances cited above of dragging one into assent unambiguously refers to imagination, except probably Epictetus’ τὰ ἑλκυστικά in Diss. 3.12.14–15.Footnote ¹⁹ The rest are either definitely or at least plausibly cases where one is being drawn to assent to representational states caused by present external objects, which according to Chrysippus’ distinction would be classified as appearances. This means that, even if the Stoics thought that imaginations have an inherent ability to draw us into assent (which, as we will see below, is itself questionable), they did not consider this ability to be a distinctive feature of imagination but one that is shared by (Chrysippean) appearances too. But if imaginations are not the only representational mental states that can draw us into assent, then centring on this ability as a defining feature of imagination seems irrelevant, especially in the context where imagination is directly compared and contrasted with appearance.

Still, one might think that in the background of the views summarized by Aetius was Chrysippus’ idea that all representational mental states share a common structure in that they ‘reveal’ or make us aware of some content, and also—perhaps in virtue of this revelatory ability—draw us to assent to that content.Footnote ²⁰ This hypothesis is not only prima facie plausible but also consistent with Chrysippus’ emphasis on causal origin as the key remaining difference between appearances and imaginations. Additionally, if true, it would eliminate the two objections mentioned above by providing at least some reason for mentioning assent in this context. The problem with the hypothesis, however, is twofold: first, it is clear that the Stoics did not think that all representational mental states have the ability to draw us to assent, and, second, it seems that they distinguished between the ability of representational states to reveal some content and their ability to draw us to assent to that content because they held that having the former does not entail having the latter. Namely, as we have already suggested above (notes 16 and 17), the Stoics understood the ability of representational states to draw us into assent in terms of properties like plainness (ἐνάργεια) and persuasiveness (πιθανότης): those representational states that have these properties have the ability ‘to drag into assent’ (εἰς συγκατάθεσιν ἐπισπᾶσθαι, Sext. Emp. Math. 7.172), while those that do not, either ‘turn us away from assent’ (ἀποστρέφουσαι ἡμᾶς τῆς συγκαταθέσεως) or have no effect on it.Footnote ²¹ Now, Sextus Empiricus reports that in respect to persuasiveness they classified representational states into four categories: persuasive, unpersuasive, simultaneously persuasive and unpersuasive, and neither persuasive nor unpersuasive (Math. 7.242–3). The second and the fourth categories are crucial here, because they show not only that the Stoics recognized that there are representational states which lack the ability to draw us to assent but also that they thought that such representational states nevertheless do reveal something. For example, the appearance ‘If it is dark, it is day’, cited by Sextus Empiricus as an illustration of the category of unpersuasive, does not have the ability to draw us into assent and yet it would be hard to deny that it transparently and unambiguously makes us aware of the content of the conditional that if it is dark then it is day. Likewise, the appearance ‘the number of stars is even’, which is classified as neither persuasive nor unpersuasive, seems to reveal the proposition that the stars in the night sky are even in number but still does not draw us to assent to it. These examples suggest that for the Stoics the ability of representational states to draw us to assent is independent from their revelatory ability. In other words, they seem to have thought that a representational state can reveal some content to us without drawing us to assent to it. If Chrysippus shared this view—and there is no reason to think that he did not—then we are back to the problem of the relevance of assent for distinguishing imagination from appearance in terms of causal origin and revelatory ability, which is his main goal in Aetius’ summary. Furthermore, this raises another important question: if it is possible for representational states to reveal propositional contents without having the effect of drawing us into assent, then why would Chrysippus think that imaginations are special in that they always produce this effect? It seems hard to accept that he thought that each time we imagine something—say, a Cyclops living in a cave or a Centaur wondering in a forest—we are somehow drawn to assent to these things instead of finding them unpersuasive and unbelievable.

Finally, it may be tempting to suppose that Chrysippus’ intention was to say that not all imaginations have the ability to draw us to assent but rather only those we entertain when mad or otherwise mentally deranged (indeed, such cases seem to be in the focus of his attention in Aet. 4.12), because our being in an abnormal mental state somehow makes these imaginations plain and persuasive. However, the Stoics’ reply to one of the main objections raised against their theory of the apprehensive appearance makes this quite improbable. Namely members of Plato's Academy, which with Arcesilaus’ leadership took a strong sceptical turn, argued that it is possible for the apprehensive appearance to be indistinguishable in terms of properties like persuasiveness and plainness from imaginations entertained in dreams, madness, drunkenness, etc. (Cic. Acad. post. 47–52; Sext. Emp. Math. 7.403–4). They reasoned that, if imaginations indeed have plainness and persuasiveness as apprehensive appearances do, then we would often be drawn to assent to falsehoods, and the apprehensive appearance would not be able to serve as a criterion of truth. Apparently, the main strategy employed by the Stoics in response to this objection was to insist that imaginations simply lack these properties.Footnote ²² They argued that the same representational content which we eagerly assent to while dreaming, drunk or deranged, we find unpersuasive and unbelievable when sane, sober and awake. For instance, in a dream the poet Ennius assents that he sees Homer, but after waking up he says that it had merely seemed to him that he had seen Homer (Cic. Acad. post. 51, 88). Or, to expand on Chrysippus’ example from Euripides, during a fit of madness Orestes assents that the Erinyes are attacking him, but after recovering he does not believe the same thing to which he previously assented (Or. 277–9). Of course, the Stoics’ intention was not to deny the obvious fact that, while dreaming, drunk or deranged, we usually do assent to whatever we happen to imagine. Rather, their point was that in these cases we assent not because our imaginations possess plainness and persuasiveness but because the abnormal condition of our soul makes us inclined to assent to them even though they lack these properties. In other words, they held that, while we may have a defective inclination to assent to imaginations entertained when our soul is in an abnormal condition, imaginations qua representational states do not possess an inherent ability to draw us to assent to them.

All this makes it unlikely that Chrysippus thought that imagination is a mental state whose defining characteristic is that it draws the subject to assent to a phantasm, as Ps.-Plutarch's version of Aet. 4.12 suggests. And in the absence of a better account of what exactly being drawn to a phantasm would mean in this context, the reliability of Ps.-Plutarch's version of Aetius’ summary seems to be seriously brought into question.

Fortunately, one of the alternative sources for Aet. 4.12, Nemesius’ De natura hominis 55.13–22, suggests a more promising interpretation of Chrysippus’ view on imagination. Although shorter and less detailed than Ps.-Plutarch's version, Nemesius’ text does retain the sentence that is the focus of our attention (55.21–2):

Crucially, instead of Ps.-Plutarch's ἕλκειν in the passive voice, here we have the cognate verb ἐφέλκειν in the active voice, which implies a different meaning—that phantasm is that which we pull or draw while our soul is engaged in imagining. In other words, Nemesius’ version of Aetius suggests that Chrysippus understood imagination not as a mental process in which we are drawn towards a phantasm but instead as one in which we are drawing a phantasm.

Taken at face value, Nemesius’ version seems no less cryptic than Ps.-Plutarch's is, because it is not obvious what the claim that imagination involves drawing a phantasm might refer to here. However, I believe that a plausible hypothesis can be formulated if we recall what Chrysippus took to be the main characteristic of imagination as a mental state. According to Aet. 4.12.4, the key difference between appearance and imagination is that, at the time of being entertained by the subject, the former is an affection in the soul produced by that which appears—that is, by a present external object—which is its immediate cause, while the latter is an affection that has no immediate external cause. To use Chrysippus’ example, at the time Orestes is imagining the Furies, the causal origin of the phantasm of the Furies is not actually in the Furies but in Orestes’ own soul. In fact, a more precise Stoic explanation of how the phantasm of a Fury comes about is preserved by our sources: Orestes created it ‘by composition’ (κατὰ σύνθεσιν), that is, by combining in his mind the concepts of a girl, a bloody-looking person and a dragon, and thus conjured up a thought about something that is at the moment not affecting him causally.Footnote ²⁴ This suggests that Chrysippus’ talk of ‘drawing a phantasm’ is referring to the psychological act of creating the concept of a Fury and entertaining a mental image of her.Footnote ²⁵ We should not forget, however, that, in addition to fictional objects such as the Furies, the Stoics also thought that phantasms can represent objects that do exist but are not present at the time the phantasm is entertained.Footnote ²⁶ In the case of the latter, they would probably say that the phantasm had been recalled from the memory, like, for example, when we imagine Dion, even though Dion is not in the vicinity and thus is not presently affecting our senses.Footnote ²⁷ In both cases, the point is the same: at the moment imagination is entertained, both the phantasm and that which it represents are produced by a process completely internal to the subject's soul and not by the impact of an external object on the sense organs. And it seems that this was precisely what Chrysippus was trying to emphasize by saying that a phantasm is what we draw when imagining: that we are conjuring up or creating a mental image of something in the absence of a corresponding external thing which is engaged in an immediate causal interaction with our soul.Footnote ²⁸ It is in this sense that imagination is an ‘empty drawing’, an act of pulling out of one's own soul a representation of something that is not actually there at the time the representation is being entertained.

Given the two versions of Aet. 4.12.5 and the corresponding two interpretations of Chrysippus’ understanding of imagination, the key question is which one is more reliable, that is, more faithful to Aetius’ original text and thus presumably to Chrysippus’ actual words. Although it is impossible to be absolutely certain, I would like to suggest that Nemesius’ version is the more likely candidate. Namely, as we have seen above, Ps.-Plutarch's version, according to which Chrysippus claimed that an important characteristic of imagination is that we are drawn towards a phantasm, is either doomed to remain unclear or, according to the best available reconstruction, incompatible with what we know about the Stoic psychology of assent. Furthermore, it makes no sense in the context of Chrysippus’ main explanatory goal in Aet. 4.12, which is to specify the difference between appearance and imagination in terms of the genesis of these two mental states and their revelatory ability. In respect to this goal, characterizing imagination as a state in which we are drawn towards a phantasm seems completely irrelevant, as I argued above. On the other hand, Nemesius’ version, which suggests that Chrysippus thought that imagination consists in drawing or conjuring up a phantasm from our mind, is consistent with the Stoic views on memory and on thinking about fictional entities. In addition, it fits perfectly Chrysippus’ main topic in Aet. 4.12, which is the contrast between appearances, representational states whose immediate causal origin is in a present external object, and imaginations, whose origin is internal to the soul.

What about the textual support for Nemesius’ version? Our sources unfortunately do not give us much to go on: just like in the case of Ps.-Plutarch's formulation of being drawn towards a phantasm, there is no other extant Stoic text that uses Nemesius’ formulation of drawing a phantasm. Nevertheless, there are texts where ἕλκειν in the active voice is used in reference to imaginations such as in Nemesius’ version of Aetius. The first text occurs later in Nemesius’ text as part of his discussion of the relationship between sensation, thought and memory. In 70.12–71.5 he uses an example from Galen (De loc. aff. 8.226 K; De symp. diff. 7.60–1 K) to show how in patients who are suffering from one form of phrenitisFootnote ²⁹ sense perception can be sound but their thinking adversely affected, while in those who are suffering from a different form of phrenitis thinking can be sound but perception negatively affected. The example is about a patient suffering from the former type of phrenitis, who decided to throw things out of a high window onto the street below in order to amuse the people passing by. After throwing a few glass objects, the patient picked up a wool-worker who happened to be in his apartment, asked the bystanders below whether they want to see a wool-worker falling down, and then threw him out of the window as well, much to the spectators’ consternation. Based on the example, Nemesius concludes that the patient's senses were working properly because he was able to discriminate between the glass objects and the wool-worker, but that owing to phrenitis the patient's thought processes were compromised since he did not understand that throwing a person out of the window is much more problematic than throwing glass objects. Then he goes on to make the following point about the patients suffering from the second type of phrenitis (Nemesius 70.22–3):

Although Nemesius is here talking about drawing a φαντασία, since he is qualifying it with the adjective διάκενος there is little doubt that he in fact has in mind what in Chrysippus’ technical terminology would be classified as φανταστικόν. The verb ἕλκουσι occurs here in the active voice and indicates that when they are suffering from the second form of phrenitis people can draw imaginations about things that are not present.

The second text is part of Sextus Empiricus’ report on the Stoic classification of different kinds of appearances in Math. 7.242–60. According to Sextus (Math. 7.247), they held that

Although this is not immediately clear, there are strong reasons to think that the true non-apprehensive appearance Sextus refers to here is in fact a Chrysippean imagination. Namely, according to the Stoic definition of the apprehensive appearance,Footnote ³¹ there are only two types of situations when a true appearance—one that accurately represents some real object—fails to be apprehensive: either when it is caused by that object but instead of being ‘clear’ and ‘distinct’ it is ‘faint’ and ‘mixed-up’, or when it is ‘empty’ and not caused by that object, that is, when it is a Chrysippean imagination.Footnote ³² Now, given that the former type of non-apprehensive appearance is caused by a present external object and accurately represents that object, it is hard to see why the Stoics would say for such an appearance that it is true merely by chance. On the contrary, it seems that, because it is caused by the object it accurately represents, such an appearance would count as being true non-accidentally (even though it would still be non-apprehensive owing to being unclear and indistinct). On the other hand, it is relatively obvious why the Stoics would say for a Chrysippean imagination which accurately represents some real object that it is true merely by chance—precisely because it is not caused by that object.

Furthermore, the fact that the appearance Sextus is talking about in Math. 7.247 occurs to phrenitics and melancholicsFootnote ³³ also strongly indicates imagination. We have already seen in our discussion of Nemesius 70.22–3 that phrenitis causes people to imagine things that are not actually there. There is evidence that the Stoics thought the same about melancholy. For instance, all three sources of Aet. 4.12 mention melancholy as a state in which phantasms arise, while Ps.-Galen even specifies that both Orestes and Theoclymenus were melancholic when they have entertained their respective imaginations (De hist. phil. 93.10–11). The mention of Theoclymenus is particularly interesting in this context because it is a case of divinatory prediction that turns out to be true, one that the Stoics would classify under the so-called ‘natural’ or ‘non-technical’ form of divination.Footnote ³⁴ It is thus quite possible that the accidentally true non-apprehensive appearance Sextus has in mind is in fact a Chrysippean imagination entertained in the state of melancholy or phrenitis that turns out to be an accurate divinatory prediction. If so, then Sext. Emp. Math. 7.247 represents another instance of ἕλκειν in the active voice (ἕλκουσι) used in relation to imagination, occurring this time in a context that is undeniably Stoic.

The third text occurs in the opening paragraphs of Plutarch's biography of Dion of Syracuse. After mentioning that Dion was given advance warning of his untimely death by a spirit, Plutarch says (Dion 2.4):

According to Plutarch, people who reject the idea that spirits can speak to us explain this as mere superstition of those who entertain ‘empty opinions’ (κεναὶ δόξαι) involving phantasms of spirits. Again, the fact that he employs the adjective κενός and says that they involve phantasms strongly suggests that the opinions in question are in fact Chrysippean imaginations. The verb Plutarch uses is ἐφέλκειν in the middle voice (ἐφέλκεσθαι), in the sense of ‘drawing imaginations for oneself’.Footnote ³⁵ Nevertheless, in this context this conveys a very similar meaning to the active ἐφέλκειν Nemesius uses in his summary of Aet. 4.12.5.

Before concluding, let us address two potential problems with the interpretation of Aet. 4.12 that I am proposing. The first is that all three texts cited above in its support talk about the subject drawing an imagination and not about drawing a phantasm, as Nemesius does in his summary of Chrysippus. Indeed, as I mentioned above, no other Stoic text employs the language of drawing phantasms. Certainly, one reason for this could be the scarcity of the surviving Stoic texts. Another could be that Chrysippus’ technical language failed to become widely accepted by his Stoic followers. It is quite possible that Chrysippus saw the talk of drawing imaginations as imprecise and wanted to clarify that it is in fact more accurate to say that imagination consists in drawing a phantasm but that his clarification was not deemed as important by other authors, just like in the case of his attempt to introduce φανταστικόν as a more technical term for empty appearance.

The second problem is that, except for Nemesius 55.14–24 and Plut. Dion 2.4, in all other texts we have cited, the verb used to refer to appearances and imaginations is ἕλκειν and not ἐφέλκειν. This may suggest that the use of ἐφέλκειν by Nemesius in 55.14–24 was his own invention and not a faithful reproduction of Aetius’ original text and thus presumably of Chrysippus’ language. However, the brief summary of Aetius in Nemesius 55.14–24 represents the sole occurrence of the verb ἐφέλκειν in his entire text, while ἕλκειν and its cognates occur in it more than a dozen times in various contexts. In fact, as we saw above, in the only other passage where Nemesius is talking about imagination in his own words, 70.22–3, he uses ἕλκειν and not ἐφέλκειν. This makes it very unlikely that Nemesius creatively inserted ἐφέλκειν instead of ἕλκειν into his summary of Aetius. On the contrary, it is quite probable that here Nemesius used the verb ἐφέλκειν—which he apparently was not particularly fond of—precisely because that is what was in the original Aetian text he was summarizing.

Although the evidence from extant sources is far from conclusive and leaves a lot to be desired, all this hopefully shows that on balance there are good textual grounds as well as strong interpretative reasons to take Nemesius’ version as closer to the original text of Aet. 4.12.5—and thus presumably to the original text of Chrysippus that Aetius was summarizing—than Ps.-Plutarch's version. If so, the verb Aetius used at 4.12.5 was not ἕλκειν in the passive voice but ἐφέλκειν in the active or in the middle voice,Footnote ³⁶ which implies that Chrysippus held that imagining consists not in being drawn towards a phantasm but in drawing a phantasm in the sense of conjuring up a mental image of something from within our soul.