Appropriatio Platonica

This paper proposes a taxonomy to systematise the diverse ways in which Platonists appropriated foreign concepts and terminology. Through a case study, it demonstrates that Platonists did not merely replicate foreign notions but rather assimilated them into their own framework. It argues that such appropriations were justified from a Platonist perspective. Platonists accorded absolute epistemic authority to Plato, and they hence conceived of all truthful beliefs as inherently Platonic, whether in nature or origin.