Abstract
Athanasius' catalogues of Arian views are notoriously difficult to interpret. Recent studies have recognized their polemical character and in particular their reporting of views not of Arius but of his supporters, such as Asterius. In his edition of the fragments of Asterius, Markus Vinzent has accordingly reassigned eight passages in these catalogues from Arius to Asterius. This study questions the methodological assumptions that underlie the retrieval of fragments of Asterius from the writings of Athanasius by means of such reassignments in lieu of external indications. It examines four of the passages that Vinzent attributed to Asterius and demonstrates that these texts are actually polemical reports and interpretations derived from genuine Asterian texts that Athanasius preserves in their original form elsewhere. Only the original, verbatim versions of these Asterian texts should be included in a collection of fragments, not the polemical, derivative versions of them, which make no contribution to our understanding of Asterius. Including such fragments risks skewing any recovery of the genuine theology of Asterius in an Athanasian direction.