The book “Gnomica Democritea” takes a panoramic view of the fate of Democritus’ ethics by establishing a connection between the lost body of works on ethics and the “gnomological” tradition which is at the core of Diels’ collection of fragments attributed to Democritus (in his book Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, chapter 68). The focus of the study is on the early and middle period of the Byzantine gnomological tradition which had not yet been analysed so far, and it leads to some modifications of the canon of texts established by Diels. Starting from a central “universal collection” (Corpus Parisinum), the author traces the erratic ways of tradition of the Democritea with unprecedented precision, and this results in new insight about the Byzantine florilegia.