The last great theological doxography of the early Muʿtazila, Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī’s (d.324/935-6) Maqālāt al-islāmīyīn wa-khtilāf al-muṣallīn, which is also the only example still extant and available in complete form, contains almost nothing on the opinions of Greek philosophers. In this, however, the Maqālāt cannot have been typical. Al-Ashʿarī himself refers there to another of his doxographical compositions, the Maqālāt ghayr al-islāmīyīn, which concentrated on the pagan thinkers of Antiquity, as well as Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian doctrine. The work was apparently still accessible to Ibn Taymīya (d.728/1328) in the fourteenth century, as he and his followers cite a handful of passages from it. In contrast to this division of the material, Ashʿarī’s immediate doxographical forebears, namely al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā an-Nawbaḫtī (d. after 310/922) with his Ārā wa-d-diyānāt and Abū l-Qāsim al-Balkhī (d.319/931) with his Maqālāt ahl al-qibla wa-ghayrihim, gave significant treatment to Greek philosophy alongside Islamic theology. Although these works are now lost or unavailable, many relevant and extensive passages have been preserved in recently edited writings of the later Muʿtazila or in the little-studied cosmographical sections of world-histories that depend heavily on Muʿtazilī material, such as Muṭahhar b. Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī’s (d. after 355/966) al-Badʾ wa-t-taʾrīkh and Masʿūdī’s (d.345/956) Murūj adh-dhahab. What survives has a heavy bias towards problēmata physica and much of it can be traced to the Placita Philosophorum of pseudo-Plutarch. This paper will attempt to bring into focus the somewhat hazy outlines of the reception of Late Antique doxography dealing with natural philosophy amongst the early Muʿtazila and its subsequent transmission within Muʿtazilī circles. It will argue that the early Muʿtazila took an active role in encouraging the translation of, and engagement with the Late Antique problēmata physica tradition because they intended kalām to offer an account of God’s creation consistent with their views about its Creator and sought to defend that account against rival theories, especially those promoted by Christian theologians, whom they regularly encountered in disputation and who explicitly invoked Greek philosophy in their arguments. Greek thinkers of the past thus also became (hypothetical) dialogical opponents for the Muʿtazila, and their opinions were embedded, alongside those of Muslim interlocutors, within the theological doxographical tradition. Muʿtazilī schools actively continued to transmit this material long after the Muʿtazila had largely ceased direct engagement with the natural philosophy of Antiquity because it became a vivtal part of the thought-world of kalām.