Vitae philosophorum

All knowledge that a man may have had I;
1. Yet tell Pythagoras, were more thereby,
2. That first of all Greeks is he; I speak no lie.

With manly worth endowed and modesty,
1. Though he be dead, his soul lives happily,
2. If wise Pythagoras indeed saw light
3. And read the destinies of men aright.

There is also an epigram of my own in the Pherecratean metre[*](Anth. Plan. iii. 128.):

The famous Pherecydes, to whom Syros gave birth,

when his former beauty was consumed by vermin, gave orders that he should be taken straight to the Magnesian land in order that he might give victory to the noble Ephesians. There was an oracle, which he alone knew, enjoining this; and there he died among them. It seems then it is a true tale; if anyone is truly wise, he brings blessings both in his lifetime and when he is no more.

He lived in the 59th Olympiad. He wrote the following letter:

Pherecydes to Thales[*](This forgery is easily analysed. There is the tradition of the malady which proved fatal to Pherecydes ( cf. Porphyry, Vit. Pyth. §55), with the anecdote of his protruding his finger through the door. There is also an allusion to the alleged obscurity of the work on the gods which passed current as written by him.)

May yours be a happy death when your time comes. Since I received your letter, I have been attacked by disease. I am infested with vermin and subject to a violent fever with shivering fits. I have therefore given instructions to my servants to carry my writing to you after they have buried me. I would like you to publish it, provided that you and

So much for those who are called the Sages, with whom some writers also class Pisistratus the tyrant. I must now proceed to the philosophers and start with the philosophy of Ionia. Its founder was Thales, and Anaximander was his pupil.

Anaximander, the son of Praxiades, was a native of Miletus. He laid down as his principle and element that which is unlimited without defining it as air or water or anything else. He held that the parts undergo change, but the whole is unchangeable; that the earth, which is of spherical shape, lies in the midst, occupying the place of a centre; that the moon, shining with borrowed light, derives its illumination from the sun; further, that the sun is as large as the earth and consists of the purest fire.[*](These astronomical discoveries belong properly to Anaxagoras.)

He was the first inventor of the gnomon and set it up for a sundial in Lacedaemon,[*](But see Herodotus ii. 109, who makes the Babylonians the inventors.) as is stated by Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History, in order to mark the solstices and the equinoxes; he also constructed clocks to tell the time.

He was the first to draw on a map the outline of land and sea, and he constructed a globe as well.

His exposition of his doctrines took the form of a summary which no doubt came into the hands, among others, of Apollodorus of Athens. He says in his Chronology that in the second year of the 58th

There is another Anaximander, also of Miletus, a historian who wrote in the Ionic dialect.

Anaximenes, the son of Eurystratus, a native of Miletus, was a pupil of Anaximander. According to some, he was also a pupil of Parmenides. He took for his first principle air or that which is unlimited. He held that the stars move round the earth but do not go under it. He writes simply and unaffectedly in the Ionic dialect.

According to Apollodorus he was contemporary with the taking of Sardis and died in the 63rd Olympiad.[*](528-525 b.c.)

There have been two other men named Anaximenes, both of Lampsacus, the one a rhetorician who wrote on the achievements of Alexander, the other, the nephew of the rhetorician, who was a historian.

Anaximenes the philosopher wrote the following letters:

Anaximenes to Pythagoras

Thales, the son of Examyas, has met an unkind fate in his old age. He went out from the court of

And again:

Anaximenes to Pythagoras

You were better advised than the rest of us when you left Samos for Croton, where you live in peace. For the sons of Aeaces work incessant mischief, and Miletus is never without tyrants. The king of the Medes is another terror to us, not indeed so long as we are willing to pay tribute; but the Ionians are on the point of going to war with the Medes to secure their common freedom, and once we are at war we have no more hope of safety. How then can Anaximenes any longer think of studying the heavens when threatened with destruction or slavery? Meanwhile you find favour with the people of Croton and with the other Greeks in Italy; and pupils come to you even from Sicily.

Anaxagoras, the son of Hegesibulus or Eubulus, was a native of Clazomenae. He was a pupil of Anaximenes, and was the first who set mind above

Then, I ween, there is Anaxagoras, a doughty champion, whom they call Mind, because forsooth his was the mind which suddenly woke up and fitted closely together all that had formerly been in a medley of confusion.

He was eminent for wealth and noble birth, and furthermore for magnanimity, in that he gave up his patrimony to his relations.

For, when they accused him of neglecting it, he replied, Why then do you not look after it? And at last he went into retirement and engaged in physical investigation without troubling himself about public affairs. When some one inquired, Have you no concern in your native land? Gently, he replied, I am greatly concerned with my fatherland, and pointed to the sky.

He is said to have been twenty years old at the invasion of Xerxes and to have lived seventy-two years. Apollodorus in his Chronology says that he was born in the 70th Olympiad,[*](500-497 b.c.) and died in the first year of the 88th Olympiad.[*](428 b.c.) He began to study philosophy at Athens in the archonship of Callias[*](i.e. 456 b.c.; but possibly the year 480 is meant, when Calliades was archon.) when he was twenty; Demetrius of Phalerum states this in his list of archons; and at Athens they say he remained for thirty years.

He declared the sun to be a mass of red-hot metal and to be larger than the Peloponnesus, though others ascribe this view to Tantalus; he declared that there were dwellings on the moon, and moreover

In the beginning the stars moved in the sky as in a revolving dome, so that the celestial pole which is always visible was vertically overhead; but subsequently the pole took its inclined position. He held the Milky Way to be a reflection of the light of stars which are not shone upon by the sun; comets to be a conjunction of planets which emit flames; shooting-stars to be a sort of sparks thrown off by the air. He held that winds arise when the air is rarefied by the sun’s heat; that thunder is a clashing together of the clouds, lightning their violent friction; an earthquake a subsidence of air into the earth.

Animals were produced from moisture, heat, and an earthy substance; later the species were propagated by generation from one another, males from the right side, females from the left.

There is a story that he predicted the fall of the meteoric stone at Aegospotami, which he said would fall from the sun.[*](This version agrees with Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 149 celebrant Graeci Anaxagoram Clazomenium Olympiadis septuagesimae octavae secundo anno praedixisse caelestium litterarum scientia quibus diebus saxum casurum esset e sole.) Hence Euripides, who was his pupil, in the Phathon calls the sun itself a golden clod.[*](Nauck, T.G.F.2, Eur. 783.) Furthermore, when he went to Olympia,

To one who complained that he was dying in a foreign land, his answer was, The descent to Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.

Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History says Anaxagoras was the first to maintain that Homer in his poems treats of virtue and justice, and that this thesis was defended at greater length by his friend Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who was the first to busy himself with Homer’s physical doctrine. Anaxagoras was also the first to publish a book with diagrams.[*](From Plutarch’s Life of Nicias, c. 23, and Clement of Alexandria (Strom. i. 78, p. 364 P.), διὰ γραφῆς (for which Diels conjectures ‹μετὰ› διαγραφῆς) ἐκδοῦναι βιβλίον ἱστοροῦσιν, the inference seems to be that Anaxagoras was credited with diagrams as well as text, διδασκαλία καὶ γραφή. Laertius, if the text is sound, is much too vague; and some translate was the first to bring out a book written by himself.) Silenus[*](Silenus of Calatia, who served in the Hannibalic war, wrote a History quoted by Cicero, Livy and Pliny; also a work on Sicily, F.H.G. iii. 100.) in the first book of his History gives the archonship of Demylus[*](We know no archon Demylus. Various dates are suggested by critics; the years of (1) Demotion, archon 470, (2) Lysistratus, 467, (3) Diphilus, 442 b.c. The letters -μυλου may not be part of the archon’s name but a distinct word, calling the meteor a millstone, i.e. in size.) as the date when the meteoric stone fell,

and says that Anaxagoras declared the whole firmament to be made of stones; that the

Of the trial of Anaxagoras different accounts are given. Sotion in his Succession of the Philosophers says that he was indicted by Cleon on a charge of impiety, because he declared the sun to be a mass of red-hot metal; that his pupil Pericles defended him, and he was fined five talents and banished. Satyrus in his Lives says that the prosecutor was Thucydides, the opponent of Pericles, and the charge one of treasonable correspondence with Persia as well as of impiety; and that sentence of death was passed on Anaxagoras by default.

When news was brought him that he was condemned and his sons were dead, his comment on the sentence was, Long ago nature condemned both my judges and myself to death; and on his sons, I knew that my children were born to die. Some, however, tell this story of Solon, and others of Xenophon. That he buried his sons with his own hands is asserted by Demetrius of Phalerum in his work On Old Age. Hermippus in his Lives says that he was confined in the prison pending his execution; that Pericles came forward and asked the people whether they had any fault to find with him in his own public career; to which they replied that they had not. Well, he continued, I am a pupil of Anaxagoras; do not then be carried away by slanders and put him to death. Let me prevail upon you to release him. So he was released; but he could not brook the indignity he had suffered and committed suicide.

Hieronymus in the second book of his Scattered Notes states that Pericles brought him into court so weak and wasted from illness that he owed his

He was supposed to have borne Democritus a grudge because he had failed to get into communication with him.[*](In ix. 34, 35 the statement that Democritus was hostile to Anaxagoras and criticized his doctrines is ascribed to Favorinus, and, as the motive alleged is similar, Favorinus may also be the source of the statement of ii. 14.) At length he retired to Lampsacus and there died. And when the magistrates of the city asked if there was anything he would like done for him, he replied that he would like them to grant an annual holiday to the boys in the month in which he died; and the custom is kept up to this day.

So, when he died, the people of Lampsacus gave him honourable burial and placed over his grave the following inscription[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 94.):

Here Anaxagoras, who in his quest
1. Of truth scaled heaven itself, is laid to rest.

I also have written an epigram upon him[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 95.):

1. The sun’s a molten mass,
2. Quoth Anaxagoras;
3. This is his crime, his life must pay the price.
4. Pericles from that fate
5. Rescued his friend too late;
6. His spirit crushed, by his own hand he dies.

There have been three other men who bore the name of Anaxagoras [of whom no other writer gives a complete list]. The first was a rhetorician of the school of Isocrates; the second a sculptor, mentioned by Antigonus; the third a grammarian, pupil of Zenodotus.

Archelaus, the son of Apollodorus, or as some say

His theory is to this effect. Water is melted by heat and produces on the one hand earth in so far as by the action of fire it sinks and coheres, while on the other hand it generates air in so far as it overflows on all sides. Hence the earth is confined by the air, and the air by the circumambient fire. Living things, he holds, are generated from the earth when it is heated and throws off slime of the consistency of milk to serve as a sort of nourishment, and in this same way the earth produced man. He was the first who explained the production of sound as being the concussion of the air, and the formation of the sea in hollow places as due to its filtering through the earth. He declared the sun to be the largest of the heavenly bodies and the universe to be unlimited.

There have been three other men who bore the name of Archelaus: the topographer who described the countries traversed by Alexander; the author