Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.

As regards chronology, he was, as he says himself in the Lesser Diacosmos, a young man when Anaxagoras was old, being forty years his junior. He says that the Lesser Diacosmos was compiled 730 years after the capture of Troy. According to Apollodorus in his Chronology he would thus have been born in the 80th Olympiad,[*](460-457 b.c.) but according to Thrasylus in his pamphlet entitled Prolegomena to the Reading of the works of Democritus, in the third year of the 77th Olympiad,[*](470-469 b.c.) which makes him, adds Thrasylus, one year older than Socrates. He would then be a contemporary of Archelaus, the pupil of Anaxagoras, and of the school of Oenopides; indeed he mentions Oenopides.

Again, he alludes to the doctrine of the One held by Parmenides and Zeno, they being evidently the persons most talked about in his day; he also mentions Protagoras of Abdera, who, it is admitted, was a contemporary of Socrates.

Athenodorus in the eighth book of his Walks relates that, when Hippocrates came to see him, he ordered

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milk to be brought, and, having inspected it, pronounced it to be the milk of a black she-goat which had produced her first kid; which made Hippocrates marvel at the accuracy of his observation. Moreover, Hippocrates being accompanied by a maidservant, on the first day Democritus greeted her with Good morning, maiden, but the next day with Good morning, woman, As a matter of fact the girl had been seduced in the night.

Of the death of Democritus the account given by Hermippus is as follows. When he was now very old and near his end, his sister was vexed that he seemed likely to die during the festival of Thesmophoria and she would be prevented from paying the fitting worship to the goddess. He bade her be of good cheer and ordered hot loaves to be brought to him every day. By applying these to his nostrils he contrived to outlive the festival; and as soon as the three festival days were passed he let his life go from him without pain, having then, according to Hipparchus, attained his one hundred and ninth year.

In my Pammetros I have a piece on him as follows[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 57.):

Pray who was so wise, who wrought so vast a work as the omniscient Democritus achieved? When Death was near, for three days he kept him in his house and regaled him with the steam of hot loaves.

Such was the life of our philosopher.

His opinions are these. The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist. The worlds are unlimited; they come into being and perish. Nothing can come into being from that which is not

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nor pass away into that which is not. Further, the atoms are unlimited in size and number, and they are borne along in the whole universe in a vortex, and therby generate all composite things—fire, water, air, earth; for even these are conglomerations of given atoms. And it is because of their solidity that these atoms are impassive and unalterable. The sun and the moon have been composed of such smooth and spherical masses [i.e. atoms], and so also the soul, which is identical with reason. We see by virtue of the impact of images upon our eyes.

All things happen by virtue of necessity, the vortex being the cause of the creation of all things, and this he calls necessity. The end of action is tranquillity, which is not identical with pleasure, as some by a false interpretation have understood, but a state in which the soul continues calm and strong, undisturbed by any fear or superstition or any other emotion. This he calls well-being and many other names. The qualities of things exist merely by convention; in nature there is nothing but atoms and void space. These, then, are his opinions.

Of his works Thrasylus has made an ordered catalogue, arranging them in fours, as he also arranged Plato’s works.

The ethical works are the following:

I. Pythagoras.

Of the Disposition of the Wise Man.

Of those in Hades.

Tritogeneia (so called because three things, on which all mortal life depends, come from her).

II. Of Manly Excellence, or Of Virtue. Amalthea’s Horn (the Horn of Plenty).

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Of Tranquillity.

Ethical Commentaries: the work on Wellbeing is not to be found.

So much for the ethical works.

The physical works are these:

III. The Great Diacosmos (which the school of Theophrastus attribute to Leucippus).

The Lesser Diacosmos.

Description of the World.

On the Planets.

IV. Of Nature, one book.

Of the Nature of Man, or Of Flesh, a second book on Nature.

Of Reason.

Of the Senses (some editors combine these two under the title Of the Soul).

V. Of Flavours.

Of Colours.

Of the Different Shapes (of Atoms).

Of Changes of Shape.

VI. Confirmations (summaries of the aforesaid works).

On Images, or On Foreknowledge of the Future.

On Logic, or Criterion of Thought, three books.

Problems.

So much for the physical works.

The following fall under no head:

Causes of Celestial Phenomena.

Causes of Phenomena in the Air.

Causes on the Earth’s Surface.

Causes concerned with Fire and Things in Fire.

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Causes concerned with Sounds.

Causes concerned with Seeds, Plants and Fruits.

Causes concerned with Animals, three books.

Miscellaneous Causes.

Concerning the Magnet.

These works have not been arranged.

The mathematical works are these:

VII. On a Difference in an Angle, or On Contact with the Circle or the Sphere.

On Geometry.

Geometrica.

Numbers.

VIII. On Irrational Lines and Solids, two books.

Extensions[*](Diels compares Ptolemy, Geogr. vii. 7 ὑπογραφὴ τοῦ ἐκπετάσματος. ὑπογραφ ὴ δʼ ἔσται καὶ τῆς τοιαύτης ἐκπετάς εως ἁρμόζουσά τε καὶ κεφαλα ιώδης. ἡ τοιαύτη τῆς κρικωτῆς σφαίρας ἐπιπέδῳ καταγραφή κτλ. The title Ἐκπετάσματα may therefore mean Projection of an armillary sphere on a plane.) (Projections).

The Great Year, or Astronomy, Calendar.

Contention of the Water-clock [and the Heaven].

IX. Description of the Heaven.

Geography.

Description of the Pole.

Description of Rays of Light.

These are the mathematical works.

The literary and musical works are these:

X. On Rhythms and Harmony.

On Poetry.

On Beauty of Verses.

On Euphonious and Cacophonous Letters.

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XI. Concerning Homer, or On Correct Epic Diction, and On Glosses.

Of Song.

On Words.

A Vocabulary.

So much for the works on literature and music.

The works on the arts are these:

XII. Prognostication.

Of Diet, or Diaetetics.

Medical Regimen.

Causes concerned with Things Seasonable and Unseasonable.

XIII. Of Agriculture, or Concerning Land Measurements.

Of Painting.

Treatise on Tactics, and

On Fighting in Armour.

So much for these works.

Some include as separate items in the list the following works taken from his notes:

Of the Sacred Writings in Babylon.

Of those in Meroë.

A Voyage round the Ocean.

Of [the Right Use of] History.

A Chaldaean Treatise.

A Phrygian Treatise.

Concerning Fever and those whose Malady makes them Cough.

Legal Causes and Effects.

Problems wrought by Hand.[*](χειρόκμητα is a correction of Salmasius based upon Pliny, N.H. xxiv. 160, and Vitruvius, ix. i. 14. The mss. give either χέρνιβα,finger-bowls, or χερνικά, the sense of which is not clear; they read ἢ before προβλήματα..)

The other works which some attribute to Democritus

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are either compilations from his writings or admittedly not genuine. So much for the books that he wrote and their number.

The name of Democritus has been borne by six persons: (1) our philosopher; (2) a contemporary of his, a musician of Chios; (3) a sculptor, mentioned by Antigonus; (4) an author who wrote on the temple at Ephesus and the state of Samothrace; (5) an epigrammatist whose style is lucid and ornate; (6) a native of Pergamum who made his mark by rhetorical speeches.

Protagoras, son of Artemon or, according to Apollodorus and Dinon in the fifth book of his History of Persia, of Maeandrius, was born at Abdera (so says Heraclides of Pontus in his treatise On Laws, and also that he made laws for Thurii) or, according to Eupolis in his Flatterers, at Teos; for the latter says:

Inside we’ve got Protagoras of Teos.

He and Prodicus of Ceos gave public readings for which fees were charged, and Plato in the Protagoras[*](316 a.) calls Prodicus deep-voiced. Protagoras studied under Democritus. The latter[*](Cf. Clem. Strom. vi. 32, and Suidas, s.v. Δημόκριτος.) was nicknamed Wisdom, according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History.

Protagoras was the first to maintain that there are two sides to every question, opposed to each other, and he even argued in this fashion, being the first to do so. Furthermore he began a work thus: Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they

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are not. He used to say that soul was nothing apart from the senses, as we learn from Plato in the Theaetetus,[*](152 a sq.) and that everything is true. In another work he began thus: As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.

For this introduction to his book the Athenians expelled him; and they burnt his works in the market-place, after sending round a herald to collect them from all who had copies in their possession.

He was the first to exact a fee of a hundred minae and the first to distinguish the tenses of verbs, to emphasize the importance of seizing the right moment, to institute contests in debating, and to teach rival pleaders the tricks of their trade. Furthermore, in his dialectic he neglected the meaning in favour of verbal quibbling, and he was the father of the whole tribe of eristical disputants now so much in evidence; insomuch that Timon[*](Fr. 47 D.) too speaks of him as[*](Cf.Il. xv. 679.)

Protagoras, all mankind’s epitome,
Cunning, I trow, to war with words.

He too first introduced the method of discussion which is called Socratic. Again, as we learn from Plato in the Euthydemus,[*](286 c.) he was the first to use in discussion the argument of Antisthenes which strives to prove that contradiction is impossible, and the first to point out how to attack and refute any proposition laid down: so Artemidorus the dialectician in his treatise In Reply to Chrysippus. He too invented the shoulder-pad on which porters carry their burdens, so we are told by Aristotle in his treatise On Education; for he himself had been a porter,

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says Epicurus somewhere.[*](Sc. in an epistle, Περὶ ἐπιτηδευμάτων, cf. Athen. viii. 354 c.) This was how he was taken up by Democritus, who saw how skilfully his bundles of wood were tied. He was the first to mark off the parts of discourse into four, namely, wish, question, answer, command[*](This answers roughly to the optative, the indicative, and the imperative.);

others divide into seven parts, narration, question, answer, command, rehearsal, wish, summoning; these he called the basic forms of speech. Alcidamas made discourse fourfold, affirmation, negation, question, address.

The first of his books he read in public was that On the Gods, the introduction to which we quoted above; he read it at Athens in Euripides’ house, or, as some say, in Megaclides’; others again make the place the Lyceum and the reader his disciple Archagoras, Theodotus’s son, who gave him the benefit of his voice. His accuser was Pythodorus, son of Polyzelus, one of the four hundred; Aristotle, however, says it was Euathlus.

The works of his which survive are these:

* * The Art of Controversy.

Of Wrestling.

On Mathematics.

Of the State.

Of Ambition.

Of Virtues.

Of the Ancient Order of Things.

On the Dwellers in Hades.

Of the Misdeeds of Mankind.

A Book of Precepts.

Of Forensic Speech for a Fee, two books of opposing arguments.

This is the list of his works.[*](That the list is defective is evident from the fact that the two works by which Protagoras is best known (supra, §§ 51, 54) are not here named.) Moreover there is a dialogue which Plato wrote upon him.

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Philochorus says that, when he was on a voyage to Sicily, his ship went down, and that Euripides hints at this in his Ixion.

According to some his death occurred, when he was on a journey, at nearly ninety years of age, though Apollodorus makes his age seventy, assigns forty years for his career as a sophist, and puts his floruit in the 84th Olympiad.[*](444-441 b.c.)

There is an epigram of my own on him as follows[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 130.):

Protagoras, I hear it told of thee
Thou died’st in eld when Athens thou didst flee;
Cecrops’ town chose to banish thee; but though
Thou ’scap’dst Athene, not so Hell below.

The story is told that once, when he asked Euathlus his disciple for his fee, the latter replied, But I have not won a case yet. Nay, said Protagoras, if I win this case against you I must have the fee, for winning it; if you win, I must have it, because you win it.

There was another Protagoras, an astronomer, for whom Euphorion wrote a dirge; and a third who was a Stoic philosopher.

Diogenes of Apollonia, son of Apollothemis, was a natural philosopher and a most famous man. Antisthenes

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calls him a pupil of Anaximenes; but he lived in Anaxagoras’s time. This man,[*](i.e. Anaxagoras.) so great was his unpopularity at Athens, almost lost his life, as Demetrius of Phalerum states in his Defence of Socrates.

The doctrines of Diogenes were as follows.[*](Diels (op. cit. p. 144) compares Plutarch, Strom. apud Euseb. Praep. Evang. i. 8. 13; Aëtius i. 3. 26; Theophrastus, Phys. Opin. Fr. 2.) Air is the universal element. There are worlds unlimited in number, and unlimited empty space. Air by condensation and rarefaction generates the worlds. Nothing comes into being from what is not or passes away into what is not. The earth is spherical, firmly supported in the centre, having its construction determined by the revolution which comes from heat and by the congealment caused by cold.

The words with which his treatise begins are these: At the beginning of every discourse I consider that one ought to make the starting-point unmistakably clear and the exposition simple and dignified.

Anaxarchus, a native of Abdera, studied under Diogenes of Smyrna,[*](Here a Diogenes is mentioned as a link between Demo critus and Anaxarchus. See p. 468, note c. Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 64, p. 301 D Δημοκρίτου δὲ ἀκουσταὶ Πρωταγόρας ὁ Ἀβδηρίτης καὶ Μητρόδωρος ὁ Χίος, οὗ Διογένης ὁ Σμυρναῖος, οὗ Ἀνάξαρχος, τούτου δὲ Πύρρων, οὗ Ναυσιφάνης; Euseb. xiv. 17. 10; Epiphanius, De fide, 9, p. 591.) and the latter under Metrodorus of Chios, who used to declare that he knew nothing, not even the fact that he knew nothing; while Metrodorus was a pupil of Nessas of Chios, though some say that he was taught by Democritus. Now Anaxarchus accompanied Alexander and flourished in the 110th Olympiad.[*](340-337 b.c.) He made an enemy of Nicocreon, tyrant of Cyprus. Once at a

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banquet, when asked by Alexander how he liked the feast, he is said to have answered, Everything, O king, is magnificent; there is only one thing lacking, that the head of some satrap should be served up at table.

This was a hit at Nicocreon, who never forgot it, and when after the king’s death Anaxarchus was forced against his will to land in Cyprus, he seized him and, putting him in a mortar, ordered him to be pounded to death with iron pestles. But he, making light of the punishment, made that well-known speech, Pound, pound the pouch containing Anaxarchus; ye pound not Anaxarchus. And when Nicocreon commanded his tongue to be cut out, they say he bit it off and spat it at him. This is what I have written upon him[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 133.):

Pound, Nicocreon, as hard as you like: it is but a pouch. Pound on; Anaxarchus’s self long since is housed with Zeus. And after she has drawn you upon her carding-combs a little while, Persephone will utter words like these: Out upon thee, villainous miller !

For his fortitude and contentment in life he was called the Happy Man. He had, too, the capacity of bringing anyone to reason in the easiest possible way. At all events he succeeded in diverting Alexander when he had begun to think himself a god; for, seeing blood running from a wound he had sustained, he pointed to him with his finger and said, See, there is blood and not

Ichor which courses in the veins of the blessed gods.[*](Il. v. 340.)

Plutarch reports this as spoken by Alexander to his friends.[*](Vit. Alex. c. 28.) Moreover, on another occasion, when Anaxarchus was drinking Alexander’s health, he held up his goblet and said:

One of the gods shall fall by the stroke of mortal man.[*](Euripides, Orestes, 271.)