Etna; thou didst fall in against thy will when thou wouldst fain not have been found out.
And another Anth. Pal. vii. 124.: Verily there is a tale about the death of Empedocles, how that once he fell from a carriage and broke his right thigh. But if he leapt into the bowls of fire and so took a draught of life, how was it that his tomb was shown still in Megara?
His doctrines were as follows, that there are four elements, fire, water, earth and air, besides friendship by which these are united, and strife by which they are separated. These are his words Fr. 6 D.: Shining Zeus and life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, who lets flow from her tears the source of mortal life, where by Zeus he means fire, by Hera earth, by Aidoneus air, and by Nestis water.
"And their continuous change," he says, "never ceases," Fr. 17. 6 D. as if this ordering of things were eternal. At all events he goes on Fr. 17.
7 D.: At one time all things uniting in one through Love, at another each carried in a different direction through the hatred born of strife.
The sun he calls a vast collection of fire and larger than the moon; the moon, he says, is of the shape of a quoit, and the heaven itself crystalline. The soul, again, assumes all the various forms of animals and plants. At any rate he says Fr. 117 D.: Before now I was born a boy and a maid, a bush and a bird, and a dumb fish leaping out of the sea.
His poems On Nature and Purifications run to 5000 lines, his Discourse on Medicine to 600. Of the tragedies we have spoken above.
Chapter 3. EPICHARMUS (c.
550-460 B.C.)
Epicharmus of Cos, son of Helothales, was another pupil of Pythagoras. When three months old he was sent to Megara in Sicily and thence to Syracuse, as he tells us in his own writings. On his statue this epigram is written Anth. Pal. vii. 78.: If the great sun outshines the other stars, If the great sea is mightier than the streams, So Epicharmus' wisdom all excelled, Whom Syracuse his fatherland thus crowned.
He has left memoirs containing his physical, ethical and medical doctrines, and he has made marginal notes in most of the memoirs, which clearly show that they were written by him. He died at the age of ninety.
Chapter 4. ARCHYTAS (fourth century B.C.)
Archytas of Tarentum, son of Mnesagoras or, if we may believe Aristoxenus, of Hestiaeus, was another of the Pythagoreans. He it was whose letter saved Plato when he was about to be put to death by Dionysius. He was generally admired for his excellence in all fields; thus he was generalissimo of his city seven times, while the law excluded all others even from a second year of command. We have two letters written to him by Plato, he having first written to Plato in these terms: "Archytas wishes Plato good health.
"You have done well to get rid of your ailment, as we learn both from your own message and through Lamiscus that you have: we attended to the matter of the memoirs and went up to Lucania where we found the true progeny of Ocellus [to wit, his writings]. We did get the works On Law, On Kingship, Of Piety, and On the Origin of the Universe, all of which we have sent on to you; but the rest are, at present, nowhere to be found; if they should turn up, you shall have them."
This is Archytas's letter; and Plato's answer is as follows: "Plato to Archytas greeting.
"I was overjoyed to get the memoirs which you sent, and I am very greatly pleased with the writer of them; he seems to be a right worthy descendant of his distant forbears. They came, so it is said, from Myra, and were among those who emigrated from Troy in Laomedon's time, really good men, as the traditional story shows.
Those memoirs of mine about which you wrote are not yet in a fit state; but such as they are I have sent them on to you. We both agree about their custody, so I need not give any advice on that head. Farewell."
These then are the letters which passed between them.
Four men have borne the name of Archytas: (1) our subject; (2) a musician, of Mytilene; (3) the compiler of a work On Agriculture; (4) a writer of epigrams.
Some speak of a fifth, an architect, to whom is attributed a book On Mechanism which begins like this: "These things I learnt from Teucer of Carthage." A tale is told of the musician that, when it was cast in his teeth that he could not be heard, he replied, "Well, my instrument shall speak for me and win the day."
Aristoxenus says that our Pythagorean was never defeated during his whole generalship, though he once resigned it owing to bad feeling against him, whereupon the army at once fell into the hands of the enemy.
He was the first to bring mechanics to a system by applying mathematical principles; he also first employed mechanical motion in a geometrical construction, namely, when he tried, by means of a section of a half-cylinder, to find two mean proportionals in order to duplicate the cube. Cf. T.
L. Heath, History of Greek Mathematics, i.
246-249. In geometry, too, he was the first to discover the cube, as Plato says in the Republic. 528 b.
Chapter 5.
ALCMAEON Alcmaeon of Croton, another disciple of Pythagoras, wrote chiefly on medicine, but now and again he touches on natural philosophy, as when he says, "Most human affairs go in pairs." He is thought to have been the first to compile a physical treatise, so we learn from Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History; and he said that the moon [and] generally [the heavenly bodies] are in their nature eternal.
He was the son of Pirithous, as he himself tells us at the beginning of his treatise Fr. 1 Diels: "These are the words of Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Pirithous, which he spake to Brotinus, Leon and Bathyllus: `Of things invisible, as of mortal things, only the gods have certain knowledge; but to us, as men, only inference from evidence is possible,' and so on." He held also that the soul is immortal and that it is continuously in motion like the sun.
Chapter 6. HIPPASUS (fourth century B.C.)
Hippasus of Metapontum was another Pythagorean, who held that there is a definite time which the changes in the universe take to complete and that the All is limited and ever in motion.
According to Demetrius in his work on Men of the Same Name, he left nothing in writing. There were two men named Hippasus, one being our subject, and the other a man who wrote The Laconian Constitution in five books; and he himself was a Lacedaemonian.
Chapter 7. PHILOLAUS (Perhaps late fifth century) Philolaus of Croton was a Pythagorean, and it was from him that Plato requests Dion to buy the Pythagorean treatises. Cf. iii. 9. He (Dion) was put to death because he was thought to be aiming at a tyranny. The subject of e)teleu/ ta would naturally be Philolaus, and so D. L. understood it; but the original reference was clearly to Dion. This is what we have written upon him Anth.
Pal. vii. 126.: Fancies of all things are most flattering; If you intend, but do not, you are lost. So Croton taught Philolaus to his cost, Who fancied he would like to be their king. Or in prose: "My chief advice to all men is: to lull suspicion to rest. For even if you don't do something, and people fancy you do, it is ill for you. So Croton, his native land, once put Philolaus to death, fancying he wished to have a tyrant's house."
His doctrine is that all things are brought about by necessity and in harmonious inter-relation. He was the first to declare that the earth moves in a circle, i.e. round the central fire. See T. L. Heath, Aristarchus. 187 sqq. though some say that it was Hicetas of Syracuse.
He wrote one book, and it was this work which, according to Hermippus, some writer said that Plato the philosopher, when he went to Sicily to Dionysius's court, bought from Philolaus's relatives for the sum of forty Alexandrine Hermippus ( F.H.G. iii. 42, fr. 25) seems to forget that Alexander was not born until after Plato's death. Cf. vii. 18. minas of silver, from which also the Timaeus was transcribed. Others say that Plato received it as a present for having procured from Dionysius the release of a young disciple of Philolaus who had been cast into prison.
According to Demetrius in his work on Men of the Same Name, Philolaus was the first to publish the Pythagorean treatises, to which he gave the title On Nature, beginning as follows: "Nature in the ordered universe was composed of unlimited and limiting elements, and so was the whole universe and all that is therein."
Eudoxus of Cnidos, the son of Aeschines, was an astronomer, a geometer, a physician and a legislator. He learned geometry from Archytas and medicine from Philistion the Sicilian, as Callimachus tells us in his Tables. Sotion in his Successions of Philosophers says that he was also a pupil of Plato. When he was about twenty-three years old and in straitened circumstances, he was attracted by the reputation of the Socratics and set sail for Athens with Theomedon the physician, who provided for his wants. Some even say that he was Theomedon's favourite. Having disembarked at Piraeus he went up every day to Athens and, when he had attended the Sophists' lectures, returned again to the port.
After spending two months there, he went home and, aided by the liberality of his friends, he proceeded to Egypt with Chrysippus the physician, bearing with him letters of introduction from Agesilaus to Nectanabis, who recommended him to the priests. There he remained one year and four months with his beard and eyebrows shaved, and there, some say, he wrote his Octaëteris. From there he went to Cyzicus and the Propontis, giving lectures; afterwards he came to the court of Mausolus. Then at length he returned to Athens, bringing with him a great number of pupils: according to some, this was for the purpose of annoying Plato, who had originally passed him over. The suggestion of hostile relations is held to be without foundation both by Tannery, Astronomie Some say that, when Plato gave a banquet, Eudoxus, owing to the numbers present, introduced the fashion of arranging couches in a semicircle.
Nicomachus, the son of Aristotle, states that he declared pleasure to be the good. The reference is to the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (i. 12, 1101 b 27; treatise called after him was a common error into which Cicero also fell ( De fin. v. § 12). He was received in his native city with great honour, proof of this being the decree concerning him. But he also became famous throughout Greece, as legislator for his fellow-citizens, so we learn from Hermippus in his fourth book On the Seven Sages, and as the author of astronomical and geometrical treatises and other important works.
He had three daughters, Actis, Philtis and Delphis.
Eratosthenes in his writings addressed to Baton tells us that he also composed Dialogues of Dogs; others say that they were written by Egyptians in their own language and that he translated them and published them in Greece. Chrysippus of Cnidos, the son of Erineus, attended his lectures on the gods, the world, and the phenomena of the heavens, while in medicine he was the pupil of Philistion the Sicilian.
Eudoxus also left some excellent commentaries. He had a son Aristagoras, who had a son Chrysippus, the pupil of Aëthlius. To this Chrysippus we owe a medical work on the treatment of the eye, speculations upon nature having occupied his mind.
Three men have borne the name of Eudoxus: (1) our present subject; (2) a historian, of Rhodes; (3) a Sicilian Greek, the son of Agathocles, a comic poet, who three times won the prize in the city Dionysia and five times at the Lenaea, so we are told by Apollodorus in his Chronology. We also find another physician of Cnidos mentioned by Eudoxus The wording suggests that this physician's name was not Eudoxus, but rather Chrysippus. He may have been the Chrysippus of Cnidos mentioned supra, vii. 186 ( cf. Wilamowitz, Antig. v.
Kar. 324-326); see, however, Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Chrysippos, 15 and 16. in his Geography as advising people to be always exercising their limbs by every form of gymnastics, and their sense-organs in the same way.
The same authority, Apollodorus, states that Eudoxus of Cnidos flourished about the 103rd Olympiad, 368-364 b.c. and that he discovered the properties of curves. He died in his fifty-third year. When he was in Egypt with Chonuphis of Heliopolis, the sacred bull Apis licked his cloak. From this the priests foretold that he would be famous but shortlived, so we are informed by Favorinus in his Memorabilia.
There is a poem of our own upon him, which runs thus Anth.
Pal. vii. 744.: It is said that at Memphis Eudoxus learned his coming fate from the bull with beautiful horns.
No words did it utter; for whence comes speech to a bull? Nature did not provide the young bull Apis with a chattering tongue. But, standing sideways by him, it licked his robe, by which it plainly prophesied "you shall soon die."
Whereupon, soon after, this fate overtook him, when he had seen fifty-three risings of the Pleiades.
Eudoxus used to be called Endoxos (illustrious) instead of Eudoxus by reason of his brilliant reputation.
Having now dealt with the famous Pythagoreans, let us next discuss the so-called "sporadic" philosophers. And first we must speak of Heraclitus.
BOOK IX Chapter 1. HERACLITUS Heraclitus, son of Bloson or, according to some, of Heracon, was a native of Ephesus. He flourished in the 69th Olympiad. 504-500 b.c. He was lofty-minded beyond all other men, The biographers used by our author laid evident stress on this characteristic of the Ephesian, for §§ 1-3 (excepting two fragments cited in § 2) dwell on this single theme. As to the criticism of Pythagoras cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 129 s.f., who, dealing with chronology, says that Heraclitus was later than Pythagoras, for Pythagoras is mentioned by him. and over-weening, as is clear from his book in which he says: "Much learning does not teach understanding; else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, or, again, Xenophanes and Hecataeus." Fr. 40 D., 16 B. For "this one thing is wisdom, to understand thought, as that which guides all the world everywhere." Fr. 41 D., 19 B. And he used to say that "Homer deserved to be chased out of the lists and beaten with rods, and Archilochus likewise." Fr. 42 D., 119 B.
Again he would say: "There is more need to extinguish insolence than an outbreak of fire," Fr. 43 D., 103 B. and "The people must fight for the law as for citywalls." Fr. 44 D., 100 B. He attacks the Ephesians, too, for banishing his friend Hermodorus: he says: "The Ephesians would do well to end their lives, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless boys, for that they have driven out Hermodorus, the worthiest man among them, saying, `We will have none who is worthiest among us; or if there be any such, let him go elsewhere and consort with others.'" Fr. 121 D., 114 B. And when he was requested by them to make laws, he scorned the request because the state was already in the grip of a bad constitution.
He would retire to the temple of Artemis and play at knuckle-bones with the boys; and when the Ephesians stood round him and looked on, "Why, you rascals," he said, "are you astonished? Is it not better to do this than to take part in your civil life?"
Finally, he became a hater of his kind and wandered on the mountains, and there he continued to live, making his diet of grass and herbs. However, when this gave him dropsy, he made his way back to the city and put this riddle to the physicians, whether they were competent to create a drought after heavy rain. They could make nothing of this, whereupon he buried himself in a cowshed, expecting that the noxious damp humour would be drawn out of him by the warmth of the manure. But, as even this was of no avail, he died at the age of sixty.
There is a piece of my own about him as follows Anth. Pal. vii. 127.: Often have I wondered how it came about that Heraclitus endured to live in this miserable fashion and then to die. For a fell disease flooded his body with water, quenched the light in his eyes and brought on darkness.
Hermippus, too, says that he asked the doctors whether anyone could by emptying the intestines draw off the moisture; and when they said it was impossible, he put himself in the sun and bade his servants plaster him over with cow-dung. Being thus stretched and prone, he died the next day and was buried in the market-place. Neanthes of Cyzicus states that, being unable to tear off the dung, he remained as he was and, being unrecognizable when so transformed, he was devoured by dogs.
He was exceptional from his boyhood; for when a youth he used to say that he knew nothing, although when he was grown up he claimed that he knew everything. He was nobody's pupil, but he declared that he "inquired of himself," Fr.
101 D., 80 B. and learned everything from himself. Some, however, had said that he had been a pupil of Xenophanes, as we learn from Sotion, who also tells us that Ariston in his book On Heraclitus declares that he was cured of the dropsy and died of another disease. And Hippobotus has the same story.
As to the work which passes as his, it is a continuous treatise On Nature, but is divided into three discourses, one on the universe, another on politics, and a third on theology.
This book he deposited in the temple of Artemis and, according to some, he deliberately made it the more obscure in order that none but adepts should approach it, and lest familiarity should breed contempt. Of our philosopher Timon Fr. 43 D. gives a sketch in these words Cf. Il. i. 247, 248.: In their midst uprose shrill, cuckoo-like, a mob-reviler, riddling Heraclitus.
Theophrastus puts it down to melancholy that some parts of his work are half-finished, while other parts make a strange medley. As a proof of his magnanimity Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers cites the fact that he renounced his claim to the kingship in favour of his brother. So great fame did his book win that a sect was founded and called the Heracliteans, after him.
Here is a general summary of his doctrines. All things are composed of fire, and into fire they are again resolved; further, all things come about by destiny, and existent things are brought into harmony by the clash of opposing currents; again, all things are filled with souls and divinities. He has also given an account of all the orderly happenings in the universe, and declares the sun to be no larger than it appears. Another of his sayings is: "Of soul thou shalt never find boundaries, not if thou trackest it on every path; so deep is its cause." Fr. 45 D., 71 B. Self-conceit he used to call a falling sickness (epilepsy) and eyesight a lying sense. Fr. 46 D., 132 B.
Sometimes, however, his utterances are clear and distinct, so that even the dullest can easily understand and derive therefrom elevation of soul. For brevity and weightiness his exposition is incomparable.
Coming now to his particular tenets, we may state them as follows: fire is the element, all things are exchange for fire and come into being by rarefaction and condensation Cf. Fr. 90 D., 22 B.; but of this he gives no clear explanation. All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things flows like a stream.
Further, all that is is limited and forms one world. And it is alternately born from fire and again resolved into fire in fixed cycles to all eternity, and this is determined by destiny. Of the opposites that which tends to birth or creation is called war and strife, and that which tends to destruction by fire is called concord and peace. Cf. Fr. 80 D., 62 B. Change he called a pathway up and down, and this determines the birth of the world.
For fire by contracting turns into moisture, and this condensing turns into water; water again when congealed turns into earth. This process he calls the downward path. Then again earth is liquefied, and thus gives rise to water, and from water the rest of the series is derived. He reduces nearly everything to exhalation from the sea.
This process is the upward path. Exhalations arise from earth as well as from sea; those from sea are bright and pure, those from earth dark. Fire is fed by the bright exhalations, the moist element by the others. He does not make clear the nature of the surrounding element. He says, however, that there are in it bowls with their concavities turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations collect and produce flames. These are the stars.
The flame of the sun is the brightest and the hottest; the other stars are further from the earth and for that reason give it less light and heat. The moon, which is nearer to the earth, traverses a region which is not pure. The sun, however, moves in a clear and untroubled region, and keeps a proportionate distance from us. That is why it gives us more heat and light. Eclipses of the sun and moon occur when the bowls are turned upwards; the monthly phases of the moon are due to the bowl turning round in its place little by little. Day and night, months, seasons and years, rains and winds and other similar phenomena are accounted for by the various exhalations. Thus the bright exhalation, set aflame in the hollow orb of the sun, produces day, the opposite exhalation when it has got the mastery causes night; the increase of warmth due to the bright exhalation produces summer, whereas the preponderance of moisture due to the dark exhalation brings about winter. His explanations of other phenomena are in harmony with this. He gives no account of the nature of the earth, nor even of the bowls. These, then, were his opinions.
The story told by Ariston of Socrates, and his remarks when he came upon the book of Heraclitus, which Euripides brought him, I have mentioned in my Life of Socrates. ii.
22.
However, Seleucus the grammarian says that a certain Croton relates in his book called The Diver that the said work of Heraclitus was first brought into Greece by one Crates, who further said it required a Delian diver not to be drowned in it. The title given to it by some is The Muses, Plato, alluding to Heraclitus, speaks of "Ionian Muses" ( Soph. 242 e). He is followed by i ), and possibly, as M. Ernout thinks, by Lucretius, i.
657, where "Musae" is the ms. reading. But cf.
Lachmann, ad loc. by others Concerning Nature; but Diodotus calls it Nauck, T.G.F. 2, Adesp. 287.
A helm unerring for the rule of life; others "a guide of conduct, the keel of the whole world, for one and all alike." We are told that, when asked why he kept silence, he replied, "Why, to let you chatter." Darius, too, was eager to make his acquaintance, and wrote to him as follows The request of Darius is u(perei=d en. The story is not made more plausible by the two forged letters to which it must have given rise.: "King Darius, son of Hystaspes, to Heraclitus the wise man of Ephesus, greeting.
"You are the author of a treatise On Nature which is hard to understand and hard to interpret. In certain parts, if it be interpreted word for word, it seems to contain a power of speculation on the whole universe and all that goes on within it, which depends upon motion most divine; but for the most part judgement is suspended, so that even those who are the most conversant with literature are at a loss to know what is the right interpretation of your work. Accordingly King Darius, son of Hystaspes, wishes to enjoy your instruction and Greek culture. Come then with all speed to see me at my palace.
For the Greeks as a rule are not prone to mark their wise men; nay, they neglect their excellent precepts which make for good hearing and learning. But at my court there is secured for you every privilege and daily conversation of a good and worthy kind, and a life in keeping with your counsels."
"Heraclitus of Ephesus to King Darius, son of Hystaspes, greeting.
"All men upon earth hold aloof from truth and justice, while, by reason of wicked folly, they devote themselves to avarice and thirst for popularity. But I, being forgetful of all wickedness, shunning the general satiety which is closely joined with envy, and because I have a horror of splendour, could not come to Persia, being content with little, when that little is to my mind."
So independent was he even when dealing with a king.
Demetrius, in his book on Men of the Same Name, says that he despised even the Athenians, although held by them in the highest estimation; and, notwithstanding that the Ephesians thought little of him, he preferred his own home the more. Demetrius of Phalerum, too, mentions him in his Defence of Socrates This work is again quoted in ix. 37 and ix.
57, and is perhaps the source of the first sentence of § 52 also.; and the commentators on his work are very numerous, including as they do Antishenes and Heraclides of Pontus, Cleanthes and Sphaerus the Stoic, and again Pausanias who was called the imitator of Heraclitus, Nicomedes, Dionysius, and, among the grammarians, Diodotus. The latter affirms that it is not a treatise upon nature, but upon government, the physical part serving merely for illustration. Apparently D. L. is using, through another of his sources, the very same citation from Diodotus which he has given verbatim in § 12.
Hieronymus tells us that Scythinus, the satirical poet, undertook to put the discourse of Heraclitus into verse. He is the subject of many epigrams, and amongst them of this one Anth. Pal.
vii. 128.: Heraclitus am I. Why do ye drag me up and down, ye illiterate? It was not for you I toiled, but for such as understand me. One man in my sight is a match for thirty thousand, but the countless hosts do not make a single one. This I proclaim, yea in the halls of Persephone.
Another runs as follows Anth. Pal. ix. 540.: Do not be in too great a hurry to get to the end of Heraclitus the Ephesian's book: the path is hard to travel. Gloom is there and darkness devoid of light. But if an initiate be your guide, the path shines brighter than sunlight.
Five men have borne the name of Heraclitus: (1) our philosopher; (2) a lyric poet, who wrote a hymn of praise to the twelve gods; (3) an elegiac poet of Halicarnassus, on whom Callimachus wrote the following epitaph Anth. Pal. vii.
80.: They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake; For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take; From Cory's Ionica, p. 7. In bare prose: "One told me of thy death, Heraclitus, and moved me to tears, when I remembered how often we two watched the sun go down upon our talk. But though thou, I ween, my Halicarnassian friend, art dust long, long ago, yet do thy `Nightingales' live on, and Death, that insatiate ravisher, shall lay no hand on them." Perhaps "Nightingales" was the title of a work. Laertius deserves our gratitude for inserting this little poem, especially on so slight a pretext.
(4) a Lesbian who wrote a history of Macedonia; (5) a jester who adopted this profession after having been a musician.
Theophrastus, Phys. Opin. Fr. 5, Fr. 16.
(570-478 B.C.)
Xenophanes, a native of Colophon, the son of Dexius, or, according to Apollodorus, of Orthomenes, is praised by Timon, whose words at all events are: Xenophanes, not over-proud, perverter of Homer, castigator.
He was banished from his native city and lived at Zancle in Sicily [and having joined the colony planted at Elea taught there]. He also lived in Catana. According to some he was no man's pupil, according to others he was a pupil of Boton of Athens, Possibly the same Boton who taught Theramenes rhetoric. If so, D. L. (or his authority) may have transferred to Xenophanes an excerpt intended for Xenophon. See the note of Diels, Fr. d. Vors., on 11 A 1 (Xenophanes) or, as some say, of Archelaus. Sotion makes him a contemporary of Anaximander. His writings are in epic metre, as well as elegiacs and iambics attacking Hesiod and Homer and denouncing what they said about the gods. Furthermore he used to recite his own poems. It is stated that he opposed the views of Thales and Pythagoras, and attacked Epimenides also. He lived to a very great age, as his own words somewhere testify Fr. 8 D.: Seven and sixty are now the years that have been tossing my cares up and down the land of Greece; and there were then twenty and five years more from my birth up, if I know how to speak truly about these things.
He holds that there are four elements of existent things, and worlds unlimited in number but not overlapping [in time]. Clouds are formed when the vapour from the sun is carried upwards and lifts them into the surrounding air. The substance of God is spherical, in no way resembling man. He is all eye and all ear, but does not breathe; he is the totality of mind and thought, and is eternal. Xenophanes was the first to declare that everything which comes into being is doomed to perish, and that the soul is breath.
Presumably followed by Epicharmus when he wrote n.
(Fr. 22, ap. Clem. Strom. iv. 170, p. 640 P.)
He also said that the mass of things falls short of thought; and again that our encounters with tyrants should be as few, or else as pleasant, as possible. When Empedocles remarked to him that it is impossible to find a wise man, "Naturally," he replied, "for it takes a wise man to recognize a wise man."
Sotion says that he was the first to maintain that all things are incognizable, but Sotion is in error. It would be rash to infer from this single notice, that Sotion, considering Xenophanes a Sceptic, did not derive him from the Pythagoreans through Telauges.
One of his poems is The Founding of Colophon, and another The Settlement of a Colony at Elea in Italy, making 2000 lines in all. He flourished about the 60th Olympiad. 540-537 b.c. That he buried his sons with his own hands like Anaxagoras ii. 13. is stated by Demetrius of Phalerum in his work On Old Age and by Panaetius the Stoic in his book Of Cheerfulness. He is believed to have been sold into slavery by [...and to have been set free by] the Pythagoreans Parmeniscus and Orestades: so Favorinus in the first book of his Memorabilia. There was also another Xenophanes, of Lesbos, an iambic poet.
Such were the "sporadic" philosophers.
Chapter 3. PARMENIDES Diels ( op. cit. p. 141) compares Hippolytus, Ref. Haer. i. 11. 1, 2; Plutarch, 12, iii. 15. 7; ultimately from Theophrastus, Phys.
Parmenides, a native of Elea, son of Pyres, was a pupil of Xenophanes (Theophrastus in his Epitome makes him a pupil of Anaximander). Diels considers this sentence to be a marginal note of an editor referring to Xenophanes, not Parmenides. Parmenides, however, though he was instructed by Xenophanes, was no follower of his. According to Sotion Sotion would thus appear to separate Parmenides from Xenophanes. Compare note a on p. 426. Diels conjectures that an epitaph on the Pythagoreans mentioned is the ultimate authority here. he also associated with Ameinias the Pythagorean, who was the son of Diochaetas and a worthy gentleman though poor. This Ameinias he was more inclined to follow, and on his death he built a shrine to him, being himself of illustrious birth and possessed of great wealth; moreover it was Ameinias and not Xenophanes who led him to adopt the peaceful life of a student.
He was the first to declare that the earth is spherical and is situated in the centre of the universe. He held that there were two elements, fire and earth, and that the former discharged the function of a craftsman, the latter of his material.
The generation of man proceeded from the sun as first cause; heat and cold, of which all things consist, surpass the sun itself. Again he held that soul and mind are one and the same, as Theophrastus mentions in his Physics, where he is setting forth the tenets of almost all the schools. He divided his philosophy into two parts dealing the one with truth, the other with opinion. Hence he somewhere says Fr. 1. 28 D.
: Thou must needs learn all things, as well the unshakeable heart of well-rounded truth as the opinions of mortals in which there is no sure trust. The text of Parmenides had suffered in the course of time. Here Laertius, like Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch, read eu)peiqe/ os a)treke\ s ; Proclus, two centuries later, eu)fegg e/os; but Simplicius, on De caelo, enables us to go behind our author by citing (as he no doubt would have wished to do) the better reading.
Our philosopher too commits his doctrines to verse just as did Hesiod, Xenophanes and Empedocles. He made reason the standard and pronounced sensations to be inexact. At all events his words are Fr. 1. 34 D.: And let not long-practised wont force thee to tread this path, to be governed by an aimless eye, an echoing ear and a tongue, but do thou with understanding bring the muchcontested issue to decision.
Hence Timon Fr. 44 D. says of him Cf. Od. xi. 601.: And the strength of high-souled Parmenides, of no diverse opinions, who introduced thought instead of imagination's deceit.
It was about him that Plato wrote a dialogue with the title Parmenides or Concerning Ideas.
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