Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

 Table of Contents

 Book I .

 Prologue

 and this idea was borrowed by Anaxagoras when he declared that all things were originally together until Mind came and set them in order. Linus died i

 And thus it was from the Greeks that philosophy took its rise: its very name refuses to be translated into foreign speech.

 But the advocates of the theory that philosophy took its rise among the barbarians go on to explain the different forms it assumed in different countr

 Thales

 But according to others he wrote nothing but two treatises, one On the Solstice and one On the Equinox History of Astronomy.

 Accordingly they give it to Thales, and he to another, and so on till it comes to Solon, who, with the remark that the god was the most wise, sent it

 But the prose inscription is:

 and it was given in reply to a question put by Anacharsis. Daimachus the Platonist and Clearchus allege that a bowl was sent by Croesus to Pittacus an

 Some relate that a vessel with its freight was sent by Periander to Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, and that, when it was wrecked in Coan waters, the

 That of the Milesians beginning Who shall possess the tripod? has been quoted above. So much for this version of the story.

 His writings are said by Lobon of Argos to have run to some two hundred lines. His statue is said to bear this inscription:

 Of songs still sung these verses belong to him:

 Here too are certain current apophthegms assigned to him:

 I may also cite one of my own, from my first book, Epigrams in Various Metres

 To him belongs the proverb Know thyself, which Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers attributes to Phemonoë, though admitting that it was a

 Nor is there any agreement how the number is made up for Maeandrius, in place of Cleobulus and Myson, includes Leophantus, son of Gorgiadas, of Lebed

 Solon

 and

 He also persuaded the Athenians to acquire the Thracian Chersonese. And lest it should be thought that he had acquired Salamis by force only and not o

 Solon inserted one of his own:

 Thereafter the people looked up to him, and would gladly have had him rule them as tyrant he refused, and, early perceiving the designs of his kinsma

 That he foresaw the tyranny of Pisistratus is proved by a passage from a poem of his:

 When Pisistratus was already established, Solon, unable to move the people, piled his arms in front of the generals' quarters, and exclaimed, My coun

 and Solon, perceiving this, treated them with scant respect. Excellent, too, is his provision that the guardian of an orphan should not marry the moth

 and to have replied thus:

 Of the songs sung this is attributed to Solon:

 He flourished, according to Sosicrates, about the 46th Olympiad, in the third year of which he was archon at Athens it was then that he enacted his l

 An epigram of my own is also contained in the collection of Epigrams in Various Metres mentioned above, where I have discoursed of all the illustrious

 It is said that he was the author of the apophthegm Nothing too much, Ne quid nimis. According to Dioscurides in his Memorabilia,

 Chilon

 The inscription on his statue runs thus:

 His apophthegm is: Give a pledge, and suffer for it. A short letter is also ascribed to him.

 Pittacus

 He also wrote poems in elegiac metre, some 600 lines, and a prose work On Laws for the use of the citizens.

 To him belongs the apophthegm, Know thine opportunity.

 The advice seems to have been prompted by his situation. For he had married a wife superior in birth to himself: she was the sister of Draco, the son

 Bias

 and Hipponax thus: More powerful in pleading causes than Bias of Priene.

 My own epitaph is:

 He wrote a poem of 2000 lines on Ionia and the manner of rendering it prosperous. Of his songs the most popular is the following:

 For this earns most gratitude the headstrong spirit often flashes forth with harmful bane.

 Cleobulus

 His apophthegm was: Moderation is best. And he wrote to Solon the following letter:

 Periander

 My own epitaph on him is:

 To him belongs the maxim: Never do anything for money leave gain to trades pursued for gain. He wrote a didactic poem of 2000 lines. He said that tho

 Anacharsis

 It was a saying of his that the vine bore three kinds of grapes: the first of pleasure, the next of intoxication, and the third of disgust. He said he

 Myson

 His curiosity aroused, Anacharsis went to the village in summer time and found him fitting a share to a plough and said, Myson, this is not the seaso

 Aristoxenus in his Historical Gleanings says he was not unlike Timon and Apemantus, for he was a misanthrope. At any rate he was seen in Lacedaemon la

 Epimenides

 Pherecydes

 Ion of Chios says of him:

 There is also an epigram of my own in the Pherecratean metre:

 Book II .

 Anaximander

 Anaximenes

 Anaxagoras

 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

 I also have written an epigram upon him:

 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 sc

 Archelaus

 Socrates

 And again he calls Euripides an engine riveted by Socrates. And Callias in The Captives :

 Aristophanes in The Clouds

 According to some authors he was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and also of Damon, as Alexander states in his Successions of Philosophers. When Anaxagoras was

 that frequently, owing to his vehemence in argument, men set upon him with their fists or tore his hair out and that for the most part he was despise

 He showed his contempt for Archelaus of Macedon and Scopas of Cranon and Eurylochus of Larissa by refusing to accept their presents or to go to their

 This disdainful, lofty spirit of his is also noticed by Aristophanes when he says:

 he got up and left the theatre. For he said it was absurd to make a hue and cry about a slave who could not be found, and to allow virtue to perish in

 and he told Aeschines, On the third day I shall die. When he was about to drink the hemlock, Apollodorus offered him a beautiful garment to die in:

 For this he was most envied and especially because he would take to task those who thought highly of themselves, proving them to be fools, as to be s

 Dionysodorus denies that he wrote the paean. He also composed a fable of Aesop, not very skilfully, beginning:

 So he was taken from among men and not long afterwards the Athenians felt such remorse that they shut up the training grounds and gymnasia. They bani

 Xenophon

 There is another on the circumstances of his death:

 Aeschines

 Aristippus

 He is said to have ordered a partridge to be bought at a cost of fifty drachmae, and, when someone censured him, he inquired, Would not you have give

 Aristippus, however, put on the dress and, as he was about to dance, was ready with the repartee:

 He made a request to Dionysius on behalf of a friend and, failing to obtain it, fell down at his feet. And when some one jeered at him, he made reply,

 he retorted:

 This is stated by Diocles in his work On the Lives of Philosophers other writers refer the anecdotes to Plato. After getting in a rage with Aeschine

 Phaedo

 Euclides

 He too was a dialectician and was supposed to have been the first who discovered the arguments known as the Veiled Figure and the Horned One. When

 The successors of Euclides include Ichthyas, the son of Metallus, an excellent man, to whom Diogenes the Cynic has addressed one of his dialogues Cli

 Stilpo

 In character Stilpo was simple and unaffected, and he could readily adapt himself to the plain man. For instance, when Crates the Cynic did not answer

 The pun upon καινοῦ (new) and καὶ νοῦ (mind as well) recurs vi. 3.

 Crito

 Simon

 Glaucon

 Simmias

 Cebes

 Menedemus

 and Timon as follows:

 He was a man of such dignity that, when Eurylochus of Casandrea was invited by Antigonus to court along with Cleïppides, a youth of Cyzicus, he declin

 which are from the Omphale, a satiric drama of Achaeus. Therefore it is a mistake to say that he had read nothing except the Medea

 Book III

 Plato

 From that time onward, having reached his twentieth year (so it is said), he was the pupil of Socrates. When Socrates was gone, he attached himself to

 Furthermore he said that, according to Homer, beyond all men the Egyptians were skilled in healing. Plato also intended to make the acquaintance of th

 Moreover, there are verses of Timon which refer to Plato:

 Then there is Timon who puns on his name thus:

 Alexis again in the Meropis :

 And Alexis in the Olympiodorus :

 And in the Parasite :

 Anaxilas, again, in the Botrylion Circe Rich Women

 And another:

 And he wrote thus upon Dion:

 This, they say, was actually inscribed upon his tomb at Syracuse.

 And another:

 And again:

 And again:

 Further, Molon, being his enemy, said, It is not wonderful that Dionysius should be in Corinth, but rather that Plato should be in Sicily. And it se

 There is also an epitaph of my own which runs thus:

So he was taken from among men; and not long afterwards the Athenians felt such remorse that they shut up the training grounds and gymnasia. They banished the other accusers but put Meletus to death; they honoured Socrates with a bronze statue, the work of Lysippus, which they placed in the hall of processions. And no sooner did Anytus visit Heraclea than the people of that town expelled him on that very day. Not only in the case of Socrates but in very many others the Athenians repented in this way. For they fined Homer (so says Heraclides 45 ) 50 drachmae for a madman, and said Tyrtaeus was beside himself, and they honoured Astydamas before Aeschylus and his brother poets with a bronze statue. Euripides upbraids them thus in his Palamedes: "Ye have slain, have slain, the all-wise, the innocent, the Muses' nightingale." 46 This is one account; but Philochorus asserts that Euripides died before Socrates.

He was born, according to Apollodorus in his Chronology, in the archonship of Apsephion, in the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad, 47 on the 6th day of the month of Thargelion, when the Athenians purify their city, which according to the Delians is the birthday of Artemis. He died in the first year of the 95th Olympiad 48 at the age of seventy. With this Demetrius of Phalerum agrees; but some say he was sixty when he died.

Both were pupils of Anaxagoras, I mean Socrates and Euripides, who was born in the first year of the 75th Olympiad in the archonship of Calliades. 49

In my opinion Socrates discoursed on physics as well as on ethics, since he holds some conversations about providence, even according to Xenophon, who, however, declares that he only discussed ethics. But Plato, after mentioning Anaxagoras and certain other physicists in the Apology, 50 treats for his own part themes which Socrates disowned, although he puts everything into the mouth of Socrates.

Aristotle relates that a magician came from Syria to Athens and, among other evils with which he threatened Socrates, predicted that he would come to a violent end.

I have written verses about him too, as follows: 51

Drink then, being in Zeus's palace, O Socrates; for truly did the god pronounce thee wise, being wisdom himself; for when thou didst frankly take the hemlock at the hands of the Athenians, they themselves drained it as it passed thy lips.

He was sharply criticized, according to Aristotle in his third book On Poetry, by a certain Antilochus of Lemnos, and by Antiphon the soothsayer, just as Pythagoras was by Cylon of Croton, or as Homer was assailed in his lifetime by Syagrus, and after his death by Xenophanes of Colophon. So too Hesiod was criticized in his lifetime by Cercops, and after his death by the aforesaid Xenophanes; Pindar by Amphimenes of Cos; thales by Pherecydes; Bias by Salarus of Priene; Pittacus by Antimenidas and Alcaeus; Anaxagoras by Sosibius; and Simonides by Timocreon.

Of those who succeeded him and were called Socratics 52 the chief were Plato, Xenophon, Antisthenes, and of ten names on the traditional list the most distinguished are Aeschines, Phaedo, Euclides, Aristippus. I must first speak of Xenophon; Antisthenes will come afterwards among the Cynics; after Xenophon I shall take the Socratics proper, and so pass on to Plato. With Plato the ten schools begin: he was himself the founder of the First Academy. This then is the order which I shall follow.

Of those who bear the name of Socrates there is one, a historian, who wrote a geographical work upon Argos; another, a Peripatetic philosopher of Bithynia; a third, a poet who wrote epigrams; lastly, Socrates of Cos, who wrote on the names of the gods.

25 So Cobet for vulgate Mnesilochus, retained by Meineke, C.G.F. ii. 371.

26 There is a pun in Φρύγες and φρύγανα (=firewood).

27 Meineke, C.G.F. ii. 739.

28 A mistake for Teleclides: see Meineke, Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ii. p. 371 sq. Dindorf conjectured that τὰς σωκρατογόμφους belongs to the same passage of Teleclides' Clouds and might well follow σοφάς.

29 Fr. 25 d.

30 Possibly the reference is to the same citation as in 19 which Diogenes Laertius may have found independently in two of his authorities. Diogenes himself notices the agreement between Favorinus and Idomeneus of Lampsacus, a much earlier author, for he was a disciple of Epicurus, whom he knew from 310 to 270 B.C.

31 Hom. Od. iv. 392.

32 The reason assigned for an expedition to Potidaea by sea will not hold. Communications between Athens and Thrace were, as a rule, made by sea. Moreover, the siege of Potidaea began in 432 B.C., the year before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war. It has been suggested that the words διὰ θαλάττης . . . κωλύοντος should properly follow Ἰσθμόν eight lines lower down. If any Athenian wished to attend the Isthmian games during the early part of the Peloponnesian war, it was probably safer not to risk the land journey owing to the bitter hostility of the Megarians.

33 Stobaeus, Florilegium, lvi. 15, attributes these and three preceding lines to Philemon, the well-known poet of the New Comedy. If Philemon wrote them, Socrates cannot have recited them, however well they express his temper.

34 Clouds, 412-417.

35 Sc. in the Connus, Meineke, C.G.F. i. 201 sq., ii. 703.

36 Clouds, 362.

37 174 a.

38 Mem. iii. 7.

39 This line, now found in Eur. Electra, 379, may have come into our text from the lost play Auge: cf. Nauck, T.G.F. ², p. 437, s.v. ΑΥΓΗ.

40 Hom. Il. ix. 363.

41 The proposal that Socrates should escape from prison was attributed to Aeschines as well as to Crito (see below, 60). The Homeric citation occurs in Plato's Crito, 44 b.

42 95 a.

43 The confusion in the last sentence of 38 is due to the insertion in the wrong place of two extracts, one from Favorinus and the other from Hermippus. When these are removed, the parts assigned to the three accusers, Meletus, Anytus and Lycon, become clear: ἀπηνέγκατο μὲν οὖν τὴν γραφὴν ὁ Μέλητος, εἶπε δὲ τὴν δίκην Ἄνυτος, προητοίμασε δὲ πάντα Λύκων ὁ δημαγωγός.

44 Anth. Plan. iv. 16.

45 Most probably Heraclides of Pontus. This remarkable assertion may have occurred in one of his dialogues, and was perhaps not meant to be taken seriously.

46 Nauck, T.G.F. ², Eur. 588.

47 469-468 B.C.

48 400-399 B.C.

49 480-479 B.C.

50 26 d.

51 Anth. Pal. vii. 96.

52 The text would perhaps be clearer if we transposed thus: τῶν δὲ διαδεξαμένων αὐτὸν οἱ κορυφαιότατοι μὲν Πλάτων, Ξενοφῶν, Ἀντισθένης. τῶν δὲ λεγομένων Σωκρατικῶν οἱ διασημότατοι τέσσαρες, Αἰσχίνης, Φαίδων, Εὐκλείδης, Ἀρίστιππος κτλ . . . εἶθ᾽ οὔτω περὶ Πλάτωνος: ἐπεὶ κατάρχει τῶν φερομένων δέκα αἱρέσεων. The division of moral philosophers into ten schools was mentioned above, i. 18.