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:

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 of Euripides, which some have asserted to be the work of Neophron of Sicyon.

He despised the teachers of the school of Plato and Xenocrates as well as the Cyrenaic philosopher Paraebates. He had a great admiration for Stilpo; and on one occasion, when he was questioned about him, he made no other answer than that he was a gentleman. Menedemus was difficult to see through, and in making a bargain it was difficult to get the better of him. He would twist and turn in every direction, and he excelled in inventing objections. He was a great controversialist, according to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers. In particular he was fond of using the following argument: "Is the one of two things different from the other?" "Yes." "And is conferring benefits different from the good?" "Yes." "Then to confer benefits is not good."

It is said that he disallowed negative propositions, converting them into affirmatives, and of these he admitted simple propositions only, rejecting those which are not simple, I mean hypothetical and complex propositions. Heraclides declares that, although in his doctrines he was a Platonist, yet he made sport of dialectic. So that, when Alexinus once inquired if he had left off beating his father, his answer was, "Why, I was not beating him and have not left off"; and upon Alexinus insisting that he ought to have cleared up the ambiguity by a plain "Yes" or "No," "It would be absurd," he said, "for me to conform to your rules when I can stop you on the threshold." And when Bion persistently ran down the soothsayers, Menedemus said he was slaying the slain.

On hearing some one say that the greatest good was to get all you want, he rejoined, "To want the right things is a far greater good." Antigonus of Carystus asserts that he never wrote or composed anything, and so never held firmly by any doctrine. He adds that in discussing questions he was so pugnacious that he would only retire after he had been badly mauled. And yet, though he was so violent in debate, he was as mild as possible in his conduct. For instance, though he made sport of Alexinus and bantered him cruelly, he was nevertheless very kind to him, for, when his wife was afraid that on her journey she might be set upon and robbed, he gave her an escort from Delphi to Chalcis.

He was a very warm friend, as is shown by his affection for Asclepiades, which was hardly inferior to the devotion shown by Pylades. But, Asclepiades being the elder, it was said that he was the playwright and Menedemus the actor. They say that once, when Archipolis had given them a cheque for half a talent, they stickled so long over the point as to whose claim came second that neither of them got the money. It is said that they married a mother and her daughter; Asclepiades married the daughter and Menedemus the mother. But after the death of his own wife, Asclepiades took the wife of Menedemus; and afterwards the latter, when he became head of the state, married a rich woman as his second wife. Nevertheless, as they kept one household, Menedemus entrusted his former wife with the care of his establishment. However, Asclepiades died first at a great age at Eretria, having lived with Menedemus economically, though they had ample means. Some time afterwards a favourite of Asclepiades, having come to a party and being refused admittance by the pupils, Menedemus ordered them to admit him, saying that even now, when under the earth, Asclepiades opened the door for him. It was Hipponicus the Macedonian and Agetor of Lamia who were their chief supporters; the one gave each of the two thirty minae, while Hipponicus furnished Menedemus with two thousand drachmae with which to portion his daughters. There were three of them according to Heraclides, his children by a wife who was a native of Oropus.

He used to give his parties in this fashion: he would breakfast beforehand with two or three friends and stay until it was late in the day. And in the next place some one would summon the guests who had arrived and who had themselves already dined, so that, if anyone came too soon, he would walk up and down and inquire from those who came out of the house what was on the table and what o'clock it was. If then it was only vegetables or salt fish, they would depart; but if there was meat, they would enter the house. In the summer time a rush mat was put upon each couch, in winter time a sheepskin. The guest brought his own cushion. The loving-cup which was passed round was no larger than a pint cup. The dessert consisted of lupins or beans, sometimes of ripe fruit such as pears, pomegranates, a kind of pulse, or even dried figs. All of these facts are mentioned by Lycophron in his satiric drama entitled Menedemus, which was composed as a tribute to him. Here is a specimen of it: 92

And after a temperate feast the modest cup was passed round with discretion, and their dessert was temperate discourse for such as cared to listen.

At first he was despised, being called a cynic and a humbug by the Eretrians. But afterwards he was greatly admired, so much so that they entrusted him with the government of the state. He was sent as envoy to Ptolemy and to Lysimachus, being honoured wherever he went. He was, moreover, envoy to Demetrius, and he caused the yearly tribute of two hundred talents which the city used to pay Demetrius to be reduced by fifty talents. And when he was accused to Demetrius of intriguing to hand over the city to Ptolemy, he defended himself in a letter which commences thus: "Menedemus to King Demetrius, greeting. I hear that a report has reached you concerning me." There is a tradition that one Aeschylus who belonged to the opposite party had made these charges against him. He seems to have behaved with the utmost dignity in the embassy to Demetrius on the subject of Oropus, as Euphantus relates in his Histories. Antigonus too was much attached to him and used to proclaim himself his pupil. And when he vanquished the barbarians near the town of Lysimachia, Menedemus moved a decree in his honour in simple terms and free from flattery, beginning thus: "On the motion of the generals and the councillors - Whereas King Antigonus is returning to his own country after vanquishing the barbarians in battle, and whereas in all his undertakings he prospers according to his will, the senate and the people have decreed . . . "

On these grounds, then, and from his friendship for him in other matters, he was suspected of betraying the city to Antigonus, and, being denounced by Aristodemus, withdrew from Eretria and stayed awhile in Oropus in the temple of Amphiaraus. And, because some golden goblets were missing from the temple, he was ordered to depart by a general vote of the Boeotians, as is stated by Hermippus; and thereupon in despair, after a secret visit to his native city, he took with him his wife and daughters and came to the court of Antigonus, where he died of a broken heart.

Heraclides tells quite another story, that he was made councillor of the Eretrians and more than once saved the city from a tyranny by calling in Demetrius - so then he would not be likely to betray the city to Antigonus, but was made the victim of a false charge; that he betook himself to Antigonus and was anxious to regain freedom for his country; that, as Antigonus would not give way, in despair he put an end to his life by abstaining from food for seven days. The account of Antigonus of Carystus is similar. 93 With Persaeus alone he carried on open warfare, for it was thought that, when Antigonus was willing for Menedemus's sake to restore to the Eretrians their democracy, Persaeus prevented him. Hence on one occasion over the wine Menedemus refuted Persaeus in argument and said, amongst other things, "Such he is as a philosopher but, as a man, the worst of all that are alive or to be born hereafter."

According to the statement of Heraclides he died in his seventy-fourth year. I have written the following epigram upon him: 94

I heard of your fate, Menedemus, how, of your own free will, you expired by starving yourself for seven days, a deed right worthy of an Eretrian, but unworthy of a man; but despair was your leader and urged you on.

These then are the disciples of Socrates or their immediate successors. We must now pass to Plato, the founder of the Academy, and his successors, so far as they were men of reputation.

89 Fr. 2 D.

90 Fr. 29 D.

91 Nauck, T.G.F. ², Achaeus, 34.

92 Nauck, T.G.F. ² p. 818.

93 Antigonus of Carystus (see Introd. p. xxiii) is the older authority, from whom Heraclides (probably Heraclides Lembos) directly or indirectly derived his information.

94 Anth. Plan. v. 40.