Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers

§ 8.54 That he belonged to Agrigentum in Sicily he himself testifies at the beginning of his Purifications: My friends, who dwell in the great city sloping down to yellow Acragas, hard by the citadel. So much for his family. Timaeus in the ninth book of his Histories says he was a pupil of Pythagoras, adding that, having been convicted at that time of stealing his discourses, he was, like Plato, excluded from taking part in the discussions of the school; and further, that Empedocles himself mentions Pythagoras in the lines: And there lived among them a man of superhuman knowledge, who verily possessed the greatest wealth of wisdom. Others say that it is to Parmenides that he is here referring.

§ 8.55 Neanthes states that down to the time of Philolaus and Empedocles all Pythagoreans were admitted to the discussions. But when Empedocles himself made them public property by his poem, they made a law that they should not be imparted to any poet. He says the same thing also happened to Plato, for he too was excommunicated. But which of the Pythagoreans it was who had Empedocles for a pupil he did not say. For the epistle commonly attributed to Telauges and the statement that Empedocles was the pupil of both Hippasus and Brontinus he held to be unworthy of credence. Theophrastus affirms that he was an admirer of Parmenides and imitated him in his verses, for Parmenides too had published his treatise On Nature in verse.

§ 8.56 But Hermippus's account is that he was an admirer not so much of Parmenides as of Xenophanes, with whom in fact he lived and whose writing of poetry he imitated, and that his meeting with the Pythagoreans was subsequent. Alcidamas tells us in his treatise on Physics that Zeno and Empedocles were pupils of Parmenides about the same time, that afterwards they left him, and that, while Zeno framed his own system, Empedocles became the pupil of Anaxagoras and Pythagoras, emulating the latter in dignity of life and bearing, and the former in his physical investigations.

§ 8.57 Aristotle in his Sophist calls Empedocles the inventor of rhetoric as Zeno of dialectic. In his treatise On Poets he says that Empedocles was of Homer's school and powerful in diction, being great in metaphors and in the use of all other poetical devices. He also says that he wrote other poems, in particular the invasion of Xerxes and a hymn to Apollo, which a sister of his (or, according to Hieronymus, his daughter) afterwards burnt. The hymn she destroyed unintentionally, but the poem on the Persian war deliberately, because it was unfinished.

§ 8.58 And in general terms he says he wrote both tragedies and political discourses. But Heraclides, the son of Sarapion, attributes the tragedies to a different author. Hieronymus declares that he had come across forty-three of these plays, while Neanthes tells us that Empedocles wrote these tragedies in his youth, and that he, Neanthes, was acquainted with seven of them. Satyrus in his Lives says that he was also a physician and an excellent orator: at all events Gorgias of Leontini, a man pre-eminent in oratory and the author of a treatise on the art, had been his pupil. Of Gorgias Apollodorus says in his Chronology that he lived to be one hundred and nine.

§ 8.59 Satyrus quotes this same Gorgias as saying that he himself was present when Empedocles performed magical feats. Nay more: he contends that Empedocles in his poems lays claim to this power and to much besides when he says: And thou shalt learn all the drugs that are a defence to ward off ills and old age, since for thee alone shall I accomplish all this. Thou shalt arrest the violence of the unwearied winds that arise and sweep the earth, laying waste the cornfields with their blasts; and again, if thou so will, thou shalt call back winds in requital. Thou shalt make after the dark rain a seasonable drought for men, and again after the summer drought thou shalt cause tree-nourishing streams to pour from the sky. Thou shalt bring back from Hades a dead man's strength.

§ 8.60 Timaeus also in the eighteenth book of his Histories remarks that Empedocles has been admired on many grounds. For instance, when the etesian winds once began to blow violently and to damage the crops, he ordered asses to be flayed and bags to be made of their skin. These he stretched out here and there on the hills and headlands to catch the wind and, because this checked the wind, he was called the “wind-stayer.” Heraclides in his book On Diseases says that he furnished Pausanias with the facts about the woman in a trance. This Pausanias, according to Aristippus and Satyrus, was his bosom-friend, to whom he dedicated his poem On Nature thus:

§ 8.61 Give ear, Pausanias, thou son of Anchitus the wise! Moreover he wrote an epigram upon him: The physician Pausanias, rightly so named, son of Anchitus, descendant of Asclepius, was born and bred at Gela. Many a wight pining in fell torments did he bring back from Persephone's inmost shrine. At all events Heraclides testifies that the case of the woman in a trance was such that for thirty days he kept her body without pulsation though she never breathed; and for that reason Heraclides called him not merely a physician but a diviner as well, deriving the titles from the following lines also:

§ 8.62 My friends, who dwell in the great city sloping down to yellow Acragas, hard by the citadel, busied with goodly works, all hail! I go about among you an immortal god, no more a mortal, so honoured of all, as is meet, crowned with fillets and flowery garlands. Straightway as soon as I enter with these, men and women, into flourishing towns, I am reverenced and tens of thousands follow, to learn where is the path which leads to welfare, some desirous of oracles, others suffering from all kinds of diseases, desiring to hear a message of healing.

§ 8.63 Timaeus explains that he called Agrigentum great, inasmuch as it had 800,000 inhabitants. Hence Empedocles, he continues, speaking of their luxury, said, “The Agrigentines live delicately as if tomorrow they would die, but they build their houses well as if they thought they would live for ever.” It is said that Cleomenes the rhapsode recited this very poem, the Purifications, at Olympia: so Favorinus in his Memorabilia. Aristotle too declares him to have been a champion of freedom and averse to rule of every kind, seeing that, as Xanthus relates in his account of him, he declined the kingship when it was offered to him, obviously because he preferred a frugal life.

§ 8.64 With this Timaeus agrees, at the same time giving the reason why Empedocles favoured democracy, namely, that, having been invited to dine with one of the magistrates, when the dinner had gone on some time and no wine was put on the table, though the other guests kept quiet, he, becoming indignant, ordered wine to be brought. Then the host confessed that he was waiting for the servant of the senate to appear. When he came he was made master of the revels, clearly by the arrangement of the host, whose design of making himself tyrant was but thinly veiled, for he ordered the guests either to drink wine or have it poured over their heads. For the time being Empedocles was reduced to silence; the next day he impeached both of them, the host and the master of the revels, and secured their condemnation and execution. This, then, was the beginning of his political career.

§ 8.65 Again, when Acron the physician asked the council for a site on which to build a monument to his father, who had been eminent among physicians, Empedocles came forward and forbade it in a speech where he enlarged upon equality and in particular put the following question: “But what inscription shall we put upon it? Shall it be this? Acron the eminent physician of Agrigentum, son of Acros, is buried beneath the steep eminence of his most eminent native city?” Others give as the second line: Is laid in an exalted tomb on a most exalted peak. Some attribute this couplet to Simonides.

§ 8.66 Subsequently Empedocles broke up the assembly of the Thousand three years after it had been set up, which proves not only that he was wealthy but that he favoured the popular cause. At all events Timaeus in his eleventh and twelfth books (for he mentions him more than once) states that he seems to have held opposite views when in public life and when writing poetry. In some passages one may see that he is boastful and selfish. At any rate these are his words: All hail! I go about among you an immortal god, no more a mortal, etc. At the time when he visited Olympia he demanded an excessive deference, so that never was anyone so talked about in gatherings of friends as Empedocles.

§ 8.67 Subsequently, however, when Agrigentum came to regret him, the descendants of his personal enemies opposed his return home; and this was why he went to Peloponnesus, where he died. Nor did Timon let even him alone, but fastens upon him in these words: Empedocles, too, mouthing tawdry verses; to all that had independent force, he gave a separate existence; and the principles he chose need others to explain them. As to his death different accounts are given. Thus Heraclides, after telling the story of the woman in a trance, how that Empedocles became famous because he had sent away the dead woman alive, goes on to say that he was offering a sacrifice close to the field of Peisianax. Some of his friends had been invited to the sacrifice, including Pausanias.

§ 8.68 Then, after the feast, the remainder of the company dispersed and retired to rest, some under the trees in the adjoining field, others wherever they chose, while Empedocles himself remained on the spot where he had reclined at table. At daybreak all got up, and he was the only one missing. A search was made, and they questioned the servants, who said they did not know where he was. Thereupon someone said that in the middle of the night he heard an exceedingly loud voice calling Empedocles. Then he got up and beheld a light in the heavens and a glitter of lamps, but nothing else. His hearers were amazed at what had occurred, and Pausanias came down and sent people to search for him. But later he bade them take no further trouble, for things beyond expectation had happened to him, and it was their duty to sacrifice to him since he was now a god.

§ 8.69 Hermippus tells us that Empedocles cured Panthea, a woman of Agrigentum, who had been given up by the physicians, and this was why he was offering sacrifice, and that those invited were about eighty in number. Hippobotus, again, asserts that, when he got up, he set out on his way to Etna; then, when he had reached it, he plunged into the fiery craters and disappeared, his intention being to confirm the report that he had become a god. Afterwards the truth was known, because one of his slippers was thrown up in the flames; it had been his custom to wear slippers of bronze. To this story Pausanias is made (by Heraclides ) to take exception.

§ 8.70 Diodorus of Ephesus, when writing of Anaximander, declares that Empedocles emulated him, displaying theatrical arrogance and wearing stately robes. We are told that the people of Selinus suffered from pestilence owing to the noisome smells from the river hard by, so that the citizens themselves perished and their women died in childbirth, that Empedocles conceived the plan of bringing two neighbouring rivers to the place at his own expense, and that by this admixture he sweetened the waters. When in this way the pestilence had been stayed and the Selinuntines were feasting on the river bank, Empedocles appeared; and the company rose up and worshipped and prayed to him as to a god. It was then to confirm this belief of theirs that he leapt into the fire.

§ 8.71 These stories are contradicted by Timaeus, who expressly says that he left Sicily for Peloponnesus and never returned at all; and this is the reason Timaeus gives for the fact that the manner of his death is unknown. He replies to Heraclides, whom he mentions by name, in his fourteenth book. Pisianax, he says, was a citizen of Syracuse and possessed no land at Agrigentum. Further, if such a story had been in circulation, Pausanias would have set up a monument to his friend, as to a god, in the form of a statue or shrine, for he was a wealthy man. “How came he,” adds Timaeus, “to leap into the craters, which he had never once mentioned though they were not far off?

§ 8.72 He must then have died in Peloponnesus. It is not at all surprising that his tomb is not found; the same is true of many other men.” After urging some such arguments Timaeus goes on to say, “But Heraclides is everywhere just such a collector of absurdities, telling us, for instance, that a man dropped down to earth from the moon.” Hippobotus assures us that formerly there was in Agrigentum a statue of Empedocles with his head covered, and afterwards another with the head uncovered in front of the Senate House at Rome, which plainly the Romans had removed to that site. For portrait-statues with inscriptions are extant even now. Neanthes of Cyzicus, who tells about the Pythagoreans, relates that, after the death of Meton, the germs of a tyranny began to show themselves, that then it was Empedocles who persuaded the Agrigentines to put an end to their factions and cultivate equality in politics.

§ 8.73 Moreover, from his abundant means he bestowed dowries upon many of the maidens of the city who had no dowry. No doubt it was the same means that enabled him to don a purple robe and over it a golden girdle, as Favorinus relates in his Memorabilia, and again slippers of bronze and a Delphic laurel-wreath. He had thick hair, and a train of boy attendants. He himself was always grave, and kept this gravity of demeanour unshaken. In such sort would he appear in public; when the citizens met him, they recognized in this demeanour the stamp, as it were, of royalty. But afterwards, as he was going in a carriage to Messene to attend some festival, he fell and broke his thigh; this brought an illness which caused his death at the age of seventy-seven. Moreover, his tomb is in Megara.

§ 8.74 As to his age, Aristotle's account is different, for he makes him to have been sixty when he died; while others make him one hundred and nine. He flourished in the 84th Olympiad. Demetrius of Troezen in his pamphlet Against the Sophists said of him, adapting the words of Homer: He tied a noose that hung aloft from a tall cornel-tree and thrust his neck into it, and his soul went down to Hades. In the short letter of Telauges which was mentioned above it is stated that by reason of his age he slipped into the sea and was drowned. Thus and thus much of his death. There is an epigram of my own on him in my Pammetros in a satirical vein, as follows:

§ 8.75 Thou, Empedocles, didst cleanse thy body with nimble flame, fire didst thou drink from everlasting bowls. I will not say that of thine own will thou didst hurl thyself into the stream of Etna; thou didst fall in against thy will when thou wouldst fain not have been found out. And another: 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?

§ 8.76 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: 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,” as if this ordering of things were eternal. At all events he goes on: At one time all things uniting in one through Love, at another each carried in a different direction through the hatred born of strife.

§ 8.77 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: 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.

§ 8.78 3. EPICHARMUS 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: 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.

§ 8.79 4. ARCHYTAS 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.

§ 8.80 “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.

§ 8.81 ”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.

§ 8.82 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.

§ 8.83 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. In geometry, too, he was the first to discover the cube, as Plato says in the Republic.

§ 8.83a 5. ALCMAEON 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: “These are the words of Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Pirithous, which he spake to Brontinus, 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.

§ 8.84 6. HIPPASUS 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.

§ 8.84a 7. PHILOLAUS Philolaus of Croton was a Pythagorean, and it was from him that Plato requests Dion to buy the Pythagorean treatises. He ( Dion ) was put to death because he was thought to be aiming at a tyranny. This is what we have written upon him: 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.

§ 8.85 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, 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 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.”

§ 8.86 8. EUDOXUS 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.

§ 8.87 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 Octateris. 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.

§ 8.88 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. 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.

§ 8.89 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 Athlius. To this Chrysippus we owe a medical work on the treatment of the eye, speculations upon nature having occupied his mind.

§ 8.90 Three men have borne the name of Eudoxus: (1) our present subject; (2) [ Eudoxus ] a historian, of Rhodes; (3) [ Eudoxus ] 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 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, 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 short-lived, so we are informed by Favorinus in his Memorabilia.

§ 8.91 There is a poem of our own upon him, which runs thus: 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.

§ 9.1 BOOK 9: 1. HERACLITUS Heraclitus, son of Bloson or, according to some, of Heracon, was a native of Ephesus. He flourished in the 69th Olympiad. He was lofty-minded beyond all other men, 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.” For “this one thing is wisdom, to understand thought, as that which guides all the world everywhere.” And he used to say that “ Homer deserved to be chased out of the lists and beaten with rods, and Archilochus likewise.”

§ 9.2 Again he would say: “There is more need to extinguish insolence than an outbreak of fire,” and “The people must fight for the law as for city-walls.” 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.'” 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.

§ 9.3 He would retire to the sanctuary 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.

§ 9.4 There is a piece of my own about him as follows: 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.

§ 9.5 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,” 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.

§ 9.6 This book he dedicated in the sanctuary 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 gives a sketch in these words: 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.

§ 9.7 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.” Self-conceit he used to call a falling sickness (epilepsy) and eyesight a lying sense. 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.

§ 9.8 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; 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. Change he called a pathway up and down, and this determines the birth of the world.

§ 9.9 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.

§ 9.10 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.

§ 9.11 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.

§ 9.12 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, by others Concerning Nature; but Diodotus calls it 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:

§ 9.13 “King Darius, son of Hystaspes, to Heraclitus the wise man of Ephesus, greeting. ”You are the author of a treatise On Nature 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.

§ 9.14 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.

§ 9.15 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; 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.

§ 9.16 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: 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: 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.

§ 9.17 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: 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; (4) a Lesbian who wrote a history of Macedonia; (5) a jester who adopted this profession after having been a musician.

§ 9.18 2. XENOPHANES 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, 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:

§ 9.19 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.

§ 9.20 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. 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. That he buried his sons with his own hands like Anaxagoras 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.

§ 9.21 3. PARMENIDES Parmenides, a native of Elea, son of Pyres, was a pupil of Xenophanes ( Theophrastus in his Epitome makes him a pupil of Anaximander ). Parmenides, however, though he was instructed by Xenophanes, was no follower of his. According to Sotion 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.

§ 9.22 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: 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. 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: 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 much-contested issue to decision.

§ 9.23 Hence Timon says of him: 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. He flourished in the 69th Olympiad. He is believed to have been the first to detect the identity of Hesperus, the evening-star, and Phosphorus, the morning-star; so Favorinus in the fifth book of his Memorabilia; but others attribute this to Pythagoras, whereas Callimachus holds that the poem in question was not the work of Pythagoras. Parmenides is said to have served his native city as a legislator: so we learn from Speusippus in his book On Philosophers. Also to have been the first to use the argument known as “ Achilles [and the tortoise]”: so Favorinus tells us in his Miscellaneous History. There was also another Parmenides, a rhetorician who wrote a treatise on his art.

§ 9.24 4. MELISSUS Melissus, the son of Ithaegenes, was a native of Samos. He was a pupil of Parmenides. Moreover he came into relations with Heraclitus, on which occasion the latter was introduced by him to the Ephesians, who did not know him, as Democritus was to the citizens of Abdera by Hippocrates. He took part also in politics and won the approval of his countrymen, and for this reason he was elected admiral and won more admiration than ever through his own merit. In his view the universe was unlimited, unchangeable and immovable, and was one, uniform and full of matter. There was no real, but only apparent, motion. Moreover he said that we ought not to make any statements about the gods, for it was impossible to have knowledge of them. According to Apollodorus, he flourished in the 84th Olympiad. [444 BCE]

§ 9.25 5. ZENO OF ELEA Zeno was a citizen of Elea. Apollodorus in his Chronology says that he was the son of Teleutagoras by birth, but of Parmenides by adoption, while Parmenides was the son of Pyres. Of Zeno and Melissus, Timon speaks thus: Great Zeno's strength which, never known to fail, On each side urged, on each side could prevail. In marshalling arguments Melissus too, More skilled than many a one, and matched by few. Zeno, then, was all through a pupil of Parmenides and his bosom friend. He was tall in stature, as Plato says in his Parmenides. The same philosopher [mentions him] in his Sophist, and Phaedrus, and calls him the Eleatic Palamedes. Aristotle says that Zeno was the inventor of dialectic, as Empedocles was of rhetoric.

§ 9.26 He was a truly noble character both as philosopher and as politician; at all events, his extant books are brimful of intellect. Again, he plotted to overthrow Nearchus the tyrant (or, according to others, Diomedon ) but was arrested: so Heraclides in his epitome of Satyrus. On that occasion he was cross-examined as to his accomplices and about the arms which he was conveying to Lipara; he denounced all the tyrant's own friends, wishing to make him destitute of supporters. Then, saying that he had something to tell him about certain people in his private ear, he laid hold of it with his teeth and did not let go until stabbed to death, meeting the same fate as Aristogiton the tyrannicide.

§ 9.27 Demetrius in his work on Men of the Same Name says that he bit off, not the ear, but the nose. According to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, after informing against the tyrant's friends, he was asked by the tyrant whether there was anyone else in the plot; whereupon he replied, “Yes, you, the curse of the city!?; and to the bystanders he said, ”I marvel at your cowardice, that, for fear of any of those things which I am now enduring, you should be the tyrant's slaves." And at last he bit off his tongue and spat it at him; and his fellow-citizens were so worked upon that they forthwith stoned the tyrant to death. In this version of the story most authors nearly agree, but Hermippus says he was cast into a mortar and beaten to death.

§ 9.28 Of him also I have written as follows: You wished, Zeno, and noble was your wish, to slay the tyrant and set Elea free from bondage. But you were crushed; for, as all know, the tyrant caught you and beat you in a mortar. But what is this that I say? It was your body that he beat, and not you. In all other respects Zeno was a gallant man; and in particular he despised the great no less than Heraclitus. For example, his native place, the Phocaean colony, once known as Hyele and afterwards as Elea, a city of moderate size, skilled in nothing but to rear brave men, he preferred before all the splendour of Athens, hardly paying the Athenians a visit, but living all his life at home.

§ 9.29 He was the first to propound the argument of the “ Achilles,” which Favorinus attributes to Parmenides, and many other arguments. His views are as follows. There are worlds, but there is no empty space. The substance of all things came from hot and cold, and dry and moist, which change into one another. The generation of man proceeds from earth, and the soul is formed by a union of all the foregoing, so blended that no one element predominates. We are told that once when he was reviled he lost his temper, and, in reply to some one who blamed him for this, he said, “If when I am abused I pretend that I am not, then neither shall I be aware of it if I am praised.” The fact that there were eight men of the name of Zeno we have already mentioned under Zeno of Citium. Our philosopher flourished in the 79th Olympiad.

§ 9.30 6. LEUCIPPUS Leucippus was born at Elea, but some say at Abdera and others at Miletus. He was a pupil of Zeno. His views were these. The sum of things is unlimited, and they all change into one another. The All includes the empty as well as the full. The worlds are formed when atoms fall into the void and are entangled with one another; and from their motion as they increase in bulk arises the substance of the stars. The sun revolves in a larger circle round the moon. The earth rides steadily, being whirled about the centre; its shape is like that of a drum. Leucippus was the first to set up atoms as first principles. Such is a general summary of his views; on particular points they are as follows.

§ 9.31 He declares the All to be unlimited, as already stated; but of the All part is full and part empty, and these he calls elements. Out of them arise the worlds unlimited in number and into them they are dissolved. This is how the worlds are formed. In a given section many atoms of all manner of shapes are carried from the unlimited into the vast empty space. These collect together and form a single vortex, in which they jostle against each other and, circling round in every possible way, separate off, by like atoms joining like. And, the atoms being so numerous that they can no longer revolve in equilibrium, the light ones pass into the empty space outside, as if they were being winnowed; the remainder keep together and, becoming entangled, go on their circuit together, and form a primary spherical system.

§ 9.32 This parts off like a shell, enclosing within it atoms of all kinds; and, as these are whirled round by virtue of the resistance of the centre, the enclosing shell becomes thinner, the adjacent atoms continually combining when they touch the vortex. In this way the earth is formed by portions brought to the centre coalescing. And again, even the outer shell grows larger by the influx of atoms from outside, and, as it is carried round in the vortex, adds to itself whatever atoms it touches. And of these some portions are locked together and form a mass, at first damp and miry, but, when they have dried and revolve with the universal vortex, they afterwards take fire and form the substance of the stars.

§ 9.33 The orbit of the sun is the outermost, that of the moon nearest to the earth; the orbits of the other heavenly bodies lie between these two. All the stars are set on fire by the speed of their motion; the burning of the sun is also helped by the stars; the moon is only slightly kindled. The sun and the moon are eclipsed when..., but the obliquity of the zodiacal circle is due to the inclination of the earth to the south; the regions of the north are always shrouded in mist, and are extremely cold and frozen. Eclipses of the sun are rare; eclipses of the moon constantly occur, and this because their orbits are unequal. As the world is born, so, too, it grows, decays and perishes, in virtue of some necessity, the nature of which he does specify.

§ 9.34 7. DEMOCRITUS Democritus was the son of Hegesistratus, though some say of Athenocritus, and others again of Damasippus. He was a native of Abdera or, according to some, of Miletus. He was a pupil of certain Magians and Chaldaeans. For when King Xerxes was entertained by the father of Democritus he left men in charge, as, in fact, is stated by Herodotus; and from these men, while still a boy, he learned theology and astronomy. Afterwards he met Leucippus and, according to some, Anaxagoras, being forty years younger than the latter. But Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History tells us that Democritus, speaking of Anaxagoras, declared that his views on the sun and the moon were not original but of great antiquity, and that he had simply stolen them.

§ 9.35 Democritus also pulled to pieces the views of Anaxagoras on cosmogony and on mind, having a spite against him, because Anaxagoras did not take to him. If this be so, how could he have been his pupil, as some suggest? According to Demetrius in his book on Men of the Same Name and Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, he travelled into Egypt to learn geometry from the priests, and he also went into Persia to visit the Chaldaeans as well as to the Red Sea. Some say that he associated with the Gymnosophists in India and went to Aethiopia. Also that, being the third son, he divided the family property. Most authorities will have it that he chose the smaller portion, which was in money, because he had need of this to pay the cost of travel; besides, his brothers were crafty enough to foresee that this would be his choice.

§ 9.36 Demetrius estimates his share at over 100 talents, the whole of which he spent. His industry, says the same author, was so great that he cut off a little room in the garden round the house and shut himself up there. One day his father brought an ox to sacrifice and tied it there, and he was not aware of it for a considerable time, until his father roused him to attend the sacrifice and told him about the ox. Demetrius goes on: “It would seem that he also went to Athens and was not anxious to be recognized, because he despised fame, and that while he knew of Socrates, he was not known to Socrates, his words being,'I came to Athens and no one knew me.'”

§ 9.37 “If the Rivals be the work of Plato,” says Thrasylus, “ Democritus will be the unnamed character, different from Oenopides and Anaxagoras, who makes his appearance when conversation is going on with Socrates about philosophy, and to whom Socrates says that the philosopher is like the all-round athlete. And truly Democritus was versed in every department of philosophy, for he had trained himself both in physics and in ethics, nay more, in mathematics and the routine subjects of education, and he was quite an expert in the arts.” From him we have the saying, “Speech is the shadow of action.” Demetrius of Phalerum in his Defence of Socrates affirms that he did not even visit Athens. This is to make the larger claim, namely, that he thought that great city beneath his notice, because he did not care to win fame from a place, but preferred himself to make a place famous.

§ 9.38 His character can also be seen from his writings. “He would seem,” says Thrasylus, “to have been an admirer of the Pythagoreans. Moreover, he mentions Pythagoras himself, praising him in a work of his own entitled Pythagoras. He seems to have taken all his ideas from him and, if chronology did not stand in the way, he might have been thought his pupil.” Glaucus of Rhegium certainly says that he was taught by one of the Pythagoreans, and Glaucus was his contemporary. Apollodorus of Cyzicus, again, will have it that he lived with Philolaus. He would train himself, says Antisthenes, by a variety of means to test his sense-impressions by going at times into solitude and frequenting tombs.

§ 9.39 The same authority states that, when he returned from his travels, he was reduced to a humble mode of life because he had exhausted his means; and, because of his poverty, he was supported by his brother Damasus. But his reputation rose owing to his having foretold certain future events; and after that the public deemed him worthy of the honour paid to a god. There was a law, says Antisthenes, that no one who had squandered his patrimony should be buried in his native city. Democritus, understanding this, and fearing lest he should be at the mercy of any envious or unscrupulous prosecutors, read aloud to the people his treatise, the Great Diacosmos, the best of all his works; and then he was rewarded with 500 talents; and, more than that, with bronze statues as well; and when he died, he received a public funeral after a lifetime of more than a century.

§ 9.40 Demetrius, however, says that it was not Democritus himself but his relatives who read the Great Diacosmos, and that the sum awarded was 100 talents only; with this account Hippobotus agrees. Aristoxenus in his Historical Notes affirms that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect, but that Amyclas and Clinias the Pythagoreans prevented him, saying that there was no advantage in doing so, for already the books were widely circulated. And there is clear evidence for this in the fact that Plato, who mentions almost all the early philosophers, never once alludes to Democritus, not even where it would be necessary to controvert him, obviously because he knew that he would have to match himself against the prince of philosophers, for whom, to be sure, Timon has this meed of praise: Such is the wise Democritus, the guardian of discourse, keen-witted disputant, among the best I ever read.

§ 9.41 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, 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, 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.

§ 9.42 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 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.

§ 9.43 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: 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.

§ 9.44 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 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.

§ 9.45 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.

§ 9.46 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). 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.

§ 9.47 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. 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 (Projections).

§ 9.48 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. 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.

§ 9.49 Some include as separate items in the list the following works taken from his notes: Of the Sacred Writings in Babylon. Of those in Mero. 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. The other works which some attribute to Democritus 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 sanctuary at Ephesus and the polis of Samothrace; (5) an epigrammatist whose style is lucid and ornate; (6) a native of Pergamum who made his mark by rhetorical speeches.

§ 9.50 8. PROTAGORAS 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 calls Prodicus deep-voiced. Protagoras studied under Democritus. The latter was nicknamed “Wisdom,” according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History.

§ 9.51 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 are not.” He used to say that soul was nothing apart from the senses, as we learn from Plato in the Theaetetus, 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.”

§ 9.52 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 too speaks of him as Protagoras, all mankind's epitome, Cunning, I trow, to war with words.

§ 9.53 He too first introduced the method of discussion which is called Socratic. Again, as we learn from Plato in the Euthydemus, 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, says Epicurus somewhere. 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;

§ 9.54 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.

§ 9.55 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. Moreover there is a dialogue which Plato wrote upon him. 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,

§ 9.56 though Apollodorus makes his age seventy, assigns forty years for his career as a sophist, and puts his floruit in the 84th Olympiad. There is an epigram of my own on him as follows: 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.

§ 9.57 9. DIOGENES OF APOLLONIA Diogenes of Apollonia, son of Apollothemis, was a natural philosopher and a most famous man. Antisthenes calls him a pupil of Anaximenes; but he lived in Anaxagoras's time. This man, 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. 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.”

§ 9.58 10. ANAXARCHUS Anaxarchus, a native of Abdera, studied under Diogenes of Smyrna, 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. He made an enemy of Nicocreon, tyrant of Cyprus. Once at a 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,

§ 9.59 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: 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!”

§ 9.60 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.” Plutarch reports this as spoken by Alexander to his friends. 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.