114 Iliad 2.546.
115 The name “Old-and-New Day” was unique to Athens. Almost every community in ancient Greece had its own calendar, and calendric systems were easily changed (see 1.59).
116 In Solon’s day, the nine archons at Athens were magistrates elected annually, each responsible for different areas of civic administration. The chief or royal archon was nominally the head of the group, and is often referred to simply as “archon” for a particular year.
117 These three regional factions, each with its own economic interests and agenda, were roughly equivalent to political parties today.
118 Thespis of Icaria (fl. c. 536 BC) is credited with inventing a kind of drama in which a speaking actor conversed with the chorus, the earliest form of Greek tragedy.
119 This political ploy is described in Solon’s letter to Epimenides (see 1.64–66).
120 An elegiac poet and musician who lived in the seventh century BC, believed to be from Smyrna. Solon addresses him below as Ligyastades, a nickname referring to shrillness of singing voice.
121 In other words, Diogenes vouches for the authenticity of the works he lists here. The literary records of great figures like Solon had often become crowded with spurious and pseudonymous works by the time Diogenes surveyed them.
122 Of this vast corpus, only a few fragments survive, mostly poems in the elegiac meter (a few of which appear to be complete).
123 This Olympiad began in 596 BC, so Solon’s term as chief archon fell in 594–93 (since archonships began and ended in summer).
124 The “city of Ajax” refers to Salamis, the island from which Ajax (a Trojan War hero) hailed.
125 See 1.41.
126 Periander was tyrant of Corinth in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC, and also was listed by some among the Seven Sages; Diogenes discusses his life and work at 1.94–100.
127 Epimenides was a Cretan whose name sometimes was included among the Seven Sages; Diogenes discusses his life and work at 1.109–15.
128 Diogenes relates this gesture of resignation on Solon’s part at 1.50.
129 A large jury composed of six thousand adult Athenian citizens, chosen by lot, who judged accusations made against archons and other public officials.
130 Lacedemonians were residents of Laconia, the region around, and including, the city of Sparta.
131 Ephors (literally, “overseers”) were Spartan officials, elected annually by the popular assembly. They wielded large executive powers.
132 This Olympiad began in 556 BC.
133 Pamphila’s dating to the sixth Olympiad would move Chilon’s ephorate a full two centuries back from where Diogenes places it; she seems to have misunderstood some phrase like “he first became ephor” to mean “he was the first to become ephor.”
134 The legendary lawgiver and founder of the Spartan constitution, who, if he really existed, probably lived in the late ninth or early eighth century BC.
135 The anecdote is related by Herodotus (1.59). Since the son of Hippocrates turned out to be Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, Chilon’s advice gives premonitory meaning to the spontaneous boiling of the cauldrons.
136 According to legend, Aesop lived on the island of Samos in the early sixth century BC. The exchange between him and Chilon involves a reinterpretation of the question “What is Zeus doing?” a phrase that, in common usage, amounted to “What’s the weather like?”
137 There is a problem in the text here, probably due to a scribe who misunderstood the story and replaced some phrase like “the jurors” or “the court” with “his friend.” The friend, of course, did not need any persuading, being the object of the rescue effort.
138 The island lies close enough to the coast near Sparta that it affords a useful base for enemies attacking the Peloponnese.
139 King Demaratus of Sparta was forced from the throne in 491 BC. As an exile, he became adviser to the Persian crown and helped Xerxes in his invasion of Greece in 480 BC. His advice about Cythera is reported by Herodotus (7.235).
140 Nicias (c. 470–413 BC) was an Athenian general who helped lead his city’s forces against Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. In his history of that conflict, Thucydides reports on the garrisoning of Cythera, at 4.53–57.
141 The name of this son of Branchus has fallen out of the manuscripts. Branchidae is another name for Didyma and also for the caste of priests who presided over the oracle there.
142 This Olympiad began in 572 BC; this date would have Chilon reaching old age before becoming ephor (see 1.68).
143 Not the city in Italy but a town in the western Peloponnese whose territory included Olympia, the site of the Olympic games.
144 Pollux, who, along with his twin brother Castor, formed the divine pair known as the Dioscuri (Roman Gemini), was famous for a legendary boxing victory.
145 For Periander, see 1.94–100.
146 The largest city on the island of Lesbos.
147 Born c. 625–620 BC in Mytilene, Alcaeus was one of the most admired ancient lyric poets. His family helped Pittacus topple the tyrant of Mytilene, but they then had a falling-out, and Alcaeus subsequently wrote a great deal of invective poetry against Pittacus.
148 The region where the tomb of Achilles was located.
149 Pancratium (or pankration) was a brutal mix of boxing and wrestling. Beyond a bar against biting and eye gouging it had no restrictions and was regarded as the most dangerous athletic event.
150 Simonides of Ceos (c. 556–476 BC), one of the most celebrated lyric poets of Greece, composed epigrams in honor of the Battles of Marathon, Platea, and Thermopylae.
151 Protagoras 345d.
152 Apparently, a reference to wooden tablets on which laws were inscribed.
153 Phocaea was the northernmost Ionian city in Asia Minor. Diogenes refers to “the Phocaean” as though this was a well-known sage, but no Phocaean philosophers are otherwise known.
154 The goddess who personified retribution. Nemesis determined the portion of happiness or suffering allotted to each person.
155 This Olympiad began in 612 BC.
156 This Olympiad began in 572 BC, so he died in 570.
157 Probably a different Draco than the famous Athenian lawmaker.
158 Meaning Croesus.
159 The king of Lydia (c. 600–560 BC) and father of Croesus. Through conquest he made Lydia one of the significant powers in Anatolia.
160 A town on the island of Rhodes.
161 A mythical hero, father of the Egyptian Danaids.
162 Several kings of Phrygia, in central Anatolia, bore the name Midas, including the king who had the legendary golden touch; it’s not clear which Midas is meant here.
163 Diogenes is here gainsaying a well-known attribution of the epitaph to Homer.
164 These sixty “daughters” are the (white) days and (black) nights, counted separately, of the months (“sons”) of the year.
165 For Solon, see 1.45–67. The presumed date of this letter is the end of Solon’s life, when Pisistratus had already become tyrant at Athens.
166 The descendants of Heracles who used their ancestry to claim authority over the Peloponnesian kingdoms.
167 The king of Lydia and father of Croesus.
168 This story is taken from Herodotus (3.48).
169 This Olympiad began in 584 BC.
170 Not the hedonist philosopher Aristippus of Cyrene, whose life is discussed at 2.65–104, but a later author who assumed that name, presumably to give his work greater credibility. This man is sometimes referred to as Pseudo-Aristippus.
171 That is, his own assassination and burial, at his own orders, began the whole sequence.
172 This Olympiad began in 448 BC.
173 Not Heraclides Ponticus, who was mentioned in 1.94, but Heraclides Lembus.
174 The Isthmus of Corinth linked the Peloponnese with mainland Greece. Archaeological evidence shows that a paved track (the diolkos) was constructed across the isthmus during Periander’s time,
allowing ships to be transported between the Ionian and Aegean Seas. Today a canal connects them.
175 Procles was Periander’s father-in-law (see 1.94).
176 Herodotus explains how Periander habitually consulted the ghost of his dead wife and, regarding her as a kind of deity, took her advice to burn the clothes of all the Corinthian women (5.92).
177 The Scythians were a network of non-Greek, nomadic tribes, dwelling generally north and east of the Black Sea and around the Sea of Azov.
178 This Olympiad began in 592 BC.
179 In Greek, logos means “reason” or “speech” and phthonos means “malice” or “jealousy.”
180 The latter version of Anacharsis’s death is taken from Herodotus, Histories 4.76–77.
181 Flute players and musicians were an important part of the convivial atmosphere at the Greek symposium, or drinking party. Anacharsis jokes that in Scythia they don’t even have the makings of wine.
182 A reference to the production of wood charcoal.
183 Chen seems to have been a village in Thessaly, near Mount Oeta, though Diogenes reveals that, even in his time, there was uncertainty over its location.
184 The human voice of the oracle of Delphi.
185 See 1.30.
186 The anecdote hinges on the misunderstanding of Eteios, an adjective meaning either “from Etis” or “from Eteia,” as a name. The two places from which Myson was thought to have come are both so obscure that no one recognized the names in the adjectival Eteios.
187 Timon and Apemantus, two famously embittered Athenians, were dramatized by Shakespeare in Timon of Athens, based on stories found in Plutarch and Lucian.
188 At 343a.
189 This Olympiad began in 592 BC.
190 The Areopagus (literally, “the rock of Ares”) was the site of many councils throughout Athenian history. At the time of Epimenides, the council of archons gathered there.
191 Cylon was an Athenian nobleman who, in 632 BC, attempted to make himself tyrant of Athens by seizing the Acropolis. His coup failed and he escaped, but his followers remained behind, surrendering and seeking shelter in the temple of Athena. Megacles, the chief magistrate, initially promised to spare them but then had them killed. This violation of divine sanction incurred “pollution” or ritual guilt.
192 None of these works survive.
193 The legendary king of Crete, a son of the god Zeus and the princess Europa.
194 This work is elsewhere cited by Diogenes under a shorter title, Men of the Same Name.
195 That is, before the reforms instituted by Solon.
196 The hill of Munychia, in the Piraeus, was situated so that it could be held by even a small armed force; enemies of Athens in fact used it on several occasions to set up garrisons.
197 The mythical king of Aegina, famed for his piety and his skill.
198 The point of this story is unclear, but Pherecydes seems to have anticipated that the presence of his body would harm the Magnesians.
199 Likely a reference to the Corycian cave near the top of Mount Parnassus.
200 That is, the altars serve as tables for the gods.
201 Pherecratean meter, dating back to archaic Greece, was not normally used as the sole meter of an entire poem. Diogenes made a point of experimenting with obscure verse forms, and indeed titled his (now lost) poetry book Pammetros, which means “[Poems of] All Meters.”
202 This Olympiad began in 544 BC.
203 On Thales, see 1.22–40.
204 See 1.12, where Diogenes alludes to the distinction, implicit here, between sages and sophists, who already possess wisdom, and philosophers, who yearn for a wisdom that they have not yet attained.
Book 2
ANAXIMANDER
610–c.547 bc
ANAXIMENES
d. c. 528/25 bc
ANAXAGORAS
c. 500–428 bc
ARCHELAUS
fl. 5th cent. bc
SOCRATES
469–399 bc
XENOPHON
c. 430–c. 354 bc
AESCHINES
c. 425–c. 350 bc
ARISTIPPUS
c. 435–350 bc
PHAEDO
5th–4th cent. bc
EUCLIDES
c. 450–380 bc
STILPO
4th cent. bc
CRITO
5th cent. bc
SIMON
5th cent. bc
GLAUCON
5th–4th cent. bc
SIMMIAS
late 5th and early 4th cent. bc
CEBES
5th cent. bc
MENEDEMUS
c. 339–265 bc
The Propylaia to the Acropolis, Athens, by Braun, Clément & Cie, c. 1890.
Relief representing Anaximander, probably a Roman copy of an earlier Greek original.
Anaximander
1 Anaximander, son of Praxides, was a native of Miletus.1 He affirmed the unlimited2 as a first principle and element, without defining it as air or water or anything else. He also affirmed that though its parts change, the whole is unchangeable; that the earth, spherical in shape, lies in its midst, holding the place of a center;3 that the moon, shining with borrowed light, is illuminated by the sun; and that the sun is not smaller than the earth, and that it consists of the purest fire.
2 He was the first to invent the gnomon,4 and he placed it on the sundials in Lacedaemon, as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous History, to indicate the solstices and equinoxes; he also built clocks.5 He was the first to draw on a map the contours of the land and of the sea; he also fashioned a sphere.6
Anaximander Showing His Student How to Establish a Gnomon, by Antoine Bereger, 1838–1839.
He published a summary of his doctrines, which by chance fell into the hands of Apollodorus the Athenian, who in his Chronology says that in the second year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad7 Anaximander was sixty-four and that he died shortly thereafter, having flourished near the period when Polycrates8 was tyrant of Samos. They say that the boys made fun of his singing, and that when he learned of it he said, “Then for the boys’ sake I must sing better.”
There was another Anaximander, a historian, also of Miletus, who wrote in the Ionic dialect.9
Anaximenes
3 Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus, was a native of Miletus and a student of Anaximander. Some say that he also studied with Parmenides.10 He declared that air is a first principle, as is the unlimited.11 He held that the stars move, not under the earth, but around it.12 He wrote simply and plainly in the Ionic dialect.
He lived, according to Apollodorus, at the time of the capture of Sardis13 and died in the sixty-third Olympiad.14
There have been two other men named Anaximenes, both of Lampsacus, the one an orator, the other a historian; the latter was the nephew of the orator, who wrote about the achievements of Alexander.15
4 Anaximenes the philosopher wrote the following letter:
Anaximenes to Pythagoras16
Thales, son of Examyas, has met an unfortunate end in old age. He left his house at night, as was his habit, with his serving woman, to view the stars, and, forgetting where he was as he gazed, he stepped over the edge of a steep slope and fell.17 Thus the astronomer of Miletus met his end. Let us, who were his students, remember the man, and let our children and students do likewise, and let us continue to regale one another with his words. Let all our discussions begin with Thales.
5 And another:
Anaximenes to Pythagoras
You were the better-advised among us when you migrated from Samos to Croton,18 where you live in peace. For the sons of Aeaces19 wreak unending havoc, and the Milesians have no respite from tyrants. And the king of the Medes terrifies us,20 though not, at any rate, as long as we are willing to pay tribute. But the Ionians are about to go to war with the Medes to regain their common freedom;21 and once the battle is joined we can have no more hope of safety. How, then, could Anaximenes have the heart to talk of
aether and the like when threatened with destruction or slavery? But you are in favor with the people of Croton and all the other Greek inhabitants of Italy; students come to you even from Sicily.
Anaxagoras
6 Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus or Eubulus, was a native of Clazomenae.22 He was a student of Anaximenes and was the first to set mind above matter. For at the beginning of his treatise, which is written in a pleasing and lofty style, he says, “All things were together; then mind came and set them in order.” This is why he was called Nous (Mind); and Timon in his Lampoons says of him:
And perhaps, they say, there is Anaxagoras, a great hero
whom they call Mind because his was the mind that awakened suddenly
and tied together all that had formerly been in a state of confusion.
7 He was distinguished for his noble birth and wealth, but also for his magnanimity, since he made over his patrimony to his relatives. For when they accused him of neglecting it, he said, “Then why don’t you look after it?” And at last he retired and devoted himself to the study of nature, without troubling himself about the city’s affairs. And when someone inquired, “Do you care nothing for your native land?” he replied, “Hush!23 I am greatly concerned for my native land,” and pointed to the sky.
He is said to have been twenty years old at the time of Xerxes’ crossing24 and to have lived for seventy-two years. Apollodorus, in his Chronology, says that he was born in the seventieth Olympiad and died in the first year of the eighty-eighth.25 He began to study philosophy at Athens during the archonship of Callias,26 at the age of twenty, as Demetrius of Phalerum says in his List of Archons; and there he remained, they say, for thirty years.
8,9 It was he who said that the sun is a red-hot mass of iron and is larger than the Peloponnese. (Others, however, ascribe this view to Tantalus.27) He said that the moon has habitations as well as crests and ravines. He took as first principles the bodies whose particles are all identical: for just as gold is said to be made up of gold dust, so the universe is made up of small homogeneous bodies.28 And mind, on the one hand, is a first principle of movement; among bodies, on the other hand, the heavy ones occupy the region below,
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers Page 9