Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

by Pamela Mensch

  62 Thyatira was a small city southeast of Pergamon.

  63 One of the five rivers of Hades.

  64 A proverb attributed at 2.11 to the philosopher Anaxagoras.

  65 Ion of Chios was a fifth-century poet and tragedian, all of whose plays are now lost.

  66 Pyrrho was the founder of the Skeptic school in the early third century BC. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 9.61–108.

  67 The Eretrian school was founded by Menedemus, discussed at 2.125–44.

  68 The hexameter line parodies Iliad 6.181, a description of the chimera. Diodorus Cronus (d. c. 284 BC) was a master dialectician renowned for his skill in exploring logical problems and fallacies.

  69 Both the translation and the point of the quip are uncertain.

  70 The two lines, possibly part of a dialogue between two female characters, belong to an unknown tragedy or tragedies.

  71 A line from an unknown play of Euripides.

  72 The Greek word tokos in the second line can signify either “offspring” or “interest (on a debt).” The context in Sophocles’ original suggests only the first meaning was intended, but Arcesilaus cleverly evokes the second.

  73 Alexinus of Elis (c. 339–265 BC) was a philosopher of the Megarian school.

  74 Philoxenus of Cythera (c. 435–380 BC) was a dithyrambic poet who lived for a time at the court of Dionysius I of Syracuse.

  75 Ctesibius (fl. c. 270 BC) was an Alexandrian mathematician, physicist, and engineer.

  76 Eumenes I, who became king of Pergamon (r. 263–241 BC) after being adopted by his uncle Philetaerus, was a patron of the liberal arts. Archias is not otherwise known.

  77 It’s unclear what sort of “events” Diogenes means; philosophic lectures are a possibility. The two names given here are otherwise unknown.

  78 Antigonus II Gonatas (c. 320–239 BC) was a king of Macedonia. He sought to fill his court at Pella with philosophers, poets, and intellectuals.

  79 Munychia was a fortified hill that controlled the port of Piraeus and, thereby, the food supply of Athens. Various dynasts of the Hellenistic age garrisoned it to prevent Athenian uprisings.

  80 Sometime around 260 BC, Antigonus II defeated the naval forces of Ptolemy II at the Battle of Cos.

  81 Demetrias was a city in Thessaly founded by Demetrius I Poliorcetes, king of Macedonia and father of Antigonus II.

  82 Aristippus was the founder of the Cyrenaic school. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 2.65–104.

  83 It’s unclear which of the twenty Demetriuses listed at 5.84–85 is meant here. Cleochares of Myrlea was a Greek orator and rhetorician.

  84 There seems to be an obscene pun involved in the quip, as in a similar anecdote at 2.138.

  85 Demochares (c. 360–275 BC), the nephew of the orator Demosthenes, was an Athenian orator and democratic statesman.

  86 A pupil of Arcesilaus.

  87 As stated at 4.29, Moereas, the eldest son (who would normally inherit), had disapproved of Arcesilaus’ philosophic ambitions.

  88 The ancient Greeks usually drank their wines mixed with water to dilute their strength.

  89 This Olympiad began in 300 BC.

  90 Presumably a town on the Borysthenes River (modern-day Dnieper) in Scythia.

  91 Antigonus II Gonatas (c. 320–239 BC) was a king of Macedonia. He sought to fill his court at Pella with philosophers, poets, and intellectuals.

  92 Homer, Odyssey 10.325, a line spoken by the sorceress Circe to Odysseus.

  93 Homer, Iliad 6.211, where Glaucus, a grandson of the hero Bellerophon, finishes recounting his family’s history.

  94 Two other philosophers who also resided at Antigonus’ court.

  95 The Greek contains two rhyming words. Diogenes attributes a similar remark to Antisthenes at 6.3.

  96 A mythical hero and seer who fought alongside Polynices in the expedition of the Seven Against Thebes.

  97 In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades, a youth famed for his beauty, tells how Socrates rejected his sexual advances.

  98 Wheat being a more valued grain than barley, the quip extols the study of philosophy over that of rhetoric.

  99 The allusion is to the fifty daughters of Danaus, who were doomed to fill leaky vessels with water for eternity, unable ever to wash the stain of murder from their hands. Bion’s point seems to be that carrying heavier loads would be a harsher punishment.

  100 Since Bion came from lowly origins, he could not be held for ransom.

  101 Euripides, Hippolytus 424.

  102 Crates was head of the Academy in the early third century BC. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 4.21–23.

  103 Apatheia, here rendered “detachment,” meant, for the early Cynics, not being affected by external circumstances.

  104 Theodorus (c. 340–c. 250 BC), a philosopher of the Cyrenaic school, is discussed at 2.97–104.

  105 Theophrastus was Aristotle’s successor as the head of the Lyceum, in the late fourth and early third centuries BC. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 5.36–57.

  106 Diogenes discusses the life and views of Archytas of Tarentum at 8.79–83.

  107 Menedemus was the founder of the Eretrian school of philosophy. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 2.125–44.

  108 That is, Bion was carried about in Antigonus II’s train when he became too ill to walk. Some editors emend the text here on the assumption that Antigonus was carried to Bion’s side, rather than the other way around.

  109 That is, Bion acknowledged Pluto (Hades) as a god, thereby admitting the existence of the Olympians generally.

  110 The third and final phase in the doctrinal development of Plato’s school, the New Academy was marked by a moderation of the skepticism that had been prevalent during the Middle Academy. In saying that Lacydes was the first head of the New Academy, Diogenes differs from other ancient sources, who instead assign this role to Carneades.

  111 By this stratagem, Lacydes supposed that the door could not be resealed to conceal a theft, but he failed to reckon with the countermeasure Diogenes goes on to describe.

  112 Attalus I, king of Pergamon in the late third century BC.

  113 Carneades’ life and views are discussed at 4.62–66.

  114 A deferential way of refusing to attend on the monarch.

  115 The fourth year of this Olympiad began in 241 BC.

  116 This epithet of Dionysus derives from a Greek verb meaning “to loosen.”

  117 Diogenes discusses the life and views of Chrysippus at 7.179–202.

  118 A parody of a verse about Chrysippus (7.183): “Had there been no Chrysippus, there would have been no Stoa.”

  119 Namely, his single-minded devotion to his studies.

  120 These verses stitch together two lines of Homer’s Odyssey (4.384, 2.268) with a parody of one line from Sophocles’ Antigone (203). In the last case, the original text had Creon, ruler of Thebes, reading a decree of banishment from the city, rather than from the school.

  121 Mentor deploys another Homeric verse, used twice in the Iliad (2.52, 2.444) and once in the Odyssey (2.8).

  122 The third year of this Olympiad began in 130 BC.

  123 Presumably Ariarathes V of Cappadocia, who reigned 163–130 BC.

  124 Both are fairly rare Greek meters. Diogenes liked to use a wide variety of metrical forms in his poems, as demonstrated by the title of his now lost book of verse, Pammetros (“[Poems of] All Meters”).

  125 Clitomachus’ birth name, Hasdrubal, was notably Carthaginian, and was shared by the brother of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who fought the Romans.

  126 Salt was a frequent metaphor in the ancient world for wit. Speech that is “unsalted” is therefore dull and bland.

  Bronze statuette of a horse, late second or first century BC, Greek.

  Book 5

  ARISTOTLE

  384–322 bc

  THEOPHRASTUS

  c. 372/70–c. 288/86 bc

  STRATO

  d. 269 bc


  LYCO

  c. 300/298–c. 226/24 bc

  DEMETRIUS

  b. c. 350 bc

  HERACLIDES

  4th cent. bc

  Aristotle

  1 Aristotle, son of Nicomachus and Phaestis, was a native of Stagira.1 His father Nicomachus traced his descent to the Nicomachus who was the son of Machaon and grandson of Asclepius,2 as Hermippus says in his book On Aristotle; he lived with Amyntas, the king of the Macedonians, in the capacity of doctor and friend.3 Aristotle was the most faithful of Plato’s students; he spoke with a lisp, as Timotheus the Athenian says in his book On Lives; they also say that his calves were thin and his eyes small, and that he wore fine clothes and rings, and kept his hair short. He had a son, also called Nicomachus, by his concubine Herpyllis,4 as Timotheus says.

  2 He left the Academy while Plato was still alive; hence Plato is said to have remarked, “Aristotle kicked me away just as <…> colts kick away their mother.” Hermippus, in his Lives, says that Aristotle was on an Athenian embassy to Philip when Xenocrates became head of the school,5 and that when he returned and saw the school headed by another, he chose a walkway (peripatos) in the Lyceum,6 where he walked up and down discussing philosophy with his students until it was time for them to exercise. And thus he was called a “peripatetic.”7 Others, however, say that the name was given to him because when Alexander was walking about after an illness, Aristotle joined him and conversed with him about various matters.8

  Two marble portraits of Aristotle. Left: Young Aristotle, by Charles Jean Marie Degeorge, c. 1875. Right: a Hadrianic copy of an original commissioned by Alexander the Great from the sculptor Lysippus in c. 330 BC. The mantle is a seventeenth-century addition.

  3 But when his students had grown in number, then Aristotle too took a seat, saying:

  It is shameful to keep silence and let Xenocrates speak.9

  4 He taught his students to discourse on a set thesis, while also training them in oratory. Later, however, he departed to the court of Hermias the eunuch, the ruler of Atarneus,10 whom some say became his beloved, though others maintain that Hermias made Aristotle his kinsman, giving him his daughter or niece in marriage,11 as Demetrius of Magnesia says in his work On Poets and Writers of the Same Name. Demetrius also says that Hermias had been a slave of Eubulus, that he came from Bithynia, and that he slew his master. Aristippus,12 in the first book of his work On the Luxuriousness of the Ancients, says that Aristotle fell in love with a concubine of Hermias; that he married her with Hermias’s consent, and in his great joy offered sacrifices to this woman as the Athenians did to Demeter of Eleusis;13 and that he also wrote a paean to Hermias, which is given below.14

  5 Thereafter he was in Macedonia at Philip’s court and received from him his son Alexander as a student;15 he requested that his native city, which had been razed by Philip, be restored, and had his petition granted; he also established laws for its inhabitants. We also learn that, following Xenocrates’ example, he made it a rule at his school that a new head should be appointed every ten days.16 When he thought he had stayed long enough with Alexander, he departed to Athens, having first introduced Alexander to his kinsman, Callisthenes of Olynthus.17 But when Callisthenes spoke too frankly to the king and didn’t obey him,18 Alexander is said to have rebuked him, citing the verse,

  You’ll be short-lived, my child, by speaking thus.19

  And so it turned out. For Callisthenes, suspected of conspiring with Hermolaus in a plot against Alexander, was carried about in an iron cage, lice-ridden and untended; and finally he was thrown to a lion, and thus met his end.20

  6 As for Aristotle, after coming to Athens and leading his school for thirteen years, he retired to Chalcis21 because Eurymedon, the priest at Eleusis (or Demophilus, as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous History), charged him with impiety for having composed the hymn to the above-mentioned Hermias, as well as the following inscription for the statue he dedicated at Delphi:22

  Leaded bronze arrowhead, fourth century BC. The blunted tip suggests it saw impact; the socket’s cast inscription with Greek letters in retrograde reads “of Philip.” Reportedly found near the city of Olynthus, on the Chalcidice peninsula, it was probably used during the siege of Olynthus by Philip II of Macedon in 348 BC, one year after his destruction of Aristotle’s native city, Stagira.

  This man the king of the bow-bearing Persians slew,

   Impiously transgressing the sacred law of the immortals,

  Overcoming him not openly, with a spear in mortal combat,

   But with the help of a treacherous man whom he trusted.

  In Chalcis, drinking wolfsbane, Aristotle died,23 as Eumelus reports in the fifth book of his Histories, at the age of seventy. But the same author says that Aristotle met Plato at the age of thirty; and here he is mistaken. For Aristotle lived to be sixty-three, and he was seventeen when he became Plato’s student. His hymn to Hermias runs as follows:

  7,8  O Virtue, achieved with toil by the race of mortals,

  The finest goal in life,

   For the sake of your beauty, O maiden,

  ’Tis in Greece an enviable fate to die

   And to endure fierce and ceaseless toils.

  Such courage do you implant in the heart,

   An immortal harvest, better than gold,

  Dearer than parents, than sloe-eyed sleep.

   For your sake, Heracles, son of Zeus,

  And the sons of Leda

   Endured many labors,24

  Pursuing your power.

   For love of you Achilles

  And Ajax came to the house of Hades.

   And for the sake of your beloved form

  The nursling of Atarneus too was bereft of the sun’s rays.25

   Therefore will his deeds be sung,

  And the Muses, the daughters of Memory,

   Will make him immortal,

  Exalting the majesty of Zeus,

   Patron of strangers, and the prize of steadfast friendship.

  My own verses about him run as follows:

  Eurymedon, the priest of Deo’s26 mysteries,

   Was once about to indict Aristotle for impiety;

  But he, by drinking wolfsbane, escaped;

   And thus, without effort, defeated unjust calumnies.

  9 Favorinus, in his Miscellaneous History, says that Aristotle was the first to write a forensic speech in his own defense, on the occasion of the suit mentioned above; and he quotes him as saying that at Athens

  pear upon pear grows old, and fig upon fig.27

  10 Apollodorus, in his Chronology, says that Aristotle was born in the first year of the ninety-ninth Olympiad;28 that he met Plato and remained with him for twenty years, having become his student at the age of seventeen; and that he went to Mytilene during the archonship of Eubulus,29 in the third year of the 108th Olympiad.30 When Plato died, in the first year of that Olympiad,31 during the archonship of Theophilus, Aristotle went to Hermias and stayed with him for three years. During the archonship of Pythodotus, in the second year of the 109th Olympiad,32 he went to Philip, Alexander being then fifteen years old. He returned to Athens in the second year of the 111th Olympiad33 and lectured at the Lyceum for thirteen years. He departed for Chalcis in the third year of the 114th Olympiad34 and died of disease at about the age of sixty-three, during the archonship of Philocles, in the same year Demosthenes died on Calauria.35

  Marble portrait heads of Alexander the Great (left) and his beloved companion, Hephaistion (right), c. 320 BC, Greek.

  It is said that Aristotle offended Alexander by his introduction of Callisthenes, and that Alexander, in order to annoy Aristotle, honored Anaximenes36 and sent gifts to Xenocrates.37

  11 Theocritus of Chios,38 according to Ambryon in his book On Theocritus, also ridiculed him in the following epigram:

  To Hermias, who was a eunuch and at the same time a slave of Eubulus,

   An empty monument39 was erected by empty-minded Aristotle.
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  And Timon attacked him, saying,

  No, not even the painful thoughtlessness of Aristotle.40

  12,13,14,15,16 So much for the life of the philosopher. I have also come across his will, which runs as follows:

  All will be well; but if anything should happen, Aristotle has made the following dispositions. Antipater41 is to be executor in all matters, without restriction. Until Nicanor arrives,42 let Aristomenes, Timachus, Hipparchus, Dioteles, and Theophrastus (if he is willing and if circumstances permit him) take charge of the children and Herpyllis as well as the property.43 And when my daughter comes of age, let her be given in marriage to Nicanor;44 but if anything should happen to her (which heaven forbid, nor will any such thing occur) before she marries, or after her marriage but before there are children, let Nicanor have full authority, both with regard to my son and with regard to everything else, to manage in a manner worthy both of himself and of us. Let Nicanor take charge of my daughter and of my son Nicomachus, and act as he sees fit in all things that concern them, as if he were their father or brother. And if anything should happen to Nicanor (which heaven forbid) either before he marries the girl, or after the marriage but before there are children, let any arrangement he has made be valid. And if Theophrastus consents to live with my daughter, let him assume the same responsibility as Nicanor. Otherwise, let the executors, in consultation with Antipater, administer with respect to my daughter and my son as they think best.

  14 Let the executors and Nicanor, in memory of me and of the devotion Herpyllis has shown me, take care of her in every other respect and, if she wishes to marry, see to it that she is given in a manner not unworthy of me. Let them give her, in addition to what she has already received, a talent of silver out of the estate and three serving women, whichever