The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
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BOHN’S CLASSICAL LIBRARY
DIOGENES LAËRTIUS
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
LONDON: PORTUGAL ST., KINGSWAY
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER AND CO.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF
EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY
DIOGENES LAËRTIUS.
LITERALLY TRANSLATED
BY C. D. YONGE, M.A.,
_Fellow of the Royal University of London;
Regius Professor of English Literature and Modern
History, Queen’s College, Belfast._
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD
1915
[_Reprinted from Stereotype plates._]
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
PREFACE 1
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTION 3
THALES 14
SOLON 23
CHILO 32
PITTACUS 35
BIAS 38
CLEOBULUS 41
PERIANDER 43
ANACHARSIS, THE SCYTHIAN 46
MYSON 49
EPIMENIDES 50
PHERECYDES 53
BOOK II.
ANAXIMANDER 57
ANAXIMENES 57
ARCHELAUS 62
SOCRATES 63
XENOPHON 75
ÆSCHINES 79
ARISTIPPUS 81
PHÆDO 96
EUCLIDES 97
STILPO 100
CRITO 103
SIMON 104
GLAUCO 104
SIMIAS 105
CEBES 105
MENEDEMUS 105
BOOK III.
PLATO 113
BOOK IV.
SPEUSIPPUS 152
XENOCRATES 154
POLEMO 158
CRATES 160
CRANTOR 161
ARCESILAUS 163
BION 171
LACYDES 176
CARNEADES 177
CLITOMACHUS 178
BOOK V.
ARISTOTLE 181
THEOPHRASTUS 194
STRATO 202
LYCON 205
DEMETRIUS 209
HERACLIDES 213
BOOK VI.
ANTISTHENES 217
DIOGENES 224
MONIMUS 248
ONESICRITUS 249
CRATES 249
METROCLES 253
HIPPARCHIA 254
MENIPPUS 256
MENEDEMUS 257
BOOK VII.
ZENO 259
ARISTON 318
HERILLUS 320
DIONYSIUS 321
CLEANTHES 322
SPHÆRUS 326
CHRYSIPPUS 327
BOOK VIII.
PYTHAGORAS 338
EMPEDOCLES 359
EPICHARMUS 368
ARCHYTAS 369
ALCMÆON 371
HIPPASUS 371
PHILOLAUS 372
EUDOXUS 372
BOOK IX.
HERACLITUS 376
XENOPHANES 382
PARMENIDES 384
MELISSUS 386
ZENO, THE ELEATIC 386
LEUCIPPUS 388
DEMOCRITUS 390
PROTAGORAS 397
DIOGENES, OF APOLLONIA 400
ANAXARCHUS 400
PYRRHO 402
TIMON 420
BOOK X.
EPICURUS 424
PREFACE.
Diogenes, the author of the following work, was a native (as is generally
believed) of Laërte, in Cilicia, from which circumstance he derived the
cognomen of Laërtius. Little is known of him personally, nor is even the
age in which he lived very clearly ascertained. But as Plutarch, Sextus
Empiricus, and Saturninus are among the writers whom he quotes, he is
generally believed to have lived near the end of the second century of
our era: although some place him in the time of Alexander Severus, and
others as late as Constantine. His work consists of ten books, variously
called: The Lives of Philosophers, A History of Philosophy, and The Lives
of Sophists. From internal evidence (iii. 47, 29), we learn that he wrote
it for a noble lady (according to some, Arria; according to others,
Julia, the Empress of Severus), who occupied herself with the study of
philosophy, and especially of Plato.
Diogenes Laërtius divides the philosophy of the Greeks into the Ionic,
beginning with Anaximander, and ending with Theophrastus (in which class,
he includes the Socratic philosophy and all its various ramifications);
and the Italian, beginning with Pythagoras, and ending with Epicurus, in
which he includes the Eleatics, as also Heraclitus and the Sceptics. From
the minute consideration which he devotes to Epicurus and his system, it
has been supposed that he himself belonged to that school.
His work is the chief source of information we possess concerning the
history of Greek philosophy, and is the foundation of nearly all the
modern treatises on that subject; some of the most important of which are
little more than translations or amplifications of it. It is valuable,
as containing a copious collection of anecdotes illustrative of the life
and manners of the Greeks; but he has not always been very careful in
his selection, and in some parts there is a confusion in his statements
that makes them scarcely intelligible. These faults have led some critics
to consider the work as it now exists merely a mutilated abridgment of
the original. Breslæus, who in the thirteenth century, wrote a Treatise
on the Lives and Manners of the Philosophers, quotes many anecdotes and
sayings, which seem to be derived from Diogenes, but which are not to be
found in our present text; whence Schneider concludes that he had a very
different and far more complete copy than has come down to us.
The text used in the following translation is chiefly that of Huebner, as
published at Leipsic, A.D. 1828.
LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTION.
I. Some say that the study of philosophy originated with the barbarians.
In that among the Persians there existed the Magi,[1] and among
the Babylonians or Assyrians the Chaldæi,[2] among the Indians the
Gymnosophistæ,[3] and among the Celts and Gauls men who were called
Druids[4] and Semnothei, as Aristotle relates in his book on Magic,
and Sotion in the twenty-third book of his Succession of Philosophers.
Besides those men there were the Phœnician Ochus, the Thracian
Zamolxis,[5] and the Libyan Atlas. For the Egyptians say that Vulcan
was the son of Nilus, and that he was the author of philosophy, in which
those who were especially eminent were called his priests and prophets.
II. From his age to that of Alexander, king of the Macedonians were
forty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-three years, and during this
time there were three hundred and seventy-three eclipses of the sun, and
eight hundred and thirty-two eclipses of the moon.
Again, from the time of the Magi, the first of whom was Zoroaster
the Persian, to that of the fall of Troy, Hermodorus the Platonic
philosopher, in his treatise on Mathematics, calculates that fifteen
thousand years elapsed. But Xanthus the Lydian says that the passage of
the Hellespont by Xerxes took place six thousand years after the time of
Zoroaster,[6] and that after him there was a regular succession of Magi
under the names of Ostanes and Astrampsychos and Gobryas and Pazatas,
until the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander.
III. But those who say this, ignorantly impute to the barbarians the
merits of the Greeks, from whom not only all philosophy, but even the
whole human race in reality originated. For Musæus was born among the
Athenians, and Linus among the Thebans; and they say that the former,
who was the son of Eumolpus, was the first person who taught the system
of the genealogy of the gods, and who invented the spheres; and that
he taught that all things originated in one thing, and when dissolved
returned to that same thing; and that he died at Phalerum, and that this
epitaph was inscribed on his tomb:—
Phalerum’s soil beneath this tomb contains
Musæus dead, Eumolpus’ darling son.
And it is from the father of Musæus that the family called Eumolpidæ
among the Athenians derive their name. They say too that Linus was the
son of Mercury and the Muse Urania; and that he invented a system of
Cosmogony, and of the motions of the sun and moon, and of the generation
of animals and fruits; and the following is the beginning of his poem,
There was a time when all the present world
Uprose at once.
From which Anaxagoras derived his theory, when he said that all things
had been produced at the same time, and that then intellect had come and
arranged them all in order.
They say, moreover, that Linus died in Eubœa, having been shot with an
arrow by Apollo, and that this epitaph was set over him:—
The Theban Linus sleeps beneath this ground,
Urania’s son with fairest garlands crown’d.
IV. And thus did philosophy arise among the Greeks, and indeed its very
name shows that it has no connection with the barbarians. But those who
attribute its origin to them, introduce Orpheus the Thracian, and say
that he was a philosopher, and the most ancient one of all. But if one
ought to call a man who has said such things about the gods as he has
said, a philosopher, I do not know what name one ought to give to him who
has not scrupled to attribute all sorts of human feelings to the gods,
and even such discreditable actions as are but rarely spoken of among
men; and tradition relates that he was murdered by women;[7] but there
is an inscription at Dium in Macedonia, saying that he was killed by
lightning, and it runs thus:—
Here the bard buried by the Muses lies,
The Thracian Orpheus of the golden lyre;
Whom mighty Jove, the Sovereign of the skies,
Removed from earth by his dread lightn’ng’s fire.
V. But they who say that philosophy had its rise among the barbarians,
give also an account of the different systems prevailing among the
various tribes. And they say that the Gymnosophists and the Druids
philosophize, delivering their apophthegms in enigmatical language,
bidding men worship the gods and do no evil, and practise manly virtue.
VI. Accordingly Clitarchus, in his twelfth book, says that the
Gymnosophists despise death, and that the Chaldæans study astronomy and