The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
he marched about in such style, that he seemed to all the citizens, who
met him and who admired his deportment, to exhibit a sort of likeness to
kingly power. And afterwards, it happened that as on the occasion of some
festival he was going in a chariot to Messene, he was upset and broke his
thigh; and he was taken ill in consequence, and so died, at the age of
seventy-seven. And his tomb is in Megara.
But as to his age, Aristotle differs from this account of Neanthes;
for he asserts that he died at sixty years of age; others again say,
that he was a hundred and nine when he died. He flourished about the
eighty-fourth olympiad. Demetrius, of Trœzen, in his book against the
Sophists, reports that, as the lines of Homer say:—
He now, self-murdered, from a beam depends,
And his mad soul to blackest hell descends.[118]
But in the letter of Telauges, which has been mentioned before, it is
said that he slipped down through old age, and fell into the sea, and so
died.
And this is enough to say about his death.
There is also a jesting epigram of ours upon him, in our collection of
Poems in all Metres, which runs thus:—
You too, Empedocles, essayed to purge
Your body in the rapid flames, and drank
The liquid fire from the restless crater;
I say not that you threw yourself at once
Into the stream of Ætna’s fiery flood.
But seeking to conceal yourself you fell,
And so you met with unintended death.
And another:—
’Tis said the wise Empedocles did fall
Out of his chariot, and so broke his thigh:
But if he leapt into the flames of Ætna,
How could his tomb be shown in Megara?
XII. The following were some of his doctrines. He used to assert that
there were four elements, fire, water, earth, and air. And that that
is friendship by which they are united, and discord by which they are
separated. And he speaks thus on this subject:—
Bright Jove, life-giving Juno, Pluto dark,
And Nestis, who fills mortal eyes with tears.
Meaning by Jove fire, by Juno the earth, by Pluto the air, and by Nestis
water. And these things, says he, never cease alternating with one
another; inasmuch as this arrangement is perpetual. Accordingly, he says
subsequently:—
Sometimes in friendship bound they coalesce,
Sometimes they’re parted by fell discord’s hate.
And he asserts that the sun is a vast assemblage of fire, and that it is
larger than the moon. And the moon is disk-shaped; and that the heaven
itself is like crystal; and that the soul inhabits every kind of form of
animals and plants. Accordingly, he thus expresses himself.
For once I was a boy, and once a girl.
A bush, a bird, a fish who swims the sea,
XIII. His writings on Natural Philosophy and his Purifications extend
to five thousand verses; and his Medical Poem to six hundred; and his
Tragedies we have spoken of previously.
LIFE OF EPICHARMUS.
I. Epicharmus was a native of Cos, the son of Helothales; he also was
a pupil of Pythagoras. When he was three months old he was brought to
Megara, in Sicily, and from thence he came to Syracuse, as he himself
tells us in his writings. And on his statue there is the following
inscription.
As the bright sun excels the other stars,
As the sea far exceeds the river streams:
So does sage Epicharmus men surpass,
Whom hospitable Syracuse has crowned.
II. He has left behind him Commentaries in which he treats of natural
philosophy, and delivers apophthegms, and discusses medicine. He has
also added brief notes to many of his commentaries, in which he declares
plainly that he is the author of the works.
III. He died at the age of ninety years.
LIFE OF ARCHYTAS.
I. Archytas was a native of Tarentum, and the son of Mnesagoras; or, as
Aristoxenus relates, of Histiæus.
II. He also was a Pythagorean; and he it was who saved Plato’s life
by means of a letter, when he was in danger of being put to death by
Dionysius.
III. He was a man held in very general esteem on account of his universal
virtue; and he was seven times appointed general of his countrymen, when
no one else had ever held the office for more than one year, as the law
forbade it to be held for a longer period.
IV. Plato wrote his letters to him; as he had begun the correspondence by
writing himself to Plato, which he did in the following manner:—
ARCHYTAS TO PLATO, GREETING.
“I am very glad that you have recovered from your delicate state of
health; for you yourself have sent me word of your recovery, and Lamiscus
gives the same account. I have been much occupied with some commentaries,
and have been among the Lucanians, and have met with the descendants of
Ocellus. I have now in my possession, and I send to you the treatises on
Law, and Kingly Power, and Piety, and the Creation of the Universe. As
for the rest, I have not been able to find them, but whenever I do find
any, I will send them to you.”
Thus wrote Archytas. And Plato sent him an answer in the following terms:—
PLATO TO ARCHYTAS, GREETING.
“I was exceedingly glad to receive the Commentaries which came from you,
and I have admired their author in the greatest possible degree; and he
seems to us to be a man worthy of his ancient ancestors. For they are
said to have been originally natives of Myra; and to have been among the
Trojans, whom Laomedon took with him, gallant men, as the story handed
down by tradition attests. As for my Commentaries which you ask me for,
they are not yet completed, but such as they are I send them to you. And
on the propriety of taking care of such things we are both agreed, so
that I have no need to impress anything on you on that head. Farewell.”
These then are the letters which these philosophers wrote to one another.
V. There were four people of the name of Archytas. The first, this man
of whom we are speaking. The second was a Mytilenean, a musician. The
third wrote a treatise on Agriculture. The fourth was an epigrammatic
poet. Some writers also make mention of a fifth, who was an architect;
and there is a book on mechanics extant which is attributed to him; which
begins in this way:—
“This is what I heard from Teucer, the Carthaginian.”
And concerning the musician, the following story is told: That once he
was reproached for not making himself heard, and he replied, “My organ
contends on my behalf, and speaks.”
VI. Aristoxenus says, that this Pythagorean was never once defeated while
acting as general. But that as he was attacked by envy, he once gave up
his command, and his army was immediately taken prisoner.
VII. He was the first person who applied mathematical principles to
mechanics, and reduced them to a system; and the first also who gave a
methodical impulse to descriptive geometry in seeking, in the sections of
a demicylinder for a proportional mean, which should enable him to find
the double of a given cube. He was also the first person who ever gave
the geometrical measure of a cube, as Plato mentions in his Republic.
LIFE OF ALCMÆON.
I. Alcmæon was a citizen of Crotona; he also was a pupil of Pythagoras.
And the chief part of his writings are on medical subjects; but he also
at times discusses points of natural philosophy, and asserts that the
greater part of human affairs have two sides. He appears to have been the
first person who wrote a treatise on Natural Philosophy, as Phavorinus
affirms, in his Universal History; and he used to argue that the moon had
the same nature for ever which she had at that moment.
II. He was the son of Pirithus, as he himself states at the beginning of
his treatise, where he says, “Alcmæon, of Crotona, the son of Pirithus,
says this to Brontinus, and Leon, and Bathyllus. About things invisible,
and things mortal, the Gods alone have a certain knowledge; but men may
form conjectures.…” And so on.
He used also to say that the soul was immortal, and that it was in a
state of perpetual motion in the same way as the sun.
LIFE OF HIPPASUS.
I. Hippasus was a citizen of Metapontum, and a pupil of Pythagoras.
II. He used to say that the time of the changes of the world was
definite, and that the universe also was finite, and in a state of
perpetual motion.
III. Demetrius, in his treatise on People of the same Name, says that he
left no writings behind him.
IV. There were two people of the name of Hippasus; this man, and another
who wrote an account of the Constitution of the Lacedæmonians, in five
books. And he was himself a Lacedæmonian.
LIFE OF PHILOLAUS.
I. Philolaus was a native of Crotona, and a pupil of Pythagoras, it was
from him that Plato wrote to Dion to take care and purchase the books of
Pythagoras.
II. And he died under suspicion of having designed to seize on the
tyranny; and we have written an epigram on him:—
I say that all men ought above all things
To guard against suspicion. For, though innocent,
Still if you are suspected, you’re unfortunate.
And thus his native city of Crotona
Slew Philolaus; for the jealous citizens
Thought that his house betrayed a tyrant’s purpose.
III. His theory was, that everything was produced by harmony and
necessity. And he was the first person who affirmed that the earth moved
in a circle; though some attribute the assertion of this principle to
Icetas of Syracuse.
IV. He wrote one book, which Hermippus reports, on the authority of some
unknown writer, that Plato the philosopher purchased when he was in
Sicily (having come thither to the court of Dionysius), of the relations
of Philolaus, for forty Alexandrian minæ of silver; and that from this
book he copied his Timæus. But others say that Plato received it as a
present, after having obtained his liberty for a young man, one of the
disciples of Philolaus, who had been arrested by Dionysius. Demetrius,
in his treatise on people of the same name, says that he was the first
of the Pythagoreans who wrote a treatise on Natural Philosophy; and it
begins thus:—
“But nature in the world has been composed of bodies infinite and finite,
and so is the whole world and all that is in it.”
LIFE OF EUDOXUS.
I. Eudoxus was the son of Æschines, and a native of Cnidus. He was an
astronomer, a geometrician, a physician, and a lawgiver. In geometry he
was a pupil of Archytas, and in medicine of Philistion, the Sicilian,
as Callimachus relates in his Tablets; and Sotion, in his Successions,
asserts that he was likewise a pupil of Plato; for that, when he was
twenty-three years of age, and in very narrow circumstances, he came to
Athens with Theomedon the physician, by whom he was chiefly supported,
being attracted by the reputation of the Socratic school. Some say that
his attachment to Theomedon was cemented by nearer ties. And when he
had arrived at Piræus, he went up to the city every day, and when he
had heard the Sophists lecture he returned. And having spent two months
there, he returned home again; and being again aided by the contributions
of his friends, he set sail for Egypt, with Chrysippus the physician,
bearing letters of introduction from Agesilaus to Nectanabis, and that he
recommended him to the priests.
II. And having remained there a year and four months, he shaved his
eyebrows after the manner of the Egyptian priests, and composed, as it is
said, the treatise called the Octaeteris. From thence he went to Cyzicus,
and to the Propontis, in both of which places he lived as a Sophist; he
also went to the court of Mausolus. And then, in this manner, he returned
again to Athens, having a great many disciples with him, for the sake,
as some say, of annoying Plato, because he had originally discarded him
from his school. Some say, that when Plato gave an entertainment on one