The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
powerful voice.
II. Protagoras was a pupil of Democritus. And he was surnamed Wisdom, as
Phavorinus informs us in his Universal History.
III. He was the first person who asserted that in every question there
were two sides to the argument exactly opposite to one another. And he
used to employ them in his arguments, being the first person who did so.
But he began something in this manner: “Man is the measure of all things:
of those things which exist as he is; and of those things which do not
exist as he is not.” And he used to say that nothing else was soul except
the senses, as Plato says, in the Theætetus; and that everything was
true. And another of his treatises he begins in this way: “Concerning the
Gods, I am not able to know to a certainty whether they exist or whether
they do not. For there are many things which prevent one from knowing,
especially the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of the life of
man.” And on account of this beginning of his treatise, he was banished
by the Athenians. And they burnt his books in the market-place, calling
them in by the public crier, and compelling all who possessed them to
surrender them.
He was the first person who demanded payment of his pupils; fixing
his charge at a hundred minæ. He was also the first person who gave a
precise definition of the parts of time; and who explained the value of
opportunity, and who instituted contests of argument, and who armed the
disputants with the weapon of sophism. He it was too who first left facts
out of consideration, and fastened his arguments on words; and who was
the parent of the present superficial and futile kinds of discussion. On
which account Timon says of him:—
Protagoras, that slippery arguer,
In disputatious contests fully skilled.
He too, it was, who first invented that sort of argument which is called
the Socratic, and who first employed the reasonings of Antisthenes, which
attempt to establish the point that they cannot be contradicted; as Plato
tells us in his Euthydemus. He was also the first person who practised
regular discussions on set subjects, as Artemidorus, the dialectician,
tells us in his treatise against Chrysippus. He was also the original
inventor of the porter’s pad for men to carry their burdens on, as we
are assured by Aristotle, in his book on Education; for he himself was a
porter, as Epicurus says somewhere or other. And it was in this way that
he became highly thought of by Democritus, who saw him as he was tying up
some sticks.
He was also the first person who divided discourse into four parts;
entreaty, interrogation, answer, and injunction: though some writers
make the parts seven; narration, interrogation, answer, injunction,
promise, entreaty, and invocation; and these he called the foundations of
discourse: but Alcidamas says that there are four divisions of discourse;
affirmation, denial, interrogation, and invocation.
V. The first of his works that he ever read in public was the treatise
on the Gods, the beginning of which we have quoted above, and he read
this at Athens in the house of Euripides, or, as some say, in that
of Megaclides; others say that he read it in the Lyceum; his pupil,
Archagoras, the son of Theodotus, giving him the aid of his voice. His
accuser was Pythodorus, the son of Polyzelus, one of the four hundred;
but Aristotle calls him Evathlus.
VI. The writings of his which are still extant are these: a treatise on
the Art of Contention; one on Wrestling; one on Mathematics; one on a
Republic; one on Ambition; one on Virtues; one on the Original Condition
of Man; one on those in the Shades Below; one on the Things which are not
done properly by Men; one volume of Precepts; one essay entitled Justice
in Pleading for Hire; two books of Contradictions.
These are his books.
Plato also addressed a dialogue to him.
VII. Philochorus relates that, as he was sailing to Sicily his ship was
wrecked, and that this circumstance is alluded to by Euripides in his
Ixion; and some say that he died on his journey, being about ninety years
old. But Apollodorus states his age at seventy years, and says that he
was a sophist forty years, and that he flourished about the eighty-fourth
Olympiad. There is an epigram upon him written by myself, in the
following terms:—
I hear accounts of you, Protagoras,
That, travelling far from Athens, on the road,
You, an old man, and quite infirm, did die.
For Cecrops’ city drove you forth to exile;
But you, though ’scaping dread Minerva’s might,
Could not escape the outspread arms of Pluto.
VIII. It is said that once, when he demanded of Evathlus his pupil
payment for his lessons, Evathlus said to him, “But I have never been
victorious in an argument;” and he rejoined, “But if I gain my cause,
then I should naturally receive the fruits of my victory, and so would
you obtain the fruits of yours.”
IX. There was also another Protagoras, an astronomer, on whom Euphorion
wrote an elegy; and a third also, who was a philosopher of the Stoic
sect.
LIFE OF DIOGENES, OF APOLLONIA.
I. Diogenes was a native of Apollonia, and the son of Apollothemis,
a natural philosopher of high reputation; and he was, as Antisthenes
reports, a pupil of Anaximenes. He was also a contemporary of Anaxagoras,
and Demetrius Phalereus says, in his Defence of Socrates, that he was
very unpopular at Athens, and even in some danger of his life.
II. The following were his principal doctrines; that the air was an
element; that the worlds were infinite, and that the vacuum also was
infinite; that the air, as it was condensed, and as it was rarified,
was the productive cause of the worlds; that nothing can be produced
out of nothing;[130] and that nothing can be destroyed so as to become
nothing; that the earth is round, firmly planted in the middle of the
universe, having acquired its situation from the circumvolutions of the
hot principle around it, and its consistency from the cold.
The first words of his treatise are:—
“It appears to me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down
principles about which there can be no dispute, and that his exposition
of them ought to be simple and dignified.”
LIFE OF ANAXARCHUS.
I. Anaxarchus was a native of Abdera. He was a pupil of Diogenes, of
Smyrna; but, as some say, of Metrodorus, of Chios; who said that he was
not even sure that he knew nothing; and Metrodorus was a pupil of Nessus,
of Chios; though others assert that he was a disciple of Democritus.
II. Anaxarchus too enjoyed the intimacy of Alexander, and flourished
about the hundred and tenth olympiad. He had for an enemy Nicocreon, the
tyrant of Cyprus. And on one occasion, when Alexander, at a banquet,
asked him what he thought of the entertainment, he is said to have
replied, “O king, everything is provided very sumptuously; and the only
thing wanting is to have the head of some satrap served up;” hinting
at Nicocreon. And Nicocreon did not forget his grudge against him for
this; but after the death of the king, when Anaxarchus, who was making a
voyage, was driven against his will into Cyprus, he took him and put him
in a mortar, and commanded him to be pounded to death with iron pestles.
And then they say that he, disregarding this punishment, uttered that
celebrated saying, “Beat the bag of Anaxarchus, but you will not beat
Anaxarchus himself.” And then, when Nicocreon commanded that his tongue
should be cut out, it is said that he bit it off, and spit it at him. And
we have written an epigram upon him in the following terms:—
Beat more and more; you’re beating but a bag;
Beat, Anaxarchus is in heav’n with Jove.
Hereafter Proserpine will rack your bones,
And say, Thus perish, you accursed beater.
III. Anaxarchus, on account of the evenness of his temper and the
tranquillity of his life, was called the Happy. And he was a man to
whom it was very easy to reprove men and bring them to temperance.
Accordingly, he produced an alteration in Alexander who thought himself
a God, for when he saw the blood flowing from some wound that he had
received, he pointed to him with his finger, and said, “This is blood,
and not:—
“Such stream as issues from a wounded God;
Pure emanation, uncorrupted flood,
Unlike our gross, diseas’d, terrestrial blood.”[131]
But Plutarch says that it was Alexander himself who quoted these lines to
his friends.
They also tell a story that Anaxarchus once drank to him, and then showed
the goblet, and said:—
Shall any mortal hand dare wound a God?
LIFE OF PYRRHO.
I. Pyrrho was a citizen of Elis, and the son of Pleistarchus, as Diocles
informs us, and, as Apollodorus in his Chronicles asserts, he was
originally a painter.
II. And he was a pupil of Bryson, the son of Stilpon, as we are told
by Alexander in his Chronicles. After that he attached himself to
Anaxarchus, and attended him everywhere; so that he even went as far as
the Gymnosophists, in India, and the Magi.
III. Owing to which circumstance, he seems to have taken a noble line in
philosophy, introducing the doctrine of incomprehensibility, and of the
necessity of suspending one’s judgment, as we learn from Ascanius, of
Abdera. For he used to say that nothing was honourable, or disgraceful,
or just, or unjust. And on the same principle he asserted that there
was no such thing as downright truth; but that men did everything in
consequence of custom and law. For that nothing was any more this than
that. And his life corresponded to his principles; for he never shunned
anything, and never guarded against anything; encountering everything,
even waggons for instance, and precipices, and dogs, and everything of
that sort; committing nothing whatever to his senses. So that he used
to be saved, as Antigonus the Carystian tells us, by his friends who
accompanied him. And Ænesidemus says that he studied philosophy on the
principle of suspending his judgment on all points, without however, on
any occasion acting in an imprudent manner, or doing anything without due
consideration. And he lived to nearly ninety years of age.
IV. And Antigonus, of Carystus, in his account of Pyrrho, mentions the
following circumstances respecting him; that he was originally a person
of no reputation, but a poor man, and a painter; and that a picture of
some camp-bearers, of very moderate execution, was preserved in the
Gymnasium at Elis, which was his work; and that he used to walk out into
the fields and seek solitary places, very rarely appearing to his family
at home; and that he did this in consequence of having heard some Indian
reproaching Anaxarchus for never teaching any one else any good, but for
devoting all his time to paying court to princes in palaces. He relates
of him too, that he always maintained the same demeanour, so that if any
one left him in the middle of his delivery of a discourse, he remained
and continued what he was saying; although, when a young man, he was of a
very excitable temperament. Often too, says Antigonus, he would go away
for a time, without telling any one beforehand, and taking any chance
persons whom he chose for his companions. And once, when Anaxarchus had
fallen into a pond, he passed by without assisting him; and when some
one blamed him for this, Anaxarchus himself praised his indifference and
absence of all emotion.
On one occasion he was detected talking to himself, and when he was
asked the reason, he said that he was studying how to be good. In his
investigations he was never despised by any one, because he always spoke
explicitly and straight to the question that had been put to him. On
which account Nausiphanes was charmed by him even when he was quite
young. And he used to say that he should like to be endowed with the