Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

by Pamela Mensch

  18 A Greek seaport in northeast Sicily; Messina is built on its ruins.

  19 A city on the eastern coast of Sicily.

  20 Otherwise unknown.

  21 The best-known thinker by this name, the teacher of Socrates discussed at 2.16–17, lived later than Xenophanes; this passage may refer to some other Archelaus, not otherwise known, or may be in error.

  22 Anaximander, a thinker of the first half of the sixth century BC, is discussed at 2.1–2.

  23 Diogenes discusses the life and views of these two thinkers at 1.22–44 and 8.1–50, respectively. At 1.23 he claims that Xenophanes admired Thales, in contradiction to what he says here.

  24 Epimenides of Crete (late seventh century BC) is discussed at 1.109–15.

  25 In these verses Xenophanes claims a life span of ninety-two years, and he may have lived a while longer after composing them. Modern historians, relying on this fragment, have assigned his birth roughly to 570 BC and his death to the mid-470s.

  26 The word translated “should be” has been inserted by editors. “Tyrants” translates the Greek turannoi, a word that does not imply harsh or despotic behavior but simply one-man rule (often, but not always, achieved with the support of armed force).

  27 Nothing remains of either poem, though some verses do survive from other works by Xenophanes.

  28 This Olympiad began in 540 BC.

  29 See 2.13.

  30 Nothing else is known of these men. The two bracketed insertions, one of which indicates the missing name(s) of Xenophanes’ captor(s), were suggested by Hermann Diels to avoid the reading of the manuscripts according to which Xenophanes was sold into slavery by two Pythagoreans. But since Xenophanes had shown antipathy to Pythagorean views (see 9.18), the received text may be correct.

  31 The term “scattered” (sporadēn) was introduced at 8.50 to designate those thinkers whom Diogenes cannot place within the lines of philosophic transmission laid down at 1.13–15. Here, he applies the term to Heraclitus and Xenophanes, to indicate that they do not belong to the line of transmission begun by Pythagoras. However, at 1.15 he considered Xenophanes a part of the Pythagorean line, so it is unclear why he now classes him as “scattered” (the term applies more closely to Heraclitus, who went unmentioned at 1.13–15). With Parmenides below—a student of Xenophanes, but more deeply influenced by the Pythagorean Ameinias—Diogenes returns to the Pythagorean line he laid out at 1.15, and follows this throughout the rest of his work.

  32 A Phocaean colony founded in the sixth century on the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Italy, famous chiefly for the Eleatic school of philosophy.

  33 Xenophanes is discussed just above, Anaximander at 2.1–2.

  34 Otherwise unknown.

  35 Pythagoreans had formerly believed that the earth orbited around a “central fire” (see 8.85 and corresponding note).

  36 The poet Hesiod is grouped here with two Pre-Socratic philosophers, perhaps on the basis of his Theogony. Diogenes discusses the life and views of Empedocles at 8.51–77.

  37 The dialogue, a conversation among Parmenides, Zeno of Elea (see 9.25–29), and Socrates (see 2.18–47), survives intact. Parmenides was some forty years’ Socrates’ senior.

  38 This Olympiad began in 504 BC.

  39 Phosphorus (the Morning Star) and Hesperus (the Evening Star) both refer to the planet Venus.

  40 Diogenes himself makes this claim for Pythagoras at 8.14.

  41 The famous paradox of Achilles and the tortoise stated that if a tortoise was given a head start it could outrun even Achilles, the fleetest of Greek heroes. In order to catch up, Achilles would first have to reach where the tortoise had previously been, and in the time it took to do that, the tortoise would have moved ahead—and so on ad infinitum.

  42 Heraclitus of Ephesus is discussed at 9.1–17.

  43 Legendary encounters between the physician Hippocrates of Cos and the philosopher Democritus were the source of many Greek and Roman anecdotes, some of which are retold by Diogenes at 9.42 below.

  44 This Olympiad began in 444 BC.

  45 This Zeno should be distinguished from Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism (see 7.1–160).

  46 The material in parentheses is deleted by some editors.

  47 Palamedes was a mythic hero of the Trojan War, known for his great size.

  48 Empedocles of Agrigentum is discussed at 8.51–77.

  49 Both names are unknown outside this passage.

  50 An island off the northern coast of Sicily.

  51 Aristogeiton and his lover Harmodius conspired to assassinate the Athenian tyrant Hippias and his brother Hipparchus in 514 BC. The attack on Hipparchus succeeded, but Hippias survived and had his one surviving assailant tortured and killed.

  52 Antisthenes of Rhodes (fl. 200 BC), not the Socratic philosopher discussed in Book 6.

  53 In this case, a large stone trough used for kneading or grinding.

  54 See 9.23 and corresponding note.

  55 This Olympiad began in 464 BC.

  56 A Greek city on the coast of Thrace.

  57 Abdera was on the coast of Thrace, while Miletus was on the coast of Asia Minor.

  58 The Magi were Persian priests skilled in astronomy, astrology, and other arts; the term “Chaldaeans” refers here to a sect of Mesopotamian mystics.

  59 Xerxes I (c. 519–465 BC), king of Persia, led a massive invasion of Greece in 480 BC, passing through Abdera on his way west. Herodotus records in his Histories (7.109) that Xerxes stopped in Abdera but says nothing of a visit to Democritus’ father or of Persian sages left there.

  60 Leucippus is discussed just above, Anaxagoras at 2.6–15.

  61 See 2.8, where Anaxagoras is credited with the view that the sun was made of hot iron and that the moon had crests and ravines.

  62 An antipathy between Anaxagoras and Democritus was mentioned at 2.14.

  63 Antisthenes of Rhodes (fl. 200 BC) is meant, not the Socratic philosopher discussed in Book 6.

  64 Indian religious ascetics, dubbed “Gymnosophists” by Greeks who observed them exposing themselves to the elements.

  65 A considerable fortune for the time.

  66 The sentence here quoted from Claudius Thrasyllus—a Greek scholar of the first century AD who catalogued and arranged the works of Plato—concerns the dialogue known today as Erastai (Lovers), but in antiquity more often known as Anterastai (Rivals in Love). The dialogue survives intact but its Platonic authorship is now widely disputed. At the opening of the work, Socrates encounters two youths in a grammar school engaged in a debate about astronomical theories, which he supposes to be those of Anaxagoras or of Oenopides (a thinker from Chios). He engages the wiser of the two youths—whom Thrasyllus supposed was Democritus in disguise—in a dialogue that ends up comparing philosophers with pentathletes in terms of their breadth of skills.

  67 These included grammar, music, poetry, and rhetoric.

  68 This directly contradicts the claim made by Demetrius at 9.36.

  69 On the Pythagorean Philolaus, variously said to be from Croton or Tarentum, see 8.84–85.

  70 Amyclas is otherwise unknown. Clinias appears in several other sources, including Aristoxenus’ list of Pythagoreans.

  71 Diogenes makes the same point at 3.25.

  72 The Greeks assigned various dates to the capture of Troy, but the most common one in Diogenes’ day was 1184 BC; that date would mean that Democritus’ Lesser Cosmology was composed in 454.

  73 This Olympiad began in 460 BC.

  74 The year indicated spans 470 and 469 BC (since the Greek year began and ended in summer).

  75 Archelaus is discussed at 2.16–17; Oenopides is little known apart from the mention at 9.37.

  76 Parmenides and Zeno of Elea are discussed at 9.21–23 and 9.25–29, respectively. Their “doctrine of the One” held that the universe is homogeneous and composed of a single essence, “Being,” and that the appearance of multiplicity is an illusion.

  77 Protagoras (c. 490–420 BC) was th
e most successful of the sophists in Athens. Diogenes discusses his life and views at 9.50–56.

  78 A yearly panhellenic festival held in honor of the goddess Demeter and celebrated only by women. The rites, which lasted for three days and were associated with the harvest, included fasting and throwing piglets into pits as a sacrifice to the goddess.

  79 A collection of Diogenes’ verse, now lost.

  80 An epithet for Athena in the Iliad (4.514) and in Hesiod’s Theogony.

  81 The Greek term for these works is technika, derived from the word technē, which can refer to any form of expertise.

  82 The temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

  83 Abdera, a Greek city on the Thracian coast, was also the home of Democritus and Anaxarchus. Thurii was a panhellenic colony in southern Italy founded in 443 BC.

  84 City on the western coast of Asia Minor.

  85 The charging of fees for instruction distinguished the so-called sophists, including Protagoras and Prodicus, from pure philosophers like Socrates. Plato highlights the differences between the two models in his dialogue Protagoras.

  86 316a.

  87 Democritus (b. 460/57 BC) is discussed just above. He was in fact a generation younger than Protagoras and thus is unlikely to have been his teacher.

  88 152a ff.

  89 A significant sum, as one mina was worth one hundred drachmas. A drachma was the average daily wage for a skilled worker.

  90 Perhaps meaning the tenses of the Greek verb.

  91 The use of short questions and answers came to be called the Socratic method. Protagoras, who was about twenty years older than Socrates, was renowned for his flexibility in teaching, using both short questions and answers, as Socrates did, and also for giving longer speeches (see Plato, Protagoras 329b).

  92 286c.

  93 No evidence survives of how this device was used.

  94 See 10.8.

  95 Alcidamas was a fourth-century BC rhetorician.

  96 An open grove outside the walls of Athens, later the site of Aristotle’s school.

  97 The Four Hundred were an oligarchic council set up to rule Athens after a coup in 411 BC. Diogenes implies that Protagoras fell afoul of this regime because of his perceived impiety (see 9.51–52), but the whole account is unclear.

  98 Because this list omits some otherwise well-known titles, including On the Gods, scholars assume some of the text is missing.

  99 Only a few fragments of this tragedy survive. Euripides was fond of making anachronistic allusions to recent events in his dramas, which are otherwise set in a mythic past.

  100 This Olympiad began in 444 BC.

  101 A reference to Athens: Cecrops was the city’s mythical king.

  102 Another reference to Athens, whose patron was the goddess Pallas Athena.

  103 Hades, or the god of the underworld.

  104 The backdrop to the story is told more fully elsewhere (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 5.10): Euathlus had promised to pay Protagoras his full fee only after winning a case, then avoided undertaking any cases in order to avoid payment; Protagoras then brought suit against Euathlus so that he would have to plead a case.

  105 In discussing Diogenes of Apollonia here, Diogenes Laertius may have confused two thinkers named Diogenes. In the very next chapter, he says that Anaxarchus was a student of Diogenes of Smyrna, so that is probably whom he meant to discuss here. In any case both men should be distinguished from the more famous Diogenes of Sinope, discussed in Book 6.

  106 A city on the coast of the Black Sea.

  107 Anaximenes of Miletus (fl. c. 545 BC) is discussed at 2.3–5.

  108 On Anaxagoras, see 2.6–15.

  109 A Greek city on the coast of Thrace, also the home of Protagoras and Democritus.

  110 Anaxarchus was one of several Greek philosophers who attended on Alexander the Great during his campaign of conquest through Asia (334–323 BC). Historical sources represent him as a supporter of Alexander’s claims to absolute power and superhuman status. By contrast, Diogenes depicts him reminding Alexander of his humanity (see 9.60).

  111 This Olympiad began in 340 BC.

  112 Nicocreon was king of Salamis in Cyprus, and an ally of Alexander. The story Diogenes relates here seems to be a variant of one Plutarch tells at Alexander 28. There, Anaxarchus makes an arrogant remark about preferring to dine on satraps’ heads rather than on meager fish; Alexander takes the comment ill.

  113 Here, a large kneading or grinding trough.

  114 A portion of this line has become corrupted. Persephone here stands for the underworld, where the souls of the wicked were judged and punished.

  115 The verse occurs at Iliad 5.340, where Diomedes stabs Aphrodite. As Diogenes goes on to note, his retelling of this anecdote reverses the roles of the participants as compared with Plutarch’s (see Alexander 28). Plutarch gave the quote to Alexander and credited him with recognizing his mortality; then, in another story immediately following this one, he belittled Anaxarchus for comparing Alexander with Zeus.

  116 A quote from Euripides’ Orestes (line 271), where Orestes threatens to shoot an arrow at the Furies who are pursuing him. The quote sounds like a veiled threat; that would fit with a parallel story in Plutarch, in which Anaxarchus spoke the line after Alexander had pelted him with fruit (Convivial Questions 737a).

  117 A city in the western Peloponnese.

  118 Not otherwise known. Some editors emend the text to read “Bryson or Stilpo.” Diogenes discusses Stilpo at 2.113–20. Bryson the Achaean (fl. c. 330 BC) was a pupil of Stilpo. Chronology would seem to rule out Pyrrho’s having studied under either of them.

  119 The life and views of Anaxarchus (c. 380–320 BC) are discussed just above.

  120 The Naked Sages were Indian religious ascetics whom the Greeks dubbed “Gymnosophists” after seeing them exposing themselves to the elements. The Magi were Persian priests skilled in astronomy, astrology, and other arts.

  121 As related in the preceding biography, Anaxarchus attached himself to Alexander the Great.

  122 Nausiphanes of Teos (b. c. 360 BC), a follower of Democritus, became Epicurus’ teacher c. 324. He passed on to Epicurus Democritus’ physics and theory of knowledge.

  123 The account of Epicurus’ opinion of Pyrrho given at 10.8 is rather different.

  124 The promised quote from Python has fallen out of the manuscripts.

  125 According to Aristotle and Plutarch, it was Python, a disciple of Plato (see 3.46), and not Pyrrho, who assassinated Cotys II, king of Thrace, in 360 BC.

  126 In the Python, a lost prose work, Timon recounted to Python a conversation between himself and Pyrrho.

  127 Diogenes discusses the life and views of Democritus (b. 460/57 BC) at 9.34–49 above.

  128 Iliad 6.146.

  129 Iliad 21.106–7, in a passage in which Achilles confronts the Trojan Lycaon, then kills him.

  130 See 9.109–16.

  131 The text is damaged here, but it surely referred to the derivation of Aporetics from aporeō, “to be at a loss.”

  132 A seventh-century BC lyric poet.

  133 Suppliant Maidens 735–37.

  134 All three philosophers are discussed earlier in Book 9.

  135 Timaeus 40d.

  136 Diogenes discusses the life and views of Empedocles (c. 492–c. 432 BC) at 8.51–77.

  137 Three successive verses from Iliad 20.248–50.

  138 Scylla was a mythical monster with six heads who lurked in a cave beside a strait. Chimaera was another mythical monster; this beast had the head of a fire-breathing goat, the body of a lion, and the tail of a snake.

  139 The example refers to a characteristic dogma of the Stoics, who held that a kind of divine order and purpose pervades all things.

  140 In this sentence and other places below, Diogenes (or his source) appears to use the first-person plural to speak for the Skeptics.

  141 In the ancient world the salamander was believed to have the ability to live in fire
and to extinguish flames (see, e.g., Aelian, De Natura Animalium 17.2.31).

  142 This statement is not found in Aristotle’s surviving works. According to other sources, it comes from the dialogue titled Symposium or On Intoxication.

  143 Otherwise unknown.

  144 According to Pliny (Natural History 22.20.44) and Plutarch (Pericles 13), the great Athenian statesman Pericles had a beloved slave who was helping to build the Parthenon. He fell asleep on top of the temple and rolled off the building.

  145 The Greeks located the Massagetae vaguely in the far northeast of the world, somewhere beyond the Caspian Sea, and imagined them as a nomadic people much like the Scythians.

  146 Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390–c. 340 BC) was a mathematician and did important work in astronomy and geography. Diogenes discusses him at 8.86–91.

  147 The inhabitants of a district in southern Asia Minor.

  148 A Balkan people living north of Macedonian territory.

  149 The physician and philosopher Sextus Empiricus (fl. late second century AD) was the author of Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against the Mathematicians. These works offer the most complete surviving account of Pyrrhonian Skepticism.

  150 A Skeptic who flourished sometime after the first century BC.

  151 The example alluded to concerns physiological arguments about the cause of moisture appearing on the skin.

  152 This term was used by both the Stoics and Epicureans to refer to an ultimate standard that could serve as the basis for all knowledge.

  153 The term sēmeion (“sign”) is commonly used in Greek philosophical discourse to refer to any consideration that serves as evidence for a further conclusion. In effect, the Skeptics reject any use of evidence to draw conclusions about things not immediately evident.

  154 A technical term in Stoicism, used to refer to an experience in which an object appears as it truly is; the Stoics make this their criterion for all knowledge (see 7.46).

  155 The example refers to pictures drawn in perspective so as to give the illusion of depth. The Skeptics aim to describe how the picture appears, without opposing this appearance to any underlying reality.

  156 None of the three are otherwise known.

  157 Tiberius became emperor of Rome in AD 14 and ruled until his death in 37. Phlius is a city in the northeast Peloponnese.