The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius (best free ebook reader txt) 📕

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Alcmaeon

Alcmaeon 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 forever which she had at that moment.

He was the son of Pirithus, as he himself states at the beginning of his treatise, where he says, “Alcmaeon 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.

Hippasus

Hippasus was a citizen of Metapontum, and a pupil of Pythagoras.

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.

Demetrius, in his treatise on People of the Same Name, says that he left no writings behind him.

There were two people of the name of Hippasus: this man, and another who wrote an account of the Constitution of the Lacedaemonians in five books. And he was himself a Lacedaemonian.

Philolaus

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.

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.

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.

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 minae of silver; and that from this book he copied his Timaeus. 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.

Eudoxus

Eudoxus was the son of Aeschines, 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.