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

pupil, defended him, he was nevertheless fined five talents and banished. But Satyrus, in his Lives, says that it was Thucydides by whom he was impeached, as Thucydides was of the opposite party to Pericles; and that he was prosecuted not only for impiety, but also for Medism; and that he was condemned to death in his absence. And when news was brought him of two misfortunes⁠—his condemnation, and the death of his children; concerning the condemnation he said: “Nature has long since condemned both them and me.” But about his children, he said: “I knew that I had become the father of mortals.” Some, however, attribute this saying to Solon, and others to Xenophon. And Demetrius Phalereus, in his treatise on Old Age, says that Anaxagoras buried them with his own hands. But Hermippus, in his Lives, says that he was thrown into prison for the purpose of being put to death: but that Pericles came forward and inquired if anyone brought any accusation against him respecting his course of life. And as no one alleged anything against him: “I then,” said he, “am his disciple: do not you then be led away by calumnies to put this man to death; but be guided by me, and release him.” And he was released. But, as he was indignant at the insult which had been offered to him, he left the city.

But Hieronymus, in the second book of his Miscellaneous Commentaries, says that Pericles produced him before the court, tottering and emaciated by disease, so that he was released rather out of pity than by any deliberate decision on the merits of his case. And thus much may be said about his trial. Some people have fancied that he was very hostile to Democritus, because he did not succeed in getting admission to him for the purposes of conversation.

And at last, having gone to Lampsacus, he died in that city. And it is said that when the governors of the city asked him what he would like to have done for him, he replied: “That they would allow the children to play every year during the month in which he died.” And this custom is kept up even now. And when he was dead, the citizens of Lampsacus buried him with great honors, and wrote this epitaph on him:

Here Anaxagoras lies, who reached of truth
The farthest bounds in heavenly speculations.

We ourselves also have written an epigram on him:

Wise Anaxagoras did call the sun
A mass of glowing iron; and for this
Death was to be his fate. But Pericles
Then saved his friend; but afterwards he died
A victim of a weak philosophy.

There were also three other people of the name of Anaxagoras, none of whom combined all kinds of knowledge. But one was an orator and a pupil of Isocrates; another was a statuary, who is mentioned by Antigonus; another is a grammarian, a pupil of Zenodotus.

Archelaus

Archelaus was a citizen of either Athens or Miletus, and his father’s name was Apollodorus; but, as some say, Mydon. He was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and the master of Socrates.

He was the first person who imported the study of natural philosophy from Ionia to Athens, and he was called the Natural Philosopher because natural philosophy terminated with him, as Socrates introduced ethical philosophy. And it seems probable that Archelaus too meddled in some degree with moral philosophy, for in his philosophical speculations he discussed laws and what was honorable and just. And Socrates borrowed from him; and because he enlarged his principles, he was thought to be the inventor of them.

He used to say that there were two primary causes of generation: heat and cold; and that all animals were generated out of mud; and that what are accounted just and disgraceful are not so by nature, but only by law. And his reasoning proceeds in this way: He says that water being melted by heat, when it is submitted to the action of fire, by which it is solidified, becomes earth; and when it is liquefied, becomes air. And, therefore, the earth is surrounded by air and influenced by it, and so is the air by the revolutions of fire. And he says that animals are generated out of hot earth, which sends up a thick mud something like milk for their food. So too he says that it produced men.

And he was the first person who said that sound is produced by the percussion of the air; and that the sea is filtered in the hollows of the earth in its passage, and so is condensed; and that the sun is the greatest of the stars, and that the universe is boundless.

But there were three other people of the name of Archelaus: one, a geographer, who described the countries traversed by Alexander; the second, a man who wrote a poem on objects which have two natures; and the third, an orator, who wrote a book containing the precepts of his art.

Socrates

Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a statuary, and of Phaenarete, a midwife; as Plato records in his Theaetetus, he was a citizen of Athens, of the borough of Alopece.

Some people believed that he assisted Euripides in his poems; in reference to which idea, Mnesimachus speaks as follows:

The Phrygians are a new play of Euripides,
But Socrates has laid the main foundation.19

And again he says:

Euripides: patched up by Socrates.

And Callias, in his Captives, says:

A. Are you so proud, giving yourself such airs? B. And well I may, for Socrates is the cause.

And Aristophanes says, in his Clouds:

This is Euripides, who doth compose
Those argumentative wise tragedies.

But, having been a pupil of Anaxagoras, as some people say, but of Damon as the other story goes, related by Alexander in his Successions, after the condemnation of Anaxagoras, he became a disciple of Archelaus, the natural philosopher. And, indeed, Aristoxenus says that he was very intimate with