Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius. Hicks, R. D., editor. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925.

Anaxagoras, the son of Hegesibulus or Eubulus, was a native of Clazomenae. He was a pupil of Anaximenes, and was the first who set mind above

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matter, for at the beginning of his treatise, which is composed in attractive and dignified language, he says, All things were together; then came Mind and set them in order. This earned for Anaxagoras himself the nickname of Nous or Mind, and Timon in his Silli says of him[*](Fr. 24 d.):

Then, I ween, there is Anaxagoras, a doughty champion, whom they call Mind, because forsooth his was the mind which suddenly woke up and fitted closely together all that had formerly been in a medley of confusion.

He was eminent for wealth and noble birth, and furthermore for magnanimity, in that he gave up his patrimony to his relations.

For, when they accused him of neglecting it, he replied, Why then do you not look after it? And at last he went into retirement and engaged in physical investigation without troubling himself about public affairs. When some one inquired, Have you no concern in your native land? Gently, he replied, I am greatly concerned with my fatherland, and pointed to the sky.

He is said to have been twenty years old at the invasion of Xerxes and to have lived seventy-two years. Apollodorus in his Chronology says that he was born in the 70th Olympiad,[*](500-497 b.c.) and died in the first year of the 88th Olympiad.[*](428 b.c.) He began to study philosophy at Athens in the archonship of Callias[*](i.e. 456 b.c.; but possibly the year 480 is meant, when Calliades was archon.) when he was twenty; Demetrius of Phalerum states this in his list of archons; and at Athens they say he remained for thirty years.

He declared the sun to be a mass of red-hot metal and to be larger than the Peloponnesus, though others ascribe this view to Tantalus; he declared that there were dwellings on the moon, and moreover

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hills and ravines. He took as his principles the homoeomeries or homogeneous molecules; for just as gold consists of fine particles which are called gold-dust, so he held the whole universe to be compounded of minute bodies having parts homogeneous to themselves. His moving principle was Mind; of bodies, he said, some, like earth, were heavy, occupying the region below, others, light like fire, held the region above, while water and air were intermediate in position. For in this way over the earth, which is flat, the sea sinks down after the moisture has been evaporated by the sun.