Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

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

In the beginning the stars moved in the sky as in a revolving dome, so that the celestial pole which is always visible was vertically overhead; but subsequently the pole took its inclined position. He held the Milky Way to be a reflection of the light of stars which are not shone upon by the sun; comets to be a conjunction of planets which emit flames; shooting-stars to be a sort of sparks thrown off by the air. He held that winds arise when the air is rarefied by the sun’s heat; that thunder is a clashing together of the clouds, lightning their violent friction; an earthquake a subsidence of air into the earth.

Animals were produced from moisture, heat, and an earthy substance; later the species were propagated by generation from one another, males from the right side, females from the left.

There is a story that he predicted the fall of the meteoric stone at Aegospotami, which he said would fall from the sun.[*](This version agrees with Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 149 celebrant Graeci Anaxagoram Clazomenium Olympiadis septuagesimae octavae secundo anno praedixisse caelestium litterarum scientia quibus diebus saxum casurum esset e sole.) Hence Euripides, who was his pupil, in the Phathon calls the sun itself a golden clod.[*](Nauck, T.G.F.2, Eur. 783.) Furthermore, when he went to Olympia,

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he sat down wrapped in a sheep-skin cloak as if it were going to rain; and the rain came. When some one asked him if the hills at Lampsacus would ever become sea, he replied, Yes, it only needs time. Being asked to what end he had been born, he replied, To study sun and moon and heavens. To one who inquired, You miss the society of the Athenians? his reply was, Not I, but they miss mine. When he saw the tomb of Mausolus, he said, A costly tomb is an image of an estate turned into stone.[*](Anaxagoras, whose death falls in the fifth century, circa 428-425 b.c., could not possibly have seen the famous Mausoleum erected by Artemisia, the widow of Mausolus, not earlier than 350 b.c. Mausolus ruled over Caria, according to Diodorus, from 377 to 353. The apophthegm is therefore either wrongly attributed to Anaxagoras or, if genuine, must have been uttered on some other occasion.)

To one who complained that he was dying in a foreign land, his answer was, The descent to Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.

Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History says Anaxagoras was the first to maintain that Homer in his poems treats of virtue and justice, and that this thesis was defended at greater length by his friend Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who was the first to busy himself with Homer’s physical doctrine. Anaxagoras was also the first to publish a book with diagrams.[*](From Plutarch’s Life of Nicias, c. 23, and Clement of Alexandria (Strom. i. 78, p. 364 P.), διὰ γραφῆς (for which Diels conjectures ‹μετὰ› διαγραφῆς) ἐκδοῦναι βιβλίον ἱστοροῦσιν, the inference seems to be that Anaxagoras was credited with diagrams as well as text, διδασκαλία καὶ γραφή. Laertius, if the text is sound, is much too vague; and some translate was the first to bring out a book written by himself.) Silenus[*](Silenus of Calatia, who served in the Hannibalic war, wrote a History quoted by Cicero, Livy and Pliny; also a work on Sicily, F.H.G. iii. 100.) in the first book of his History gives the archonship of Demylus[*](We know no archon Demylus. Various dates are suggested by critics; the years of (1) Demotion, archon 470, (2) Lysistratus, 467, (3) Diphilus, 442 b.c. The letters -μυλου may not be part of the archon’s name but a distinct word, calling the meteor a millstone, i.e. in size.) as the date when the meteoric stone fell,