Vitae philosophorum

Xenophanes, a native of Colophon, the son of Dexius, or, according to Apollodorus, of Orthomenes, is praised by Timon, whose words at all events are:

Xenophanes, not over-proud, perverter of Homer, castigator.

Seven and sixty are now the years that have been tossing my cares up and down the land of Greece; and there were then twenty and five years more from my birth up, if I know how to speak truly about these things.

He holds that there are four elements of existent things, and worlds unlimited in number but not overlapping [in time]. Clouds are formed when the vapour from the sun is carried upwards and lifts them into the surrounding air. The substance of God is spherical, in no way resembling man. He is all eye and all ear, but does not breathe; he is the totality of mind and thought, and is eternal. Xenophanes was the first to declare that everything which comes into being is doomed to perish, and that the soul is breath.[*](Presumably followed by Epicharmus when he wrote εὐσεβὴς νόῳ πεφυκὼς οὐ πάθοις κʼ οὐδὲν κακὸν κατθαν ών· ἄνω τὸ πνεῦμα διαμεν εῖ κατʼ οὐρανόν.(Fr. 22, ap. Clem. Strom. iv. 170, p. 640 P.) )

He also said that the mass of things falls short of thought; and again that our encounters with tyrants should be as few, or else as pleasant, as possible. When Empedocles remarked to him that it is impossible to find a wise man, Naturally, he replied, for it takes a wise man to recognize a wise man.

One of his poems is The Founding of Colophon, and another The Settlement of a Colony at Elea in Italy, making 2000 lines in all. He flourished about the 60th Olympiad.[*](540-537 b.c.) That he buried his sons with his own hands like Anaxagoras[*](ii. 13.) is stated by Demetrius of Phalerum in his work On Old Age and by Panaetius the Stoic in his book Of Cheerfulness. He is believed to have been sold into slavery by [... and to have been set free by] the Pythagoreans Parmeniscus and Orestades: so Favorinus in the first book of his Memorabilia. There was also another Xenophanes, of Lesbos, an iambic poet.

Such were the sporadic philosophers.

Parmenides, a native of Elea, son of Pyres, was a pupil of Xenophanes (Theophrastus in his Epitome makes him a pupil of Anaximander).[*](Diels considers this sentence to be a marginal note of an editor referring to Xenophanes, not Parmenides.) Parmenides, however, though he was instructed by Xenophanes, was no follower of his. According to Sotion[*](Sotion would thus appear to separate Parmenides from Xenophanes. Compare note a on p. 426. Diels conjectures that an epitaph on the Pythagoreans mentioned is the ultimate authority here.) he also associated with Ameinias the Pythagorean, who was the son of Diochaetas and a worthy gentleman though poor. This Ameinias he was more inclined to follow,

and on his death he built a shrine to him, being himself of illustrious birth and possessed of great wealth; moreover it was Ameinias and not Xenophanes who led him to adopt the peaceful life of a student.

He was the first to declare that the earth is spherical and is situated in the centre of the universe. He held that there were two elements, fire and earth, and that the former discharged the function of a craftsman, the latter of his material.

The generation of man proceeded from the sun as first cause; heat and cold, of which all things consist, surpass the sun itself. Again he held that soul and mind are one and the same, as Theophrastus mentions in his Physics, where he is setting forth the tenets of almost all the schools. He divided his philosophy into two parts dealing the one with truth, the other with opinion. Hence he somewhere says[*](Fr. 1. 28 D.):

Thou must needs learn all things, as well the unshakeable heart of well-rounded truth as the opinions of mortals in which there is no sure trust.[*](The text of Parmenides had suffered in the course of time. Here Laertius, like Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch, read εὐπειθέος ἀτρεκὲς; Proclus, two centuries later, εὐφεγγέος; but Simplicius, on De caelo, enables us to go behind our author by citing (as he no doubt would have wished to do) the better reading.)

Our philosopher too commits his doctrines to verse just as did Hesiod, Xenophanes and Empedocles. He made reason the standard and pronounced sensations to be inexact. At all events his words are[*](Fr. 1. 34 D.):

And let not long-practised wont force thee to tread this path, to be governed by an aimless eye, an echoing ear and a tongue, but do thou with understanding bring the muchcontested issue to decision.

Hence Timon[*](Fr. 44 D.) says of him[*](Cf.Od. xi. 601.):

And the strength of high-souled Parmenides, of no diverse opinions, who introduced thought instead of imagination’s deceit.

He flourished in the 69th Olympiad.[*](504-500 b.c.) He is believed to have been the first to detect the identity of Hesperus, the evening-star, and Phosphorus, the morning-star; so Favorinus in the fifth book of his Memorabilia; but others attribute this to Pythagoras, whereas Callimachus holds that the poem in question was not the work of Pythagoras. Parmenides is said to have served his native city as a legislator: so we learn from Speusippus in his book On Philosophers. Also to have been the first to use the argument known as Achilles [and the tortoise]: so Favorinus tells us in his Miscellaneous History.

There was also another Parmenides, a rhetorician who wrote a treatise on his art.

Melissus, the son of Ithaegenes, was a native of Samos. He was a pupil of Parmenides. Moreover he came into relations with Heraclitus, on which occasion the latter was introduced by him to the Ephesians, who did not know him,[*](Cf. supra, § 15.) as Democritus was to the citizens of Abdera by Hippocrates. He took part also in politics and won the approval of his countrymen, and for this reason he was elected admiral and won more admiration than ever through his own merit.

In his view the universe was unlimited, unchangeable and immovable, and was one, uniform

According to Apollodorus, he flourished in the 84th Olympiad.[*](444-440 b.c.)

Zeno was a citizen of Elea. Apollodorus in his Chronology says that he was the son of Teleutagoras by birth, but of Parmenides by adoption, while Parmenides was the son of Pyres. Of Zeno and Melissus Timon [*](Fr. 45 D.) speaks thus[*](Cf.Il.xxiii 827; v. 783.):

Great Zeno’s strength which, never known to fail,
1. On each side urged, on each side could prevail.
2. In marshalling arguments Melissus too,
3. More skilled than many a one, and matched by few.

Zeno, then, was all through a pupil of Parmenides and his bosom friend. He was tall in stature, as Plato says in his Parmenides.[*](127 b.) The same philosopher [mentions him] in his Sophist,[*](p. 216 a.) [and Phaedrus,][*](261 d.) and calls him the Eleatic Palamedes. Aristotle says that Zeno was the inventor of dialectic, as Empedocles was of rhetoric.

He was a truly noble character both as philosopher and as politician; at all events, his extant books are brimful of intellect. Again, he plotted to overthrow Nearchus the tyrant (or, according to others, Diomedon) but was arrested: so Heraclides in his epitome of Satyrus. On that occasion he was crossexamined as to his accomplices and about the arms

Demetrius in his work on Men of the Same Name says that he bit off, not the ear, but the nose. According to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, after informing against the tyrant’s friends, he was asked by the tyrant whether there was anyone else in the plot; whereupon he replied, Yes, you, the curse of the city!; and to the bystanders he said, I marvel at your cowardice, that, for fear of any of those things which I am now enduring, you should be the tyrant’s slaves. And at last he bit off his tongue and spat it at him; and his fellow-citizens were so worked upon that they forthwith stoned the tyrant to death.[*](The heroic death of Zeno and his defiance of the tyrant furnished a theme for various writers; cf. Plutarch, Adv. Col. p. 1126 d; De garrulitate, p. 505 d; De Stoicorum repugn. p. 1051 c, where he is ranked with Socrates, Pythagoras and Antiphon. Cf. also Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 57, citing Eratosthenes.) In this version of the story most authors nearly agree, but Hermippus says he was cast into a mortar and beaten to death.

Of him also I have written as follows[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 129.):

You wished, Zeno, and noble was your wish, to slay the tyrant and set Elea free from bondage. But you were crushed; for, as all know, the tyrant caught you and beat you in a mortar. But what is this that I say? It was your body that he beat, and not you.

In all other respects Zeno was a gallant man; and in particular he despised the great no less than

He was the first to propound the argument of the Achilles, which Favorinus attributes to Parmenides, and many other arguments. His views are as follows. There are worlds, but there is no empty space. The substance of all things came from hot and cold, and dry and moist, which change into one another. The generation of man proceeds from earth, and the soul is formed by a union of all the foregoing, so blended that no one element predominates.

We are told that once when he was reviled he lost his temper, and, in reply to some one who blamed him for this, he said, If when I am abused I pretend that I am not, then neither shall I be aware of it if I am praised.[*](A similar answer is ascribed to Empedocles in Gnomologion Parisinum, n. 153.)

The fact that there were eight men of the name of Zeno we have already mentioned under Zeno of Citium.[*](vii. 35.) Our philosopher flourished in the 79th Olympiad.[*](464-460 b.c.)

Leucippus was born at Elea, but some say at Abdera and others at Miletus. He was a pupil of Zeno. His views were these. The sum of things

He declares the All to be unlimited, as already stated; but of the All part is full and part empty,[*](By the full is meant matter, atoms; by the empty, space.) and these he calls elements. Out of them arise the worlds unlimited in number and into them they are dissolved. This is how the worlds are formed. In a given section many atoms of all manner of shapes are carried from the unlimited into the vast empty space. These collect together and form a single vortex, in which they jostle against each other and, circling round in every possible way, separate off, by like atoms joining like. And, the atoms being so numerous that they can no longer revolve in equilibrium, the light ones pass into the empty space outside, as if they were being winnowed; the remainder keep together and, becoming entangled, go on their circuit together, and form a primary spherical system.

This parts off like a shell, enclosing within it atoms of all kinds; and, as these are whirled round by virtue of the resistance of the centre, the enclosing shell becomes thinner, the adjacent atoms continually combining when they touch the vortex.

In this way the earth is formed by portions brought to the centre coalescing. And again, even the outer shell grows larger by the influx of atoms from outside, and, as it is carried round in the vortex, adds to itself whatever atoms it touches. And of these some portions are locked together and form a mass, at first damp and miry, but, when they have dried and revolve with the universal vortex, they afterwards take fire and form the substance of the stars.

The orbit of the sun is the outermost, that of the moon nearest to the earth; the orbits of the other heavenly bodies lie between these two. All the stars are set on fire by the speed of their motion; the burning of the sun is also helped by the stars; the moon is only slightly kindled. The sun and the moon are eclipsed [when ..., but the obliquity of the zodiacal circle is due[*](So Diels; but see T. L. Heath, Aristarchus p. 122, note 3, who prefers to supply the obliquity of the circles of the stars. Cf. also Aët. iii. 12. 1-2 (Dox. Gr. p. 377).)] to the inclination of the earth to the south; the regions of the north are always shrouded in mist, and are extremely cold and frozen. Eclipses of the sun are rare; eclipses of the moon constantly occur, and this because their orbits are unequal. As the world is born, so, too, it grows, decays and perishes, in virtue of some necessity, the nature of which he does [not] specify.

Democritus was the son of Hegesistratus, though some say of Athenocritus, and others again of Damasippus. He was a native of Abdera or, according to some, of Miletus. He was a pupil of certain Magians and Chaldaeans. For when King