Vitae philosophorum

If the Rivals be the work of Plato, says Thrasylus, Democritus will be the unnamed character, different from Oenopides and Anaxagoras, who makes his appearance when conversation is going on with Socrates about philosophy, and to whom Socrates says that the philosopher is like the all-round athlete.[*](Rivals, 132 a-c.) And truly Democritus was versed in every department of philosophy, for he had trained himself both in physics and in ethics, nay more, in mathematics and the routine subjects of education, and he was quite an expert in the arts. From him we have the saying, Speech is the shadow of action. Demetrius of Phalerum in his Defence of Socrates affirms that he did not even visit Athens. This is to make the larger claim, namely, that he thought that great city beneath his notice, because he did not care to win fame from a place, but preferred himself to make a place famous.

His character can also be seen from his writings. He would seem, says Thrasylus, to have been an admirer of the Pythagoreans. Moreover, he mentions Pythagoras himself, praising him in a work of his own entitled Pythagoras.[*]( § 46.) He seems to have taken all his ideas from him and, if chronology did not stand in the way, he might have been thought his pupil. Glaucus of Rhegium certainly says that

He would train himself, says Antisthenes, by a variety of means to test his sense-impressions by going at times into solitude and frequenting tombs.

The same authority states that, when he returned from his travels, he was reduced to a humble mode of life because he had exhausted his means; and, because of his poverty, he was supported by his brother Damasus. But his reputation rose owing to his having foretold certain future events; and after that the public deemed him worthy of the honour paid to a god.[*](ὡς δὲ προειπών . . . ἠξιώθη. This sentence in oratio recta, interrupting the extract from Antisthenes, finds its counterpart in the stories attributing to Democritus the power of forecasting the weather or the seasons, on the strength of his scientific attainments. Cf.. Pliny, N.H. xviii. 273, 341, and Clem. Alex. Strom. vii. 32.) There was a law, says Antisthenes, that no one who had squandered his patrimony should be buried in his native city. Democritus, understanding this, and fearing lest he should be at the mercy of any envious or unscrupulous prosecutors, read aloud to the people his treatise, the Great Diacosmos, the best of all his works; and then he was rewarded with 500 talents; and, more than that, with bronze statues as well; and when he died, he received a public funeral after a lifetime of more than a century.

Demetrius, however, says that it was not Democritus himself but his relatives who read the Great Diacosmos, and that the sum awarded was 100 talents only; with this account Hippobotus agrees.

Aristoxenus in his Historical Notes affirms that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect, but that Amyclas and Clinias

Such is the wise Democritus, the guardian of discourse, keen-witted disputant, among the best I ever read.

As regards chronology, he was, as he says himself in the Lesser Diacosmos, a young man when Anaxagoras was old, being forty years his junior. He says that the Lesser Diacosmos was compiled 730 years after the capture of Troy. According to Apollodorus in his Chronology he would thus have been born in the 80th Olympiad,[*](460-457 b.c.) but according to Thrasylus in his pamphlet entitled Prolegomena to the Reading of the works of Democritus, in the third year of the 77th Olympiad,[*](470-469 b.c.) which makes him, adds Thrasylus, one year older than Socrates. He would then be a contemporary of Archelaus, the pupil of Anaxagoras, and of the school of Oenopides; indeed he mentions Oenopides.

Again, he alludes to the doctrine of the One held by Parmenides and Zeno, they being evidently the persons most talked about in his day; he also mentions Protagoras of Abdera, who, it is admitted, was a contemporary of Socrates.

Athenodorus in the eighth book of his Walks relates that, when Hippocrates came to see him, he ordered

Of the death of Democritus the account given by Hermippus is as follows. When he was now very old and near his end, his sister was vexed that he seemed likely to die during the festival of Thesmophoria and she would be prevented from paying the fitting worship to the goddess. He bade her be of good cheer and ordered hot loaves to be brought to him every day. By applying these to his nostrils he contrived to outlive the festival; and as soon as the three festival days were passed he let his life go from him without pain, having then, according to Hipparchus, attained his one hundred and ninth year.

In my Pammetros I have a piece on him as follows[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 57.):

Pray who was so wise, who wrought so vast a work as the omniscient Democritus achieved? When Death was near, for three days he kept him in his house and regaled him with the steam of hot loaves.

His opinions are these. The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist. The worlds are unlimited; they come into being and perish. Nothing can come into being from that which is not

All things happen by virtue of necessity, the vortex being the cause of the creation of all things, and this he calls necessity. The end of action is tranquillity, which is not identical with pleasure, as some by a false interpretation have understood, but a state in which the soul continues calm and strong, undisturbed by any fear or superstition or any other emotion. This he calls well-being and many other names. The qualities of things exist merely by convention; in nature there is nothing but atoms and void space. These, then, are his opinions.

Of his works Thrasylus has made an ordered catalogue, arranging them in fours, as he also arranged Plato’s works.

The ethical works are the following:

Some include as separate items in the list the following works taken from his notes:

Protagoras, son of Artemon or, according to Apollodorus and Dinon in the fifth book of his History of Persia, of Maeandrius, was born at Abdera (so says Heraclides of Pontus in his treatise On Laws, and also that he made laws for Thurii) or, according to Eupolis in his Flatterers, at Teos; for the latter says:

Inside we’ve got Protagoras of Teos.

Protagoras was the first to maintain that there are two sides to every question, opposed to each other, and he even argued in this fashion, being the first to do so. Furthermore he began a work thus: Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they

For this introduction to his book the Athenians expelled him; and they burnt his works in the market-place, after sending round a herald to collect them from all who had copies in their possession.

He was the first to exact a fee of a hundred minae and the first to distinguish the tenses of verbs, to emphasize the importance of seizing the right moment, to institute contests in debating, and to teach rival pleaders the tricks of their trade. Furthermore, in his dialectic he neglected the meaning in favour of verbal quibbling, and he was the father of the whole tribe of eristical disputants now so much in evidence; insomuch that Timon[*](Fr. 47 D.) too speaks of him as[*](Cf.Il. xv. 679.)

Protagoras, all mankind’s epitome,
1. Cunning, I trow, to war with words.

He too first introduced the method of discussion which is called Socratic. Again, as we learn from Plato in the Euthydemus,[*](286 c.) he was the first to use in discussion the argument of Antisthenes which strives to prove that contradiction is impossible, and the first to point out how to attack and refute any proposition laid down: so Artemidorus the dialectician in his treatise In Reply to Chrysippus. He too invented the shoulder-pad on which porters carry their burdens, so we are told by Aristotle in his treatise On Education; for he himself had been a porter,

others divide into seven parts, narration, question, answer, command, rehearsal, wish, summoning; these he called the basic forms of speech. Alcidamas made discourse fourfold, affirmation, negation, question, address.

The first of his books he read in public was that On the Gods, the introduction to which we quoted above; he read it at Athens in Euripides’ house, or, as some say, in Megaclides’; others again make the place the Lyceum and the reader his disciple Archagoras, Theodotus’s son, who gave him the benefit of his voice. His accuser was Pythodorus, son of Polyzelus, one of the four hundred; Aristotle, however, says it was Euathlus.

The works of his which survive are these:

According to some his death occurred, when he was on a journey, at nearly ninety years of age, though Apollodorus makes his age seventy, assigns forty years for his career as a sophist, and puts his floruit in the 84th Olympiad.[*](444-441 b.c.)

There is an epigram of my own on him as follows[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 130.):

Protagoras, I hear it told of thee
1. Thou died’st in eld when Athens thou didst flee;
2. Cecrops’ town chose to banish thee; but though
3. Thou ’scap’dst Athene, not so Hell below.

The story is told that once, when he asked Euathlus his disciple for his fee, the latter replied, But I have not won a case yet. Nay, said Protagoras, if I win this case against you I must have the fee, for winning it; if you win, I must have it, because you win it.

There was another Protagoras, an astronomer, for whom Euphorion wrote a dirge; and a third who was a Stoic philosopher.