Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

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

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

Of the Sacred Writings in Babylon.

Of those in Meroë.

A Voyage round the Ocean.

Of [the Right Use of] History.

A Chaldaean Treatise.

A Phrygian Treatise.

Concerning Fever and those whose Malady makes them Cough.

Legal Causes and Effects.

Problems wrought by Hand.[*](χειρόκμητα is a correction of Salmasius based upon Pliny, N.H. xxiv. 160, and Vitruvius, ix. i. 14. The mss. give either χέρνιβα,finger-bowls, or χερνικά, the sense of which is not clear; they read ἢ before προβλήματα..)

The other works which some attribute to Democritus

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are either compilations from his writings or admittedly not genuine. So much for the books that he wrote and their number.

The name of Democritus has been borne by six persons: (1) our philosopher; (2) a contemporary of his, a musician of Chios; (3) a sculptor, mentioned by Antigonus; (4) an author who wrote on the temple at Ephesus and the state of Samothrace; (5) an epigrammatist whose style is lucid and ornate; (6) a native of Pergamum who made his mark by rhetorical speeches.

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.

He and Prodicus of Ceos gave public readings for which fees were charged, and Plato in the Protagoras[*](316 a.) calls Prodicus deep-voiced. Protagoras studied under Democritus. The latter[*](Cf. Clem. Strom. vi. 32, and Suidas, s.v. Δημόκριτος.) was nicknamed Wisdom, according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History.

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

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are not. He used to say that soul was nothing apart from the senses, as we learn from Plato in the Theaetetus,[*](152 a sq.) and that everything is true. In another work he began thus: As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.