Vitae philosophorum

Diogenes Laertius

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

The works of his which survive are these:

* * The Art of Controversy.

Of Wrestling.

On Mathematics.

Of the State.

Of Ambition.

Of Virtues.

Of the Ancient Order of Things.

On the Dwellers in Hades.

Of the Misdeeds of Mankind.

A Book of Precepts.

Of Forensic Speech for a Fee, two books of opposing arguments.

This is the list of his works.[*](That the list is defective is evident from the fact that the two works by which Protagoras is best known (supra, §§ 51, 54) are not here named.) Moreover there is a dialogue which Plato wrote upon him.

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Philochorus says that, when he was on a voyage to Sicily, his ship went down, and that Euripides hints at this in his Ixion.

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
Thou died’st in eld when Athens thou didst flee;
Cecrops’ town chose to banish thee; but though
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.

Diogenes of Apollonia, son of Apollothemis, was a natural philosopher and a most famous man. Antisthenes

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calls him a pupil of Anaximenes; but he lived in Anaxagoras’s time. This man,[*](i.e. Anaxagoras.) so great was his unpopularity at Athens, almost lost his life, as Demetrius of Phalerum states in his Defence of Socrates.

The doctrines of Diogenes were as follows.[*](Diels (op. cit. p. 144) compares Plutarch, Strom. apud Euseb. Praep. Evang. i. 8. 13; Aëtius i. 3. 26; Theophrastus, Phys. Opin. Fr. 2.) Air is the universal element. There are worlds unlimited in number, and unlimited empty space. Air by condensation and rarefaction generates the worlds. Nothing comes into being from what is not or passes away into what is not. The earth is spherical, firmly supported in the centre, having its construction determined by the revolution which comes from heat and by the congealment caused by cold.

The words with which his treatise begins are these: At the beginning of every discourse I consider that one ought to make the starting-point unmistakably clear and the exposition simple and dignified.