Ancient Greek literature
Philosophical prose
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Philosophical prose
Prose as a medium of philosophy was written as early
as the 6th century. Practitioners include
Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heracleitus, Anaxagoras,
and Democritus. Philosophical prose was the greatest
literary achievement of the 4th century. It was
influenced by
Socrates
(who himself wrote nothing)
and his characteristic method of teaching by
question and answer, which led naturally to the
dialogue. Alexamenus of Teos and Antisthenes, both
disciples of
Socrates, were the first to use it; but
the greatest exponent of Socratic dialogue was the
Athenian
Plato (428/427–348/347). Shortly after
Socrates’ death in 399 Plato wrote some dialogues,
mostly short; to this group of work belong the
Apology, Protagoras, and Gorgias. In the decade
after 385 he wrote a series of brilliant works,
Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, and the Republic. His
Socrates is the most carefully drawn character in
Greek literature. Subsequent dialogues became more
austerely philosophical;
Socrates
tended
increasingly to be a mere spokesman for
Plato’s
thought; and in the last of his works, the Laws, he
was replaced by a colourless “Athenian.”
Plato’s
style is a thing of matchless beauty, though ancient
critics, who were likely to entangle themselves in
the rules they had invented, found it too poetical.
Plato’s pupil
Aristotle (384–322) was admired in
antiquity for his style; but his surviving works are
all of the “esoteric” sort, intended for use in
connection with his philosophical and scientific
school, the Lyceum. They are without literary grace,
and at times they approximate lecture notes. His
works on literary subjects, the Rhetoric, and above
all, the Poetics, had an immense effect on literary
theory after the Renaissance. In the ancient world,
Aristotelian doctrine was known mainly through the
works of his successor Theophrastus (c.
372–288/287), now lost except for two books on
plants and a famous collection of 30 Characters,
sketches of human types much imitated by English
writers of the 17th century.

Plato
Plato
("Ion",
"Phaedo",
"Cratylus",
"Meno",
"Philebus")
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THE PHILOSOPHERS
Almost every type of literary composition with which we are
familiar can be traced back to the Greeks. The most noted is
probably tragic drama, but epic poetry and history are close
behind, while in philosophy the Greeks created the
foundation on which virtually all subsequent Western thought
has been based. Western philosophy, it has been said, is
essentially a series of footnotes to
Plato
("Ion",
"Phaedo",
"Cratylus",
"Meno",
"Philebus").
The Athenian form of direct democracy, in which all citizens
participated, not only encouraged public speaking, but also
promoted the arts of oratory and rhetoric. At the highest
level, there was intense debate on questions of morality and
ethics. Against this background,
Socrates
appeared. His
probing discussions with the bright young men of Athens
turned philosophy from a somewhat fruitless speculation on
the nature of the universe into the study of human society
and moral values.
One of the most influential thinkers in history,
Socrates
didn't write a word. His teaching is known to us through his
disciples, in particular
Plato, who, himself, was no mere
reporter, but an original thinker, at least the equal of
Socrates, who turned philosophical dialogue into an art
form. He was the author of the seductive theory of the
ideal: that there is a perfect essence of any concept which
represents the truth. (A crude example: all tables are
imperfect approximations of the essence of tableness.)
Aristotle, a pupil of
Plato and a thinker of limitless
range, looked for reality in particulars rather than in
essentials. He was to remain the supreme authority on most
subjects (excluding religion) throughout the Middle Ages,
and one of the hardest tasks of the thinkers of the European
Renaissance was to gain credence for ideas that ran contrary
to
Aristotle's teaching.
There were also famous schools of
philosophy, such as the Stoics whose ideas, seriously
misrepresented by the word "stoical", were remarkably
similar to those of Christianity and had a profound
influence on Christian thinkers.
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Aedesius

Greek philosopher
died 355
Main
Greek philosopher whose ideas had their roots in
Neoplatonism, a school of philosophy that grew out of the
Idealism of Plato.
Aedesius founded the so-called Pergamum school of
philosophy, whose major concerns were theurgy (the magic
practiced by some Neoplatonists who believed miracles could
be worked by the intervention of divine and beneficent
spirits) and the revival of polytheism. He was the pupil of
Iamblichus and the teacher of Maximus, Chrysanthius, Priscus,
and Eusebius Myndius. None of his writings have survived,
but there is an extant biography by Eunapius.
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Ammonius Saccas

Neoplatonic philosopher
Ammonius Saccas (3rd century AD) was a Greek philosopher
from Alexandria who was often referred to as one of the
founders of Neoplatonism. He is mainly known as the teacher
of Plotinus, whom he taught for eleven years from 232 to
243. He was undoubtably the biggest influence on Plotinus in
his development of Neoplatonism, although little is known
about his own philosophical views. Later Christian writers
stated that Ammonius was a Christian, but it is now
generally assumed that there was a different Ammonius of
Alexandria who wrote biblical texts.
Not much is known about the life of Ammonius Saccas. He
had a humble background, and appears to have earned a living
as a porter at the docks of Alexandria, hence his nickname
of "Sack-bearer" (Sakkas for sakkophoros). Most details of
his life come from the fragments left from Porphyry's
writings. The most famous pupil of Ammonius Saccas was
Plotinus who studied under Ammonius for eleven years.
According to Porphyry, in 232, at the age of 28, Plotinus
went to Alexandria to study philosophy:
In his twenty-eighth year he [Plotinus] felt the impulse
to study philosophy and was recommended to the teachers in
Alexandria who then had the highest reputation; but he came
away from their lectures so depressed and full of sadness
that he told his trouble to one of his friends. The friend,
understanding the desire of his heart, sent him to Ammonius,
whom he had not so far tried. He went and heard him, and
said to his friend, "This is the man I was looking for."
From that day he stayed continually with Ammonius and
acquired so complete a training in philosophy that he became
eager to make acquaintance with the Persian philosophical
discipline and that prevailing among the Indians.
According to Porphyry, the parents of Ammonius were
Christians, but upon learning Greek philosophy, Ammonius
rejected his parents' religion for paganism. This conversion
is contested by the Christian writers Jerome and Eusebius,
who state that Ammonius remained a Christian throughout his
lifetime:
[Porphyry] plainly utters a falsehood (for what will not
an opposer of Christians do?) when he says that ... Ammonius
fell from a life of piety into heathen customs. ... Ammonius
held the divine philosophy unshaken and unadulterated to the
end of his life. His works yet extant show this, as he is
celebrated among many for the writings which he has left.
Eusebius goes on to mention a work On the Harmony of
Moses and Jesus, and in an epistle addressed to Carpianus
speaks of a Diatessaron or Harmony of the Four Gospels
composed by Ammonius.
However we are told by Longinus that Ammonius wrote
nothing,and if Ammonius was the principal influence on
Plotinus, then it is unlikely that Ammonius would have been
a Christian. One way to explain much of the confusion
concerning Ammonius is to assume that there were two people
called Ammonius: Ammonius Saccas who taught Plotinus, and an
Ammonius the Christian who wrote biblical texts.
To add to the confusion, it seems that Ammonius had two
pupils called Origen: Origen the Christian, and Origen the
Pagan. It is quite possible that Ammonius Saccas taught both
Origens. Among Ammonius' other pupils there were Herennius
and Cassius Longinus.
Hierocles, writing in the 5th century, states that Ammonius'
fundamental doctrine was that Plato and Aristotle were in
full agreement with each other:
He was the first who had a godly zeal for the truth in
philosophy and despised the views of the majority, which
were a disgrace to philosophy. He apprehended well the views
of each of the two philosophers [Plato and Aristotle] and
brought them under one and the same nous and transmitted
philosophy without conflicts to all of his disciples, and
especially to the best of those acquainted with him,
Plotinus, Origen, and their successors.
According to Nemesius, a bishop and Neoplatonist c. 400,
Ammonius held that the soul was immaterial.
Little is known about Ammonius's role in the development
of Neoplatonism. Porphyry seems to suggest that Ammonius was
instrumental in helping Plotinus think about philosophy in
new ways:
But he [Plotinus] did not just speak straight out of
these books but took a distinctive personal line in his
consideration, and brought the mind of Ammonius' to bear on
the investigation in hand.
Two of Ammonius's students - Origen the Pagan, and
Longinus - seem to have held philosophical positions which
were closer to Middle Platonism than Neoplatonism, which
perhaps suggests that Ammonius's doctrines were also closer
to those of Middle Platonism than the Neoplatonism developed
by Plotinus , but Plotinus does not seem to have thought
that he was departing in any significant way from that of
his master.
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Anaxagoras

Greek philosopher
born c. 500 bc, Clazomenae, Anatolia [now in Turkey]
died c. 428, Lampsacus
Main
Greek philosopher of nature remembered for his cosmology and
for his discovery of the true cause of eclipses. He was
associated with the Athenian statesman Pericles.
About 480 Anaxagoras moved to Athens, then becoming the
centre of Greek culture, and brought from Ionia the new
practice of philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry.
After 30 years’ residence in Athens, he was prosecuted on a
charge of impiety for asserting that the Sun is an
incandescent stone somewhat larger than the region of the
Peloponnese. The attack on him was intended as an indirect
blow at Pericles, and, although Pericles managed to save
him, Anaxagoras was compelled to leave Athens. He spent his
last years in retirement at Lampsacus.
Only a few fragments of Anaxagoras’ writings have been
preserved, and several different interpretations of his work
have been made. The basic features, however, are clear. His
cosmology grows out of the efforts of earlier Greek thinkers
who had tried to explain the physical universe by an
assumption of a single fundamental element. Parmenides,
however, asserted that such an assumption could not account
for movement and change, and, whereas Empedocles sought to
resolve this difficulty by positing four basic ingredients,
Anaxagoras posited an infinite number. Unlike his
predecessors, who had chosen such elements as heat or water
as the basic substance, Anaxagoras included those found in
living bodies, such as flesh, bone, bark, and leaf.
Otherwise, he asked, how could flesh come from what is not
flesh? He also accounted for biological changes, in which
substances appear under new manifestations: as men eat and
drink, flesh, bone, and hair grow. In order to explain the
great amount and diversity of change, he said that “there is
a portion of every thing, i.e., of every elemental stuff, in
every thing,” but “each is and was most manifestly those
things of which there is most in it.”
The most original aspect of Anaxagoras’ system was his
doctrine of nous (“mind,” or “reason”). The cosmos was
formed by mind in two stages: first, by a revolving and
mixing process that still continues; and, second, by the
development of living things. In the first, all of “the
dark” came together to form the night, “the fluid” came
together to form the oceans, and so on with other elements.
The same process of attraction of “like to like” occurred in
the second stage, when flesh and other elements were brought
together by mind in large amounts. This stage took place by
means of animal and plant seeds inherent in the original
mixture. The growth of living things, according to
Anaxagoras, depends on the power of mind within the
organisms that enables them to extract nourishment from
surrounding substances. For this concept of mind, Anaxagoras
was commended by Aristotle. Both Plato and Aristotle,
however, objected that his notion of mind did not include a
view that mind acts ethically—i.e., acts for the “best
interests” of the universe.
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Anaximander

Greek philosopher
born 610 bc, Miletus [now in Turkey]
died 546/545 bc
Main
Greek philosopher often called the founder of astronomy, the
first thinker to develop a cosmology, or systematic
philosophical view of the world.
Anaximander is thought to have been a pupil of Thales of
Miletus. Evidence exists that he wrote treatises on
geography, astronomy, and cosmology that survived for
several centuries, and that he made a map of the known
world. As a rationalist he prized symmetry and introduced
geometry and mathematical proportions into his efforts to
map the heavens. Thus, his theories departed from earlier,
more mystical conceptions of the universe and prefigured the
achievements of later astronomers.
Only one sentence of Anaximander’s writings survives,
however, so that reports from later writers form the primary
record of his discoveries. That sentence describes the
emergence of particular substances such as water or fire in
metaphors drawn from human society, in which injustices are
penalized. For example, neither hot nor cold prevails
permanently, but each “pays reparations” in order to keep a
balance between them.
Anaximander derived the world from a nonperceptible
substance called the apeiron (“unlimited”). This state
preceded the “separation” into contrasting qualities, such
as hot and cold, wet and dry, and thus represents the
primitive unity of all phenomena. Anaximander subscribed to
the philosophical view that unity could definitely be found
behind all multiplicity. A novel element in Anaximander’s
theory was his rejection of the older notion that the Earth
was somehow suspended or supported from elsewhere in the
heavens; instead, he asserted that the Earth remained in its
unsupported position at the centre of the universe because
it had no reason to move in any direction and therefore was
at rest.
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Anaximenes of Miletus

Greek philosopher
flourished c. 545 bc
Main
Greek philosopher of nature and one of three thinkers of
Miletus traditionally considered to be the first
philosophers in the Western world. Of the other two, Thales
held that water is the basic building block of all matter,
whereas Anaximander chose to call the essential substance
“the unlimited.”
Anaximenes substituted aer (“mist,” “vapour,” “air”) for
his predecessors’ choices. His writings, which survived into
the Hellenistic Age, no longer exist except in passages in
the works of later authors. Consequently, interpretations of
his beliefs are frequently in conflict. It is clear,
however, that he believed in degrees of condensation of
moisture that corresponded to the densities of various types
of matter. When “most evenly distributed,” aer is the
common, invisible air of the atmosphere. By condensation it
becomes visible, first as mist or cloud, then as water, and
finally as solid matter such as earth or stones. If further
rarefied, it turns to fire. Thus hotness and dryness typify
rarity, whereas coldness and wetness are related to denser
matter.
Anaximenes’ assumption that aer is everlastingly in
motion suggests that he thought it also possessed life.
Because it was eternally alive, aer took on qualities of the
divine and became the cause of other gods as well as of all
matter. The same motion accounts for the shift from one
physical state of the aer to another. There is evidence that
he made the common analogy between the divine air that
sustains the universe and the human “air,” or soul, that
animates people. Such a comparison between a macrocosm and a
microcosm would also permit him to maintain a unity behind
diversity as well as to reinforce the view of his
contemporaries that there is an overarching principle
regulating all life and behaviour.
A practical man and a talented observer with a vivid
imagination, Anaximenes noted the rainbows occasionally seen
in moonlight and described the phosphorescent glow given off
by an oar blade breaking the water. His thought is typical
of the transition from mythology to science; its rationality
is evident from his discussion of the rainbow not as a
goddess but as the effect of sun rays on compacted air. Yet
his thought is not completely liberated from earlier
mythological or mystical tendencies, as seen from his belief
that the universe is hemispherical. Thus, his permanent
contribution lies not in his cosmology but in his suggestion
that known natural processes (i.e., condensation and
rarefaction) play a part in the making of a world. This
suggestion, together with Anaximenes’ reduction of apparent
qualitative differences in substances to mere differences of
quantity, was highly influential in the development of
scientific thought.
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Antiochus of Ascalon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Antiochus (Greek: Άντίοχος ὁ Ἀσκαλώνιος), of
Ascalon, (lived c. 125–c. 68 BC, was an Academic
philosopher. He was a pupil of Philo of Larissa at the
Academy, but he diverged from the Academic skepticism of
Philo and his predecessors. He was a teacher of Cicero, and
the first of a new breed of eclectics among the
Platonists; he endeavoured to bring the doctrines of the
Stoics and the Peripatetics into Platonism, and stated, in
opposition to Philo, that the mind could distinguish true
from false. In doing so, he claimed to be reviving the
doctrines of the Old Academy. With him began the phase of
philosophy known as Middle Platonism.
Life
He was a friend of Lucullus (the antagonist of Mithridates)
and the teacher of Cicero during his studies at Athens (79
BC); but he had a school at Alexandria also, as well as in
Syria, where he seems to have died. He was a philosopher of
considerable reputation in his time, for Strabo in
describing Ascalon, mentions his birth there as a mark of
distinction for the city, and Cicero frequently speaks of
him in affectionate and respectful terms as the best and
wisest of the Academics, and the most polished and acute
philosopher of his age.
He studied under the Stoic Mnesarchus, but his principal
teacher was Philo, who succeeded Clitomachus as the head
(scholarch) of the Academy. He is, however, better known as
the adversary than the disciple of Philo; and Cicero
mentions a treatise called Sosus, written by him against his
master, in which he refutes the scepticism of the Academics.
Another of his works, called Canonica, is quoted by Sextus
Empiricus, and appears to have been a treatise on logic.
Antiochus was called the founder of the "fifth Academy,"
in the same way that Philo was called the founder of the
fourth. This split occurred just before the First
Mithridatic War began in 88 BC which would lead to the
destruction of the Academy in 86 BC. During this time,
Antiochus was resident in Alexandria. He had returned to
Athens by the time Cicero studied there in 79 BC, and he
seems to have died around 68 BC.
Philosophy
The Academic skepticism of the Academy before Antiochus
probably had its origin in Plato's successful attempts to
lead his disciples to abstract reasoning as the right method
of discovering truth, and not to trust too much to the
impressions of the senses. Cicero even ranks Plato himself
with those philosophers who held that there was no such
thing as certainty in any kind of knowledge; as if his
depreciation of the senses as trustworthy organs of
perception, and of the kind of knowledge which they convey,
invalidated also the conclusions of the reason.
Later philosophers, either by insisting too exclusively
on the uncertainty of the senses (in order like Arcesilaus
to exaggerate by comparison the value of speculative truth),
or like Carneades and Philo, by extending the same
fallibility to reason, had fallen into a degree of
scepticism that seemed to strike at the root of all truth,
theoretical and practical. It was, therefore, the chief
object of Antiochus, besides promoting particular doctrines
in moral philosophy, to examine the grounds of our
knowledge, and our capacities for discovering truth; though
no complete judgment can be formed of his success, as the
book in which Cicero gave the fullest representation of his
opinions has been lost.
He professed to be reviving the doctrines of the Old
Academy, or of Plato's school, when he maintained, in
opposition to Philo and Carneades, that the intellect had in
itself a test by which it could distinguish truth from
falsehood; or in the language of the Academics, discern
between the images arising from actual objects and those
conceptions that had no corresponding reality. For the
argument of the sceptics was, that if two notions were so
exactly similar as that they could not be distinguished,
neither of them could be said to be known with more
certainty than the other; and that every true notion was
liable to have a false one of this kind attached to it:
therefore nothing could be certainly known. This reasoning
was obviously overthrown by the assertion that the mind
contained within itself the standard of truth and falsehood;
it was also attacked more generally by the argument that all
such reasoning refutes itself, since it proceeds upon
principles assumed to be true, and then concludes that there
can be no certain ground for any assumption at all. In this
manner Antiochus seems to have taken the side of the Stoics
in defending the senses from the charge of complete
uncertainty brought against them by the Academics.
It is evident that in such discussions the same questions
were examined which had formerly been more thoroughly sifted
by Plato and Aristotle, in analyzing the nature of science
and treating of the different kinds of truth, according as
they were objects of pure intellectual apprehension, or only
of probable and uncertain knowledge. The result was an
attempt to revive the dialectic art which the Academics had
ignored, so the existing accounts of Antiochus' moral
teaching seem to show. Without yielding to the paradoxes of
the Stoics, or the scepticism of the Academics, he held in
the main doctrines nearly coinciding with those of
Aristotle: that happiness consists essentially in a virtuous
life, yet is not independent of external things. So he
denied the Stoic doctrine that all crimes were equal, but
agreed with them in holding that all the emotions ought to
be suppressed. On the whole, therefore, though Cicero
inclines to rank him among the Stoics, it appears that he
considered himself an eclectic philosopher, and attempted to
unite the doctrines of the Stoics and Peripatetics, so as to
revive the old Academy.
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Antisthenes

Greek philosopher
born c. 445 bc
died c. 365
Main
Greek philosopher, of Athens, who was a disciple of Socrates
and is considered the founder of the Cynic school of
philosophy, though Diogenes of Sinope often is given that
credit.
Antisthenes was born into a wealthy family, and the
philosophical ideas that he developed had their roots in the
contradictions and injustices that he found embedded in
society. He sought to build a foundation of ideas that would
serve as a guiding principle toward a happier, more
thoughtful way of life. Antisthenes believed that happiness
was dependent on moral virtue and that virtue could be
instilled through teaching.
In teaching people how to be virtuous, Antisthenes
demarcated two categories of objects: (1) external goods,
embracing such elements as personal property, sensual
pleasure, and other luxuries; and (2) internal goods,
including the truth and knowledge of the soul. He advocated
great restraint on the part of an individual tempted to take
pleasure in external goods, and he encouraged his students
to accept the burden of physical and mental pain that
accompanies the soul’s search for its own inner wealth. To
dramatize his method of teaching, Antisthenes, after the
myth of Hercules, would stand on his platform of ideas and
beliefs and “bark” at the folly and injustices of his
society. The Cynic (Greek: Canine, or Doglike) school of
philosophy long survived him.
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Apollonius of Tyana

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Apollonius of Tyana (Greek: Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ
Τυανεύς; ca. 15?–ca. 100? AD) was a Greek Neopythagorean
philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of
Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Little is certainly known about
him. Being a first century orator and philosopher around the
time of Christ, he was compared to Jesus of Nazareth by
Christians in the fourth century and by various popular
writers in modern times.
Life dates
Apollonius's dates are uncertain. His primary biographer,
Philostratus the Elder (c.170–247 CE) places him c. 3 BCE to
97 CE. Others agree that he was roughly a contemporary of
Jesus of Nazareth. Charles P. Eells[5] states that his date
of birth was three years before Jesus, whose date of birth
is also uncertain. However, Philostratus, in his Life of
Apollonius of Tyana, places him staying in the court of King
Vardanes I of Parthia for a while, who ruled between c.40–47
CE. Apollonius began a five year silence at about the age of
20, and after the completion of this silence travelled to
Mesopotamia and Iran. Philostratus also mentions emperors
Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and Nerva at various
points throughout Apollonius’ life. Given this information,
a timeline of roughly the years 15–98 CE can be established
for his adult life.
Sources
By far the most detailed source is the Life of Apollonius of
Tyana, a lengthy, novelistic biography written by the
sophist Philostratus at the request of empress Julia Domna.
She took her own life in 217 CE, and he completed it after
her death, probably in the 220's or 230's CE. Philostratus’
account shaped the image of Apollonius for posterity and
still dominates discussions about him in our times. To some
extent it is a valuable source because it contains data from
older writings which were available to Philostratus but
disappeared later on. Among these works are an excerpt
(preserved by Eusebius) from On sacrifices, and certain
alleged letters of Apollonius. The sage may really have
written some of these works, along with the no-longer extant
Biography of Pythagoras. At least two biographical sources
that Philostratus used are lost: a book by the imperial
secretary Maximus describing Apollonius’ activities in
Maximus' home-city of Aegaeae in Cilicia, and a biography by
a certain Moiragenes. There also survives, separately from
the LIfe by Philostratus, a collection of letters of
Apollonius, but at least some of these seem to be spurious.
One of the essential sources Philostratus claimed to know
are the “memoirs” (or “diary”) of Damis, an acolyte and
companion of Apollonius. Some scholars believe the notebooks
of Damis were an invention of Philostratus, while others
think it was a real book forged by someone else and used by
Philostratus. Philostratus describes Apollonius as a
wandering teacher of philosophy and miracle worker who was
mainly active in Greece and Asia Minor but also traveled to
Italy, Spain and North Africa and even to Mesopotamia,
India, and Ethiopia. In particular, he tells lengthy stories
of Apollonius entering the city of Rome in disregard of
emperor Nero’s ban on philosophers, and later on being
summoned, as a defendant, to the court of Domitian, where he
defied the emperor in blunt terms. He had allegedly been
accused of conspiring against the emperor, performing human
sacrifice, and predicting a plague by means of magic.
Philostratus implies that upon his death, Apollonius of
Tyana underwent heavenly assumption.
How much of this can be accepted as historical truth
depends largely on the extent to which modern scholars trust
Philostratus, and in particular on whether they believe in
the reality of Damis. Some of these scholars contend that he
never came to Western Europe and was virtually unknown there
till the third century AD when empress Julia Domna, who was
herself from the province of Syria, decided to popularize
him and his teachings in Rome. For that purpose, so these
same scholars believe, she commissioned Philostratus to
write the biography, where Apollonius is exalted as a
fearless sage with supernatural powers, even greater than
Pythagoras. This view of Julia Domna's role in the making of
the Apollonius-legend gets some support from the fact that
her son Caracalla worshiped him, and her grandnephew emperor
Severus Alexander may have done so as well.
Apollonius was also a known figure in the medieval
Islamic world as described later in this article.
Historical facts
Little can be derived from sources other than Philostratus.
Hence if we dismiss Philostratus’ colorful stories as
fiction, the figure of the historical Apollonius appears to
be rather shadowy. As James Francis put it, "the most that
can be said...is that Apollonius appears to have been a
wandering ascetic/philosopher/wonderworker of a type common
to the eastern part of the early empire." What we can safely
assume is that he was indeed a Pythagorean and as such, in
conformity with the Pythagorean tradition, opposed animal
sacrifice, and lived on a frugal, strictly vegetarian diet.
A minimalist view is that he spent his entire life in the
cities of his native Asia Minor and of northern Syria, in
particular his home town of Tyana, Ephesus, Aegae, and
Antioch, though the letters suggest wider travels, and there
seems no reason to deny that, like many wandering
philosophers, he at least visited Rome. As for his
philosophical convictions, we have an interesting, probably
authentic fragment of one of his writings (On sacrifices)
where he expresses his view that God, who is the most
beautiful being, cannot be influenced by prayers or
sacrifices and has no wish to be worshipped by humans, but
can be reached by a spiritual procedure involving nous,
because he himself is pure nous and nous is also the
greatest faculty of humankind.
Miracles
Philostratus implies on one occasion that Apollonius had
extra-sensory perception (Book VIII, Chapter XXVI). When
emperor Domitian was murdered on September 18, 96 AD,
Apollonius was said to have witnessed the event in Ephesus
"about midday" on the day it happened in Rome, and told
those present "Take heart, gentlemen, for the tyrant has
been slain this day...". The words that Philostratus
attributes to him would make equal sense, however, if
Apollonius had been informed that the emperor would be
killed at noon on Sept. 18th. Both Philostratus and renowned
historian Cassius Dio report this incident, probably on the
basis of an oral tradition. Both state that the philosopher
welcomed the deed as a praiseworthy tyrannicide.
Journey to India
Philostratus devoted two and a half of the eight books of
his Life of Apollonius (1.19–3.58) to the description of a
journey of his hero to India. According to Philostratus'
Life, en route to the Far East, Apollonius reached
Hierapolis Bambyce (Manbij) in Syria (not Nineveh, as some
scholars believed), where he met Damis, a native of that
city who became his lifelong companion. Pythagoras, whom the
Neo-Pythagoreans regarded as an exemplary sage, was believed
to have travelled to India. Hence such a feat made
Apollonius look like a good Pythagorean who spared no pains
in his efforts to discover the sources of oriental piety and
wisdom. As some details in Philostratus’ account of the
Indian adventure seem incompatible with known facts, modern
scholars are inclined to dismiss the whole story as a
fanciful fabrication, but not all of them rule out the
possibility that the Tyanean actually did visit India.
What seemed to be independent evidence showing that
Apollonius was known in India has now been proved to be
forged. In two Sanskrit texts quoted by Sanskritist
Vidhushekhara Bhattacharya in 1943[22] he appears as
"Apalūnya", in one of them together with Damis (called
"Damīśa"), it is claimed that Apollonius and Damis were
Western yogis, who later on were converted to the correct
Advaita philosophy. Some have believed that these Indian
sources derived their information from a Sanskrit
translation of Philostratus’ work (which would have been a
most uncommon and amazing occurrence), or even considered
the possibility that it was really an independent
confirmation of the historicity of the journey to India.
Only in 1995 were the passages in the Sanskrit texts proven
to be interpolations by a modern (late 19th century) forger
.
Writings
Several writings and many letters have been ascribed to
Apollonius, but some of them are lost; others have only been
preserved in parts or fragments of disputed authenticity.
Porphyry and Iamblichus refer to a biography of Pythagoras
by Apollonius, which has not survived; it is also mentioned
in the Suda. Apollonius wrote a treatise On sacrifices, of
which only a short, probably authentic fragment has come
down to us.
Philostratus’ Life and the anthology assembled by John
Stobaeus contain purported letters of Apollonius. Some of
them are cited in full, others only partially. There is also
an independently transmitted collection of letters preserved
in medieval manuscripts. It is difficult to determine what
is authentic and what not. Some of the letters may have been
forgeries or literary exercises assembled in collections
which were already circulated in the 2nd century AD. It has
been asserted that Philostratus himself forged a
considerable part of the letters he inserted into his work;
others were older forgeries available to him.
Impact
Antiquity
In the second century the satirist Lucian of Samosata was a
sharp critic of Neo-Pythagoreanism. After 180 AD he wrote a
pamphlet where he attacked Alexander of Abonoteichus, a
student of one of Apollonius’ students, as a charlatan, and
suggested that the whole school was based on fraud. From
this we can infer that Apollonius really had students and
that his school survived at least till Lucian’s time. One of
Philostratus’ foremost aims was to oppose this view;
although he related various miraculous feats of Apollonius,
he emphasized at the same time that his hero was not a
magician, but a serious philosopher and a champion of
traditional Greek values.
When emperor Aurelian conducted his military campaign
against the Palmyrene Empire, he captured Tyana in 272 AD.
According to the Historia Augusta he abstained from
destroying the city after having a vision of Apollonius
admonishing him to spare the innocent citizens.
In Philostratus’ description of Apollonius’ life and
deeds there are a number of similarities with the life and
especially the claimed miracles of Jesus. Perhaps this
parallel was intentional, but the original aim was hardly to
present Apollonius as a rival of Jesus. However, in the late
third century Porphyry, an anti-Christian Neoplatonic
philosopher, claimed in his treatise Against the Christians
that the miracles of Jesus were not unique, and mentioned
Apollonius as a non-Christian who had accomplished similar
achievements. Around 300, Roman authorities used the fame of
Apollonius in their struggle to wipe out Christianity.
Hierocles, one of the main instigators of the persecution of
Christians in 303, wrote a pamphlet where he argued that
Apollonius exceeded Christ as a wonder-worker and yet wasn’t
worshipped as a god, and that the cultured biographers of
Apollonius were more trustworthy than the uneducated
apostles. This attempt to make Apollonius a hero of the
anti-Christian movement provoked sharp replies from bishop
Eusebius of Caesarea and from Lactantius.[32] Eusebius wrote
an extant reply to the pamphlet of Hierocles, where he
claimed that Philostratus was a fabulist and that Apollonius
was a sorcerer in league with demons. This started a debate
on the relative merits of Jesus and Apollonius that has gone
on in different forms into modern times.
In Late Antiquity talismans made by Apollonius appeared
in several cities of the Eastern Roman Empire, as if they
were sent from heaven. They were magical figures and columns
erected in public places, meant to protect the cities from
afflictions. The great popularity of these talismans was a
challenge to the Christians. Some Byzantine authors
condemned them as sorcery and the work of demons, others
admitted that such magic was beneficial; none of them
claimed that it didn’t work.
In the Western Roman Empire, Sidonius Apollinaris was a
Christian admirer of Apollonius in the 5th century. He
produced a Latin translation of Philostratus’ Life, which is
lost.
Islamic world and Baha’i
Apollonius was a known figure in the medieval Islamic world.
In the Arabic literature he appears as Balīnūs (or Balīnās
or Abūlūniyūs). Arabic-speaking occultists dubbed him "Lord
of the talismans" (Ṣāḥib aṭ-ṭilasmāt) and related stories
about his achievements as a talisman-maker. They appreciated
him as a master of alchemy and a transmitter of Hermetic
knowledge. Some occult writings circulated under his name;
among them were:
the Kitāb Sirr al-ḫalīqa (Book on the Secret of
Creation), also named Kitāb al-῾ilal (Book of the Causes)
the Risāla fī ta�ṯīr ar-rūḥānīyāt fī l-murakkabāt (Treatise
on the influence of the spiritual beings on the composite
things)
al-Mudḫal al-kabīr ilā risālati aṭ-ṭalāsim (Great
introduction to the treatise on the talismans)
the Kitāb ṭalāsim Balīnās al-akbar (Great book of Balinas’
talismans)
the Kitāb Ablūs al-ḥakīm (Book of the sage Ablus)
Medieval alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan's Book of Stones
According to the Opinion of Balīnās contains an exposition
and analysis of views expressed in Arabic occult works
attributed to Apollonius.
There were also medieval Latin and vernacular
translations of Arabic books attributed to “Balinus”.
The Tablet of Wisdom written by Bahá'u'lláh, the founder
of the Bahá'í Faith, names "Balinus" (Apollonius) as a great
philosopher, who "surpassed everyone else in the diffusion
of arts and sciences and soared unto the loftiest heights of
humility and supplication."
Modern era
In Europe, there has been great interest in Apollonius since
the beginning of the 16th century, but the traditional
ecclesiastical viewpoint still prevailed. Till the Age of
Enlightenment the Tyanean was usually treated as a demonic
magician and a great enemy of the Church who collaborated
with the devil and tried to overthrow Christianity. On the
other hand, several advocates of Enlightenment, deism and
anti-Church positions saw him as an early forerunner of
their own ethical and religious ideas, a proponent of a
universal, non-denominational religion compatible with
Reason. In 1680, Charles Blount, a radical English deist,
published the first English translation of the first two
books of Philostratus' Life with an anti-Church
introduction. Voltaire praised Apollonius.
As in Late Antiquity, comparisons between Apollonius and
Jesus became commonplace in the 17th and 18th centuries in
the context of polemic about Christianity. In the Marquis de
Sade's "Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man", the
Dying Man compares Jesus to Apollonius as a false prophet.
Some Theosophists, notably C.W. Leadbeater, Alice A. Bailey,
and Benjamin Creme, have maintained that Apollonius of Tyana
was the reincarnation of the being they call the Master
Jesus. In the 20th century, Ezra Pound evoked Apollonius in
his later Cantos as a figure associated with sun-worship and
a messianic rival to Christ. Pound identifies him as Aryan
within an anti-semitic mythology, and celebrates his solar
worship and aversion to ancient Jewish animal sacrifice. In
the Gerald Messadié's "The man who became god", Apollonius
appears as a wandering philosopher and magician of about the
same age as Jesus. The two of them supposedly met. French
author Maurice Magre also wrote about Apollonius in his
little known book Magicians, Seers, and Mystics.
In fiction
Apollonius appears as a fictional character in the 1935
novel The Circus of Dr. Lao and its 1964 film adaptation, 7
Faces of Dr. Lao. In these, Apollonius works in the circus
as a fortune-teller, who is under a curse — he sees the
future, but can only speak the exact truth, thus seeming to
be cruel and hateful. He is blind and weary after many years
of predicting disappointment for his clients.
The plot of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's 1948
fantasy novel The Carnelian Cube hinges on a magical
artifact passed down by Apollonius.
In the 1975 work The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Apollonius
appears in discussion with Abbie Hoffman.
Apollonius appears as a fictional character in the 1977
television series The Fantastic Journey in the seventh
episode named Funhouse. In this episode, Apollonius attempts
to take possession of the scientist Willaway in a funhouse
but is thwarted by Varian, "a man from the future possessing
awesome powers".
Apollonius appears as a fictional character in the 1996
short story "The Garden of Tantalus" by Brian Stableford,
which combines two of the accounts from Life of Apollonius
of Tyana and removes the mystical aspects, turning it into a
detective story. The narrator, Menippus from the account of
Apollonius and the lamia, blames Damis for making Apollonius
a magician by elaborating on what little of the story he
knew. The story was published in Classical Whodunnits
(1996).
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Aristippus

Greek philosopher
born c. 435 bc, Cyrene, Libya
died 366, Athens
Main
philosopher who was one of Socrates’ disciples and the
founder of the Cyrenaic school of hedonism, the ethic of
pleasure (see Cyrenaics). The first of Socrates’ disciples
to demand a salary for teaching philosophy, Aristippus
believed that the good life rests upon the belief that among
human values pleasure is the highest and pain the lowest
(and one that should be avoided). He also warned his
students to avoid inflicting as well as suffering pain. Like
Socrates, Aristippus took great interest in practical
ethics. While he believed that men should dedicate their
lives to the pursuit and enjoyment of pleasure, he also
believed that they should use good judgment and exercise
self-control to temper powerful human desires. His motto
was, “I possess, I am not possessed.” None of his writings
survives.
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Chrysippus

Greek philosopher
born c. 280 bc
died c. 206
Main
Greek philosopher from Soli (Soloi) who was the principal
systematizer of Stoic philosophy. He is considered to have
been, with Zeno, cofounder of the academy at Athens Stoa
(Greek: “Porch”). Credited with about 750 writings, he was
among the first to organize propositional logic as an
intellectual discipline.
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Cleanthes

Greek philosopher
born 331/330 bc, Assos in the Troad, Asia Minor
died 232/231
Main
Stoic philosopher who became head of the Stoic school
(263–232 bc) after the death of Zeno of Citium. Among his
pupils were his successor, Chrysippus, and Antigonus II,
king of Macedonia. Although Cleanthes produced little that
is original, he brought a religious fervour to the teachings
of Zeno, stressing the belief that the universe is a living
entity and that God is the vivifying ether of the universe.
He wrote about 50 works, of which only fragments survive,
the most important being his hymn to Zeus. The principal
fragments of Cleanthes’ works are contained in works of
Diogenes Laërtius and Stobaeus; some may be found in Cicero
and Seneca.
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Crates of Thebes

Greek philosopher
flourished 4th century bc
Main
Cynic philosopher, a pupil of Diogenes. He gave up his
fortune and made it his mission to castigate vice and
pretense. Hipparchia, daughter of a wealthy Thracian family
and sister of the philosopher Metrocles, forced her parents
to allow her to join him in his ascetic and missionary life.
He had a gift for amusing parody of serious poetry, by which
he mocked other philosophers and praised the Cynic way of
living. He was reputed to be the author of philosophic
dramas and philosophic letters: the letters extant under his
name are spurious. His historical importance lies in the
influence that he exerted on Zeno the Stoic, who greatly
admired him. Plutarch’s biography of him is no longer
extant.
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Democritus

Greek philosopher
born c. 460 bc
died c. 370
Main
Greek philosopher, a central figure in the development of
the atomic theory of the universe.
Knowledge of Democritus’ life is largely limited to
untrustworthy tradition: it seems that he was a wealthy
citizen of Abdera, in Thrace; that he traveled widely in the
East; and that he lived to a great age. According to
Diogenes Laërtius, his works numbered 73; only a few hundred
fragments have survived, mostly from his treatises on
ethics.
Democritus’ physical and cosmological doctrines were an
elaborated and systematized version of those of his teacher,
Leucippus. To account for the world’s changing physical
phenomena, Democritus asserted that space, or the Void, had
an equal right with reality, or Being, to be considered
existent. He conceived of the Void as a vacuum, an infinite
space in which moved an infinite number of atoms that made
up Being (i.e., the physical world). These atoms are eternal
and invisible; absolutely small, so small that their size
cannot be diminished (hence the name atomon, or
“indivisible”); absolutely full and incompressible, as they
are without pores and entirely fill the space they occupy;
and homogeneous, differing only in shape, arrangement,
position, and magnitude. But, while atoms thus differ in
quantity, differences of quality are only apparent, owing to
the impressions caused on our senses by different
configurations and combinations of atoms. A thing is hot or
cold, sweet or bitter, or hard or soft only by convention;
the only things that exist in reality are atoms and the
Void. Thus, the atoms of water and iron are the same, but
those of water, being smooth and round and therefore unable
to hook onto one another, roll over and over like small
globes, whereas those of iron, being rough, jagged, and
uneven, cling together and form a solid body. Because all
phenomena are composed of the same eternal atoms, it may be
said that nothing comes into being or perishes in the
absolute sense of the words, although the compounds made out
of the atoms are liable to increase and decrease, explaining
a thing’s appearance and disappearance, or “birth” and
“death.”
Just as the atoms are uncaused and eternal, so too,
according to Democritus, is motion. Democritus posited the
fixed and “necessary” laws of a purely mechanical system, in
which there was no room for an intelligent cause working
with a view to an end. He explained the origin of the
universe as follows. The original motion of the atoms was in
all directions—it was a sort of “vibration”; hence there
resulted collisions and, in particular, a whirling movement,
whereby similar atoms were brought together and united to
form larger bodies and worlds. This happened not as the
result of any purpose or design but rather merely as the
result of “necessity”; i.e., it is the normal manifestation
of the nature of the atoms themselves. Atoms and void being
infinite in number and extent, and motion having always
existed, there must always have been an infinite number of
worlds, all consisting of similar atoms in various stages of
growth and decay.
Democritus devoted considerable attention to perception
and knowledge. He asserted, for example, that sensations are
changes produced in the soul by atoms emitted from other
objects that impinge on it; the atoms of the soul can be
affected only by the contact of other atoms. But sensations
such as sweet and bitter are not as such inherent in the
emitted atoms, for they result from effects caused merely by
the size and shape of the atoms; e.g., sweet taste is due to
round and not excessively small atoms. Democritus also was
the first to attempt to explain colour, which he thought was
due to the “position” (which he differentiated from shape)
of the constituent atoms of compounds. The sensation of
white, for instance, is caused by atoms that are smooth and
flat so as to cast no shadow; the sensation of black is
caused by rough, uneven atoms.
Democritus attributed popular belief in the gods to a
desire to explain extraordinary phenomena (thunder,
lightning, earthquakes) by reference to superhuman agency.
His ethical system, founded on a practical basis, posited an
ultimate good (“cheerfulness”) that was “a state in which
the soul lives peacefully and tranquilly, undisturbed by
fear or superstition or any other feeling.”
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Diogenes

Greek philosopher
born Sinope, Paphlygonia
died c. 320 bc, probably at Corinth, Greece
Main
archetype of the Cynics, a Greek philosophical sect that
stressed stoic self-sufficiency and the rejection of luxury.
He is credited by some with originating the Cynic way of
life, but he himself acknowledges an indebtedness to
Antisthenes, by whose numerous writings he was probably
influenced. It was by personal example rather than any
coherent system of thought that Diogenes conveyed the Cynic
philosophy. His followers positioned themselves as watchdogs
of morality.
Diogenes is the subject of numerous apocryphal stories,
one of which depicts his behaviour upon being sold into
slavery. He declared that his trade was that of governing
men and was appointed tutor to his master’s sons. Tradition
ascribes to him the famous search for an honest man
conducted in broad daylight with a lighted lantern. Almost
certainly forced into exile from Sinope with his father, he
had probably already adopted his life of asceticism (Greek
askesis, “training”) when he reached Athens. Referred to by
Aristotle as a familiar figure there, Diogenes began
practicing extreme anti-conventionalism. He made it his
mission to “deface the currency,” perhaps meaning “to put
false coin out of circulation.” That is, he sought to expose
the falsity of most conventional standards and beliefs and
to call men back to a simple, natural life.
For Diogenes the simple life meant not only disregard of
luxury but also disregard of laws and customs of organized,
and therefore “conventional,” communities. The family was
viewed as an unnatural institution to be replaced by a
natural state in which men and women would be promiscuous
and children would be the common concern of all. Though
Diogenes himself lived in poverty, slept in public
buildings, and begged his food, he did not insist that all
men should live in the same way but merely intended to show
that happiness and independence were possible even under
reduced circumstances.
The program for life advocated by Diogenes began with
self-sufficiency, or the ability to possess within oneself
all that one needs for happiness. A second principle,
“shamelessness,” signified the necessary disregard for those
conventions holding that actions harmless in themselves may
not be performed in every situation. To these Diogenes added
“outspokenness,” an uncompromising zeal for exposing vice
and conceit and stirring men to reform. Finally, moral
excellence is to be obtained by methodical training, or
asceticism.
Among Diogenes’ lost writings are dialogues, plays, and
the Republic, which described an anarchist utopia in which
men lived “natural” lives.
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Empedocles

Greek philosopher and scholar
born c. 490 bc, Acragas, Sicily
died 430, the Peloponnese, Greece
Main
Greek philosopher, statesman, poet, religious teacher, and
physiologist.
According to legend only, Empedocles was a self-styled
god who brought about his own death, as dramatized by the
English poet Matthew Arnold in “Empedocles on Etna,” by
flinging himself into the volcanic crater atop Mount Etna to
convince followers of his divinity. To his contemporaries he
did indeed seem more than a mere mortal; Aristotle reputedly
hailed him as the inventor of rhetoric, and Galen regarded
him as the founder of Italian medicine. Lucretius admired
his hexametric poetry. Nothing remains of the various
writings attributed to him other than 400 lines from his
poem Peri physeōs (“On Nature”) and fewer than 100 verses
from his poem Katharmoi (“Purifications”).
Although strongly influenced by Parmenides, who
emphasized the unity of all things, Empedocles assumed
instead that all matter was composed of four essential
ingredients, fire, air, water, and earth, and that nothing
either comes into being or is destroyed but that things are
merely transformed, depending on the ratio of basic
substances, to one another. Like Heracleitus, he believed
that two forces, Love and Strife, interact to bring together
and to separate the four substances. Strife makes each of
these elements withdraw itself from the others; Love makes
them mingle together. The real world is at a stage in which
neither force dominates. In the beginning, Love was dominant
and all four substances were mixed together; during the
formation of the cosmos, Strife entered to separate air,
fire, earth, and water from one another. Subsequently, the
four elements were again arranged in partial combinations in
certain places; springs and volcanoes, for example, show the
presence of both water and fire in the Earth.
Apparently a firm believer in the transmigration of
souls, Empedocles declared that those who have sinned must
wander for 30,000 seasons through many mortal bodies and be
tossed from one of the four elements to another. Escape from
such punishment requires purification, particularly
abstention from the flesh of animals, whose souls may once
have inhabited human bodies.
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Epicurus

Greek philosopher
born 341 bc, Samos, Greece
died 270, Athens
Main
Greek philosopher, author of an ethical philosophy of simple
pleasure, friendship, and retirement. He founded schools of
philosophy that survived directly from the 4th century bc
until the 4th century ad.
Early life and training
Epicurus was born on the island of Samos of Athenian parents
who had gone there as military settlers. His father, a
schoolteacher, was named Neocles, his mother Chairestrate;
both were of the same village, the deme Gargettos. According
to his own report, Epicurus began his study of philosophy at
the age of 14. One account has him turning to philosophy
when his schoolmaster could not explain the concept of chaos
in Hesiod, an early Greek philosophical poet. His first
master is said to have been the Platonist Pamphilus of Samos.
Much more significant, however, is the report that Epicurus
was for three years (327–324) a student in the Ionian city
of Teos, where his teacher was Nausiphanes, a disciple of
the naturalistic philosopher Democritus. It may have been
from this source that Epicurus’ atomistic theory came, which
he used not as a means of studying physics but as the basis
for a philosophical system that ultimately sought ethical
ends.
At the age of 18, Epicurus went to Athens to perform the
two years of military training required for Athenian
citizenship. While there he may have heard Xenocrates,
second in succession after Plato as head of his Academy, and
Aristotle, who was then in Athens. One year later Epicurus
rejoined his parents at Colophon, where they had gone as
exiles when, at the close of the Lamian War, Athens lost
Samos to the Macedonians. For the next 10 years, there is
virtually no record. It seems probable that Epicurus
travelled and studied, and it is reasonable to suppose that
this was the period during which he developed his
philosophical outlook and confirmed it in exchanges with the
Platonists and Aristotelians. A letter written by him from
Teos, addressed to his mother, was preserved by Diogenes of
Oenoanda. At the age of 32, Epicurus began to teach, first
at Mytilene and subsequently at Lampsacus, a period that
lasted from 311/310 to 307/306.
In various places Epicurus met the disciples who were
destined to follow him to Athens and to become of great
significance as vehicles through whom the Epicurean school
would achieve its mature development: at Mytilene, he met
his first disciple, Hermarchus, who eventually succeeded him
as head of the Athenian school; and at Lampsacus, he met
Metrodorus and Polyaenus, whose death preceded the master’s
and whose sons Epicurus provided for in his will; Metrodorus’
brother, Timocrates; Leonteus and his wife, Themista, who
had been a hetaira (an independent courtesan); Colotes, whom
Epicurus flattered with the pet name Colotarion; and
Idomeneus and his wife, Batis, sister of Metrodorus.
Thus, apart from his two years in Athens, Epicurus spent
the first 35 years of his life in Asia. This need not mean,
however, that he developed an aversion to the literary
circles in Athens. Instead, his Asiatic ties, which he
continued to cultivate intensely all his life (including two
or three actual journeys to Asia Minor) seem to have been
reflected mainly in his choice of words and style and, more
significantly, in the ecumenical scope of his philosophy.
The schools at Athens and elsewhere
When Epicurus and his followers came to Athens in 306, he
bought a house and, in the garden, established a school,
which came to be known as Ho Kepos (The Garden). At this
time in Athens, cultural life was dominated by the Academy
of Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle, both of which had
passed into the hands of successors. These schools attracted
both the best theoretical students and those concerned with
the application of philosophy to politics and public life.
Therefore, any school that hoped to endure through this
period had to enter into direct rivalry with the Academy and
the Lyceum by establishing itself—as did the Stoa a few
years later—in the city of Athens.
What Epicurus brought to Athens was more a way of life
than a school or a community. Unlike both of the famous
schools, it admitted women, and even one of Epicurus’
slaves, named Mouse. It taught the avoidance of political
activity and of public life, although, when one follower
from a school outside Athens rose to political power and
then fell, he was succoured by the school. Quite different
from the usual connotations borne by the term epicurean
today, life in the house and garden was simple. Water was
the usual drink, although a half-pint daily ration of wine
was allowed, and barley bread was eaten. During a famine
Epicurus saved his students by doling out a few numbered
beans daily. There was no communal property, as was the case
in Pythagorean schools. Whereas the relationships of the
members of the school were not platonic, in either the
contemporary or any later sense, there are only the attacks
of Stoic opponents to support any idea of sexual
irregularity. Epicurus wrote clearly but in no highly
organized way. There was much correspondence with students
in Athens and at other schools, some letters being concerned
with doctrinal matters but many seeming to be merely social
and friendly.
On the day in his 72nd year that Epicurus died painfully
of prostatitis, he dictated an affectionate and touching
letter to Idomeneus—probably intended, in fact, for all of
his friends in Lampsacus—which displayed the spirit in which
he had remained true to his philosophy of repose and
serenity even in the throes of pain. Epicurus’ will left the
house, garden, and some funds to trustees of the school.
Remaining funds were left to honour Epicurus’ deceased
family and to celebrate his birthday annually and his memory
monthly. His slaves were freed, and provision was made that
the daughter of Metrodorus should be wed to someone in the
Athenian school, with the approval of Hermarchus.
Writings and assessment
Diogenes Laërtius described Epicurus as a most prolific
writer and preserved three of his letters and the Kyriai
doxiai (“Principal Doctrines”). The three letters are (1) To
Herodotus, dealing with physics; (2) To Pythocles (probably
a disciple’s abridgement), on meteorology; and (3) To
Menoeceus, on ethics and theology. The Kyriai consists of 40
short aphoristic statements. Another major source is the
papyri from the Casa dei Papiri discovered at Herculaneum
(1752–54), which include not only parts of his great work
Peri physeōs (“On Nature”), originally in 37 books, but also
numerous fragments of correspondence with his friends.
Many of Epicurus’ methods made him comparable to a
religious figure. The breadth of his appeal in Rome during
the 1st century bc is indicated by the fact that the
poet-philosopher Lucretius based his work on Epicurus (Lucretius
in fact held Epicurus in reverential awe), by the references
to his thought by the statesman-moralist Cicero, and by the
detailing by the biographer Plutarch of how Cassius soothed
the mind of Brutus with his Epicurean ideas. Epicurus’
atomistic theory was revived in the 17th century by Pierre
Gassendi, a French philosopher-scientist.
Carlo Diano
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Epictetus

born ad 55, probably at Hierapolis, Phrygia [now Pamukkale,
Turkey]
died c. 135, Nicopolis, Epirus [Greece]
Greek philosopher associated with the Stoics, remembered
for the religious tone of his teachings, which commended him
to numerous early Christian thinkers.
His original name is not known; epiktētos is the Greek
word meaning “acquired.” As a boy he was a slave but managed
to attend lectures by the Stoic Musonius Rufus. He later
became a freedman and lived his life lame and in ill health.
In ad 90 he was expelled from Rome with other philosophers
by the emperor Domitian, who was irritated by the favourable
reception given by Stoics to opponents of his tyranny. The
rest of his life Epictetus spent at Nicopolis.
As far as is known, Epictetus wrote nothing. His
teachings were transmitted by Arrian, his pupil, in two
works: Discourses, of which four books are extant; and the
Encheiridion, or Manual, a condensed aphoristic version of
the main doctrines. In his teachings Epictetus followed the
early rather than the late Stoics, reverting to Socrates and
to Diogenes, the philosopher of Cynicism, as historical
models of the sage. Primarily interested in ethics,
Epictetus described philosophy as learning “how it is
possible to employ desire and aversion without hindrance.”
True education, he believed, consists in recognizing that
there is only one thing that belongs to an individual
fully—his will, or purpose. God, acting as a good king and
father, has given each being a will that cannot be compelled
or thwarted by anything external. Men are not responsible
for the ideas that present themselves to their
consciousness, though they are wholly responsible for the
way in which they use them. “Two maxims,” Epictetus said,
“we must ever bear in mind—that apart from the will there is
nothing good or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate
or to direct events, but merely to accept them with
intelligence.” Man must, that is, believe there is a God
whose thought directs the universe.
As a political theorist, Epictetus saw man as a member of
a great system that comprehends both God and men. Each human
being is primarily a citizen of his own commonwealth, but he
is also a member of the great city of gods and men, of which
the political city is only a poor copy. All men are the sons
of God by virtue of their rationality and are kindred in
nature with the divinity. Thus, man is capable of learning
to administer his city and his life according to the will of
God, which is the will of nature. The natural instinct of
animated life, to which man also is subject, is
self-preservation and self-interest. Yet men are so
constituted that the individual cannot secure his own
interests unless he contributes to the common welfare. The
aim of the philosopher, therefore, is to see the world as a
whole, to grow into the mind of God, and to make the will of
nature his own.
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Eudemus of Rhodes
Greek philosopher
also spelled Eudemos, or Eudemis
flourished before 300 bc
Main
Greek philosopher who was a pupil of Aristotle and a friend
of Theophrastus.
Together with Theophrastus, Eudemus completed Aristotle’s
philosophy from the point of view of systematization. The
fragments of his Physics (preserved by Simplicius) and his
Analytics paraphrase those of Aristotle—and it was Eudemus
who edited or revised the Eudemian Ethics, which are
preserved under Aristotle’s name. His history of geometry,
arithmetic, and astronomy completed the Doctrines of the
Natural Scientists of Theophrastus. The fragments have been
edited by F. Wehrli, Eudemos von Rhodos (1955), being part
viii of Die Schule des Aristoteles: Texte und Kommentar
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Eudoxus of Cnidus
Greek mathematician and astronomer
born c. 395–390 bc, Cnidus, Asia Minor [now in Turkey]
died c. 342–337 bc, Cnidus
Main
Greek mathematician and astronomer who substantially
advanced proportion theory, contributed to the
identification of constellations and thus to the development
of observational astronomy in the Greek world, and
established the first sophisticated, geometrical model of
celestial motion. He also wrote on geography and contributed
to philosophical discussions in Plato’s Academy. Although
none of his writings survive, his contributions are known
from many discussions throughout antiquity.
Life
According to the 3rd century ad historian Diogenes Laërtius
(the source for most biographical details), Eudoxus studied
mathematics with Archytas of Tarentum and medicine with
Philistion of Locri. At age 23 he attended lectures in
Athens, possibly at Plato’s Academy (opened c. 387 bc).
After two months he left for Egypt, where he studied with
priests for 16 months. Earning his living as a teacher,
Eudoxus then returned to Asia Minor, in particular to
Cyzicus on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara, before
returning to Athens where he associated with Plato’s
Academy.
Aristotle preserved Eudoxus’s views on metaphysics and
ethics. Unlike Plato, Eudoxus held that forms are in
perceptible things. He also defined the good as what all
things aim for, which he identified with pleasure. He
eventually returned to his native Cnidus where he became a
legislator and continued his research until his death at age
53. Followers of Eudoxus, including Menaechmus and
Callippus, flourished in both Athens and in Cyzicus.
Mathematician
Eudoxus’s contributions to the early theory of proportions
(equal ratios) forms the basis for the general account of
proportions found in Book V of Euclid’s Elements (c. 300
bc). Where previous proofs of proportion required separate
treatments for lines, surfaces, and solids, Eudoxus provided
general proofs. It is unknown, however, how much later
mathematicians may have contributed to the form found in the
Elements. He certainly formulated the bisection principle
that given two magnitudes of the same sort one can
continuously divide the larger magnitude by at least halves
so as to construct a part that is smaller than the smaller
magnitude.
Similarly, Eudoxus’s theory of incommensurable magnitudes
(magnitudes lacking a common measure) and the method of
exhaustion (its modern name) influenced Books X and XII of
the Elements, respectively. Archimedes (c. 285–212/211 bc),
in On the Sphere and Cylinder and in the Method, singled out
for praise two of Eudoxus’s proofs based on the method of
exhaustion: that the volumes of pyramids and cones are
one-third the volumes of prisms and cylinders, respectively,
with the same bases and heights. Various traces suggest that
Eudoxus’s proof of the latter began by assuming that the
cone and cylinder are commensurable, before reducing the
case of the cone and cylinder being incommensurable to the
commensurable case. Since the modern notion of a real number
is analogous to the ancient notion of ratio, this approach
may be compared with 19th-century definitions of the real
numbers in terms of rational numbers. Eudoxus also proved
that the areas of circles are proportional to the squares of
their diameters.
Eudoxus is also probably largely responsible for the
theory of irrational magnitudes of the form a ± b (found in
the Elements, Book X), based on his discovery that the
ratios of the side and diagonal of a regular pentagon
inscribed in a circle to the diameter of the circle do not
fall into the classifications of Theaetetus of Athens (c.
417–369 bc). According to Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276–194
bc), Eudoxus also contributed a solution to the problem of
doubling the cube—that is, the construction of a cube with
twice the volume of a given cube.
Astronomer
In two works, Phaenomena and Mirror, Eudoxus described
constellations schematically, the phases of fixed stars (the
dates when they are visible), and the weather associated
with different phases. Through a poem of Aratus (c. 315–245
bc) and the commentary on the poem by the astronomer
Hipparchus (c. 100 bc), these works had an enduring
influence in antiquity. Eudoxus also discussed the sizes of
the Sun, Moon, and Earth. He may have produced an eight-year
cycle calendar (Oktaëteris).
Perhaps Eudoxus’s greatest fame stems from his being the
first to attempt, in On Speeds, a geometric model of the
motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets known in
antiquity. His model consisted of a complex system of 27
interconnected, geo-concentric spheres, one for the fixed
stars, four for each planet, and three each for the Sun and
Moon. Callippus and later Aristotle modified the model.
Aristotle’s endorsement of its basic principles guaranteed
an enduring interest through the Renaissance.
Eudoxus also wrote an ethnographical work (“Circuit of
the Earth”) of which fragments survive. It is plausible that
Eudoxus also divided the spherical Earth into the familiar
six sections (northern and southern tropical, temperate, and
arctic zones) according to a division of the celestial
sphere.
Assessment
Eudoxus is the most innovative Greek mathematician before
Archimedes. His work forms the foundation for the most
advanced discussions in Euclid’s Elements and set the stage
for Archimedes’ study of volumes and surfaces. The theory of
proportions is the first completely articulated theory of
magnitudes. Although most astronomers seem to have abandoned
his astronomical views by the middle of the 2nd century bc,
his principle that every celestial motion is uniform and
circular about the centre endured until the time of the
17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. Dissatisfaction
with Ptolemy’s modification of this principle (where he made
the centre of the uniform motion distinct from the centre of
the circle of motion) motivated many medieval and
Renaissance astronomers, including Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473–1543).
Henry Ross Mendell
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Gorgias
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gorgias (Greek: Γοργίας, ca. 485-c.380 BCE) "the Nihilist",
Greek sophist, pre-socratic philosopher and rhetorician, was a
native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms
the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report
that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have
been a few years younger. "Like other Sophists he was an
itinerant, practicing in various cities and giving public
exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of
Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and
performances. A special feature of his displays was to invite
miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu
replies."
His chief claim to recognition resides in the fact that he
transplanted rhetoric from his native Sicily to Attica, and
contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the
language of literary prose.
Life
Gorgias originated from Leontini, a Greek colony in Sicily, and
what is often called the home of Greek rhetoric. It is known
that Gorgias had a father named Charmantides and two siblings –
a brother named Herodicus and a sister who dedicated a statue to
Gorgias in Delphi (McComiskey 6-7).
He was already about sixty when in 427 he was sent to Athens
by his fellow-citizens at the head of an embassy to ask for
Athenian protection against the aggression of the Syracusans. He
subsequently settled in Athens, probably due to the enormous
popularity of his style of oratory and the profits made from his
performances and rhetoric classes. According to Aristotle, his
students included Isocrates. (Other students are named in later
traditions; the Suda adds Pericles, Polus, and Alcidamas,
Diogenes Laërtius mentions Antisthenes, and according to
Philostratus, "I understand that he attracted the attention of
the most admired men, Critias and Alcibiades who were young, and
Thucydides and Pericles who were already old. Agathon too, the
tragic poet, whom Comedy regards as wise and eloquent, often
Gorgianizes in his iambic verse").
Gorgias is reputed to have lived to be over one hundred years
old. He accumulated considerable wealth; enough to commission a
gold statue of himself for a public temple. He died at Larissa
in Thessaly in 376 BC.
Rhetorical Innovation
Gorgias ushered in rhetorical innovations involving structure
and ornamentation and the introduction of paradoxologia – the
idea of paradoxical thought and paradoxical expression. For
these advancements, Gorgias has been labeled the ‘father of
sophistry’ (Wardy 6). Gorgias is also known for contributing to
the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary
prose.
Gorgias’ extant rhetorical works (Encomium of Helen, Defense
of Palamedes, On Non-Existence, and Epitaphios) come to us via a
work entitled Technai, a manual of rhetorical instruction, which
may have consisted of models to be memorized and demonstrate
various principles of rhetorical practice (Leitch, et al. 29).
Although some scholars claim that each work presents opposing
statements, the four texts can be read as interrelated
contributions to the up-and-coming theory and art (technê) of
rhetoric (McComiskey 32). Of Gorgias’ surviving works, only the
Encomium and the Defense are believed to exist in their
entirety. Meanwhile, there are his own speeches, rhetorical,
political, or other. A number of these are referred to and
quoted by Aristotle, including a speech on Hellenic unity, a
funeral oration for Athenians fallen in war, and a brief
quotation from an Encomium on the Eleans. Apart from the
speeches, there are paraphrases of the treatise "On Nature or
the Non-Existent." These works are each part of the Diels-Kranz
collection, and although academics consider this source
reliable, many of the works included are fragmentary and
corrupt. Questions have also been raised as to the authenticity
and accuracy of the texts attributed to Gorgias (Consigny 4).
Gorgias’ writings are both rhetorical and performative. He
goes to great lengths to exhibit his ability of making an
absurd, argumentative position appear stronger. Consequently,
each of his works defend positions that are unpopular,
paradoxical and even absurd. The performative nature of Gorgias’
writings is exemplified by the way that he playfully approaches
each argument with stylistic devices such as parody, artificial
figuration and theatricality (Consigny 149). Gorgias’ style of
argumentation can be described as poetics-minus-the-meter (poiêsis-minus-meter).
Gorgias argues that persuasive words have power (dunamis) that
is equivalent to that of the gods and as strong as physical
force. In the Encomium, Gorgias likens the effect of speech on
the soul to the effect of drugs on the body: “Just as different
drugs draw forth different humors from the body – some putting a
stop to disease, others to life – so too with words: some cause
pain, others joy, some strike fear, some stir the audience to
boldness, some benumb and bewitch the soul with evil persuasion”
(Gorgias 32).
Gorgias also believed that his "magical incantations" would
bring healing to the human psyche by controlling powerful
emotions. He paid particular attention to the sounds of words,
which, like poetry, could captivate audiences. His florid,
rhyming style seemed to hypnotize his audiences (Herrick 42).
Gorgias' legendary powers of persuasion would suggest that he
had a somewhat supernatural influence over his audience and
their emotions.
Unlike other Sophists (with Protagoras in mind especially)
Gorgias did not profess to teach arete (excellence, or, virtue).
He believed that there was no absolute form of arete, but that
it was relative to each situation (for example, virtue in a
slave was not virtue in a statesman) His thought was that
rhetoric, the art of persuasion, was the king of all other
sciences, since it was capable of persuading any course of
action. While rhetoric existed in the curriculum of every
Sophist, Gorgias placed more prominence upon it than any of the
others.
Much debate over both the nature and value of rhetoric begins
with Gorgias. Plato’s dialogue entitled Gorgias presents a
counter-argument to Gorgias’ embrace of rhetoric, its elegant
form, and performative nature (Wardy 2). The dialog attempts to
show that rhetoric does not meet the requirements to actually be
considered a technê but is a somewhat dangerous "knack" to
possess both for the orator and for his audience. This is
because it gives the ignorant the power to seem more
knowledgeable than an expert to a group.
On The Non-Existent
Gorgias is the author of a lost work: On Nature or the
Non-Existent. Rather than being one of his rhetorical works, it
presented a theory of being that at the same time refuted and
parodied the Eleatic thesis. The original text was lost and
today there remain just two paraphrases of it. The first is
preserved by the philosopher Sextus Empiricus in Against the
Professors and the other by the anonymous author of On Melissus,
Xenophanes, and Gorgias. Each work, however, excludes material
that is discussed in the other, which suggests that each version
may represent intermediary sources (Consigny 4). It is clear,
however, that the work developed a sceptical argument, which has
been extracted from the sources and translated as below:
1.Nothing exists;
2.Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and
3.Even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it
can't be communicated to others.
The argument has largely been seen as an ironic refutation of
Parmenides' thesis on Being. Gorgias set out to prove that it is
as easy to demonstrate that being is one, unchanging and
timeless as it is to prove that being has no existence at all.
“How can anyone communicate the idea of color by means of
words since the ear does not hear colors but only sounds?” This
quote, written by the Sicilian philosopher Gorgias, was used to
show his theory that ‘there is nothing’, ‘if there were anything
no one would know it’, ‘and if anyone did know it, no one could
communicate it’. This theory, thought of in the late 400s BCE,
is still being contemplated by many philosophers throughout the
world. This argument has led some to label Gorgias a nihilist
(one who believes nothing exists, or that the world is
incomprehensible, and that the concept of truth is fictitious).
For the first main argument where Gorgias says, “there is
nothing”, he tries to persuade the reader that thought and
existence are not the same. By claiming that if thought and
existence truly were the same, then everything that anyone
thought would suddenly exist. He also attempted to prove that
words and sensations couldn’t be measured by the same standards,
for even though words and sensations are both derived from the
mind, they are essentially different. This is where his second
idea comes into place.
Rhetorical Works
Encomium of Helen
In their writings, Gorgias and other sophists speculated "about
the structure and function of language” as a framework for
expressing the implications of action and the ways decisions
about such actions were made” (Jarratt 103). And this is exactly
the purpose of Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen. Of the three
divisions of rhetoric discussed by Aristotle in his Rhetoric
(forensic, deliberative, and epideictic), the Encomium can be
classified as an epideictic speech, expressing praise for Helen
of Troy and ridding her of the blame she faced for leaving
Sparta with Paris (Wardy 26).
Helen – the proverbial “Helen of Troy” – exemplified both
sexual passion and tremendous beauty for the Greeks. She was the
daughter of Zeus and Leda, the Queen of Sparta, and her beauty
was the direct cause of the decade long Trojan War between
Greece and Troy. The war began after the goddesses Hera, Athena,
and Aphrodite asked Paris (a Trojan prince) to select who was
the most beautiful of the three. Each goddess tried to influence
Paris’ decision, but he ultimately chose Aphrodite who then
promised Paris the most beautiful woman. Paris then traveled to
Greece where he was greeted by Helen and her husband Menelaus.
Under the influence of Aphrodite, Helen allowed Paris to
persuade her to elope with him. Together they traveled to Troy,
not only sparking the war, but also a popular and literary
tradition of blaming Helen for her wrongdoing. It is this
tradition which Gorgias confronts in the Encomium.
The Encomium opens with Gorgias explaining that “a man,
woman, speech, deed, city or action that is worthy of praise
should be honored with acclaim, but the unworthy should be
branded with blame” (Gorgias 30). In the speech Gorgias
discusses the possible reasons for Helen’s journey to Troy. He
explains that Helen could have been persuaded in one of four
ways: by the gods, by physical force, by love, or by speech
(logos). If it were indeed the plan of the gods that caused
Helen to depart for Troy, Gorgias argues that those who blame
her should face blame themselves, “for a human’s anticipation
cannot restrain a god’s inclination” (Gorgias 31). Gorgias
explains that, by nature, the weak are ruled by the strong, and,
since the gods are stronger than humans in all respects, Helen
should be freed from her undesirable reputation. If, however,
Helen was abducted by force, it is clear that the aggressor
committed a crime. Thus, it should be he, not Helen, who should
be blamed. And if Helen was persuaded by love, she should also
be rid of ill repute because “if love is a god, with the divine
power of the gods, how could a weaker person refuse and reject
him? But if love is a human sickness and a mental weakness, it
must not be blamed as mistake, but claimed as misfortune” (Gorgias
32). Finally, if speech persuaded Helen, Gorgias claims he can
easily clear her of blame. Gorgias explains: “Speech is a
powerful master and achieves the most divine feats with the
smallest and least evident body. It can stop fear, relieve pain,
create joy, and increase pity” (Gorgias 31). It is here that
Gorgias compares the effect of speech on the mind with the
effect of drugs on the body.
The Encomium demonstrates Gorgias’ love of paradoxologia. The
performative nature of the Encomium requires a reciprocal
relationship between the performer and the audience, one which
relies on the cooperation between the deceptive performer and
the equally deceived audience (Wardy 36). Gorgias reveals this
paradox in the final section of the Encomium where he writes: “I
wished to write this speech for Helen’s encomium and my
amusement” (Gorgias 33). Additionally, if one were to accept
Gorgias’ argument for Helen’s exoneration, it would fly in the
face of a whole literary tradition of blame directed towards
Helen. This too is paradoxical.
Defense of Palamedes
In the Defense of Palamedes Gorgias describes logos as a
positive instrument for creating ethical arguments (McComiskey
38). The Defense, an oration that deals with issues of morality
and political commitment (Consigny 38), defends Palamedes who,
in Greek mythology, is credited with the invention of the
alphabet, written laws, numbers, armor, and measures and weights
(McComiskey 47).
In the speech Palamedes defends himself against the charge of
treason. In Greek mythology, Odysseus – in order to avoid going
to Troy with Agamemnon and Menelaus to bring Helen back to
Sparta – pretended to have gone mad and began sowing the fields
with salt. Palamedes got Odysseus to disclose this information
by throwing his son Telemachus in front of the plow. Odysseus,
who never forgave Palamedes for making him reveal himself, later
accused Palamedes of working with the Trojans. Soon after,
Palamedes was condemned and killed (Jarratt 58).
In this epideictic speech, like the Encomium, Gorgias is
concerned with experimenting with how plausible arguments can
cause conventional truths to be doubted (Jarratt 59). Throughout
the text, Gorgias presents a method for composing logical
(logos), ethical (ethos) and emotional (pathos) arguments from
possibility, which are similar to those described by Aristotle
in Rhetoric. These types of arguments about motive and
capability presented in the Defense are later described by
Aristotle as forensic topoi. Gorgias demonstrates that in order
to prove that treason had been committed, a set of possible
occurrences also need to be established. In the Defense these
occurrences are as follows: communication between Palamedes and
the enemy, exchange of a pledge in the form of hostages or
money, and not being detected by guards or citizens. In his
defense, Palamedes claims that a small sum of money would not
have warranted such a large undertaking and reasons that a large
sum of money, if indeed such a transaction had been made, would
require the aid of many confederates in order for it to be
transported. Palamedes reasons further that such an exchange
could neither have occurred at night because the guards would be
watching, nor in the day because everyone would be able to see.
Palamedes continues, explaining that if the aforementioned
conditions were, in fact, arranged then action would need to
follow. Such action needed to take place either with or without
confederates; however, if these confederates were free men then
they were free to disclose any information they desired, but if
they were slaves there was a risk of their voluntarily accusing
to earn freedom, or accusing by force when tortured. Slaves,
Palamedes says, are untrustworthy. Palamedes goes on to list a
variety of possible motives, all of which he proves false.
Through the Defense Gorgias demonstrates that a motive
requires an advantage such as status, wealth, honour, and
security, and insists that Palamedes lacked a motive (McComiskey
47-49).
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Heracleitus

Greek philosopher
also spelled Heraclitus
born c. 540 bc, Ephesus, in Anatolia [now Selçuk, Tur.]
died c. 480
Main
Greek philosopher remembered for his cosmology, in which
fire forms the basic material principle of an orderly
universe. Little is known about his life, and the one book
he apparently wrote is lost. His views survive in the short
fragments quoted and attributed to him by later authors.
Though he was primarily concerned with explanations of
the world around him, Heracleitus also stressed the need for
people to live together in social harmony. He complained
that most people failed to comprehend the logos (Greek:
“reason”), the universal principle through which all things
are interrelated and all natural events occur, and thus
lived like dreamers with a false view of the world. A
significant manifestation of the logos, Heracleitus claimed,
is the underlying connection between opposites. For example,
health and disease define each other. Good and evil, hot and
cold, and other opposites are similarly related. In
addition, he noted that a single substance may be perceived
in varied ways—seawater is both harmful (for human beings)
and beneficial (for fishes). His understanding of the
relation of opposites to each other enabled him to overcome
the chaotic and divergent nature of the world, and he
asserted that the world exists as a coherent system in which
a change in one direction is ultimately balanced by a
corresponding change in another. Between all things there is
a hidden connection, so that those that are apparently
“tending apart” are actually “being brought together.”
Viewing fire as the essential material uniting all
things, Heracleitus wrote that the world order is an
“ever-living fire kindling in measures and being
extinguished in measures.” He extended the manifestations of
fire to include not only fuel, flame, and smoke but also the
ether in the upper atmosphere. Part of this air, or pure
fire, “turns to” ocean, presumably as rain, and part of the
ocean turns to earth. Simultaneously, equal masses of earth
and sea everywhere are returning to the respective aspects
of sea and fire. The resulting dynamic equilibrium maintains
an orderly balance in the world. This persistence of unity
despite change is illustrated by Heracleitus’ famous analogy
of life to a river: “Upon those who step into the same
rivers different and ever different waters flow down.” Plato
later took this doctrine to mean that all things are in
constant flux, regardless of how they appear to the senses.
Heracleitus was unpopular in his time and was frequently
scorned by later biographers. His primary contribution lies
in his apprehension of the formal unity of the world of
experience.
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Hippasus of Metapontum

Greek philosopher
Hippasus of Metapontum (Ancient Greek: Ἵππασος), b. c.
500 B.C. in Magna Graecia, was a Greek philosopher. He was a
disciple of Pythagoras. To Hippasus (or Hippasos) is
attributed the discovery of the existence of irrational
numbers. More specifically, he is credited with the
discovery that the square root of 2 is irrational.
Until Hippasus' discovery, the Pythagoreans preached that
all numbers could be expressed as the ratio of integers.
Despite the validity of his discovery, the Pythagoreans
initially treated it as a kind of religious heresy and they
either exiled or murdered Hippasus. Legend has it that the
discovery was made at sea and that Hippasus' fellow
Pythagoreans threw him overboard.
But there are two other stories about Hippasus. The first
says that Hippasus was expelled from the Pythagorean school
because he published doctrines of Pythagoras, while the
second says that he was drowned at sea for revealing the
construction of the dodecahedron in the sphere and claiming
it as his own. But since the Pythagoreans' supposed pledge
to secrecy was most likely false[citation needed], the
authenticity of these stories is questioned.
He was also noted as an early experimenter in acoustics
and resonance. Few of his original works now survive.
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Leucippus

Greek philosopher
flourished 5th century bc, probably at Miletus, on the
west coast of Asia Minor
Main
Greek philosopher credited by Aristotle and by Theophrastus
with having originated the theory of atomism. It has been
difficult to distinguish his contribution from that of his
most famous pupil, Democritus. Only fragments of Leucippus’
writings remain, but two works believed to have been written
by him are The Great World System and On the Mind. His
theory stated that matter is homogeneous but consists of an
infinity of small indivisible particles. These atoms are
constantly in motion, and through their collisions and
regroupings form various compounds. A cosmos is formed by
the collision of atoms that gather together into a “whirl,”
and the drum-shaped Earth is located in the centre of man’s
cosmos.
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Parmenides

Greek philosopher
born c. 515 bc
Main
Greek philosopher of Elea in southern Italy who founded
Eleaticism, one of the leading pre-Socratic schools of Greek
thought. His general teaching has been diligently
reconstructed from the few surviving fragments of his
principal work, a lengthy three-part verse composition
titled On Nature.
Parmenides held that the multiplicity of existing things,
their changing forms and motion, are but an appearance of a
single eternal reality (“Being”), thus giving rise to the
Parmenidean principle that “all is one.” From this concept
of Being, he went on to say that all claims of change or of
non-Being are illogical. Because he introduced the method of
basing claims about appearances on a logical concept of
Being, he is considered one of the founders of metaphysics.
Plato’s dialogue the Parmenides deals with his thought.
An English translation of his work was edited by L. Tarán
(1965).
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Flavius Philostratus

Greek author
born ad 170
died c. 245
Main
Greek writer of Roman imperial times who studied at Athens
and some time after ad 202 entered the circle of the
philosophical Syrian empress of Rome, Julia Domna. On her
death he settled in Tyre.
Philostratus’s works include Gymnastikos, a treatise
dealing with athletic training; Ērōïkos (“Hero”), a dialogue
on the significance of various heroes of the Trojan War;
Epistolai erōtikai (“Erotic Epistles”), one of which was the
inspiration for the English poet Ben Jonson’s To Celia
(“Drink to me only with thine eyes”); and two sets of
descriptions (ekphraseis) of paintings of mythological
scenes, attributed to two men named Philostratus, possibly
the well-known figure and his grandson. Flavius
Philostratus’s Bioi sophistōn (Lives of the Sophists) treats
both the Sophists of the 5th century bc and the later
philosophers and rhetoricians of the Second Sophistic, a
name coined by Philostratus to describe the art of
declamation in Greek as practiced in the Roman Empire from
the time of Nero (ad 54–68) to Philostratus’s own day.
Philostratus’s work on the life of the Pythagorean
philosopher Apollonius of Tyana (1st century ad), which was
commissioned by Julia Domna, is revealing of religious
attitudes in a transitional period. His idealized portrait
of Apollonius as an ascetic miracle worker was taken up with
enthusiasm by the pagan elites of the next centuries—when
Christianity had become of political significance—as a
counter figure to the Christian Jesus. In Philostratus’s
moderately Atticizing prose (i.e., aspiring to the Classical
style of 5th-century-bc Athens and opposed to the florid and
bombastic style of Greek associated especially with Asia
Minor), formal elegance was a way to give new significance
and validity to the traditional cultural heritage of the
pagan Greek world.
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Poseidonius

Greek philosopher
born c. 135 bc
died c. 51 bc
Main
also spelled Posidonius Greek philosopher, considered the
most learned man of his time and, possibly, of the entire
Stoic school.
Poseidonius, nicknamed “the Athlete,” was a native of
Apamea in Syria and a pupil of the Greek Stoic philosopher
Panaetius. He spent many years in travel and scientific
research in Spain, Africa, Italy, Gaul (modern France),
Liguria, and Sicily. When he settled as a teacher at Rhodes,
his adopted Greek city, his fame attracted numerous
scholars. By his writings and his personal relations, he did
more to spread Stoicism in the Roman world than anyone else
except Panaetius. He was known to many leading men of his
time, including the Roman statesman Cicero, who studied
under him in 78–77 and whom he mentioned as a friend. Such
other Roman writers as Strabo and Seneca provide the major
source of knowledge about his life; until the 20th century
scholars accorded him only a minor place in the development
of Stoicism.
The titles and subjects of more than 20 of his works, now
lost, are known. Like other Stoics of the middle period in
the school’s history, Poseidonius was an eclectic who
combined the views of older Stoics and of Plato and
Aristotle. His well-known ethical doctrine diverged from
contemporary Stoicism, however, in asserting that human
passions are inherent qualities, not mere faulty judgments.
Also interested in natural science, geography, astronomy,
and mathematics, Poseidonius tried to calculate the diameter
of the Earth, the influence of the Moon on tides, and the
distance and magnitude of the Sun. His history of the period
146–88 bc filled 52 volumes and was undoubtedly a storehouse
of knowledge for early writers. A gifted dialectician,
Poseidonius was notable for his powers of observation, his
travel reports, his ironic humour, and his practice of Stoic
doctrine.
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Proclus

Greek philosopher
born c. 410, Constantinople [now Istanbul]
died 485, Athens
Main
the last major Greek philosopher. He was influential in
helping Neoplatonic ideas to spread throughout the
Byzantine, Islāmic, and Roman worlds.
Proclus was reared at Xanthus in Lycia, and he studied
philosophy under Olympiodorus the Elder at Alexandria. At
Athens he studied under the Greek philosophers Plutarch and
Syrianus, whom he followed as diadochos (Greek:
“successor”), or head of the Academy founded by Plato c. 387
bc. Remaining there until his death, he helped refine and
systematize the Neoplatonic views of the 3rd-century Greek
philosopher Iamblichus, whose school stressed elaborate
metaphysical speculation.
Like Iamblichus, Proclus opposed Christianity and
passionately defended paganism. As a Neoplatonic Idealist,
he emphasized that thoughts comprise reality, while concrete
“things” are mere appearances. Ultimate reality, the “One,”
is both God and the Good and unifies his ethical and
theological systems. His attitudes significantly influenced
subsequent Christian theology, in both East and West,
through their adaptation by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,
a 5th-century writer whose forgeries were long thought to be
works by a 1st-century convert of the Apostle Paul,
Dionysius the Areopagite.
The most important Arabic philosophical work to transmit
Proclus’ ideas was the Liber de causis (“Book of Causes”),
which passed as a work of Aristotle in medieval times
despite its dependence upon Proclus’ own Institutio
theologica (Elements of Theology). Latin translations of
this, his most important work, and many of his other
writings in Greek were made in the 13th century by the
scholar William of Moerbeke and became the principal sources
for medieval knowledge of Platonic philosophy. The Elements
is a concise exposition of Neoplatonic metaphysics in 211
propositions. His Elements of Physics distilled the essence
of Aristotle’s views, and his In Platonis theologiam
(Platonic Theology) explicated Plato’s metaphysics. His
commentaries on Plato, extant in their entirety, include
those on The Republic, Parmenides, Timaeus, and Alcibiades
I.
Although more highly regarded as a systematizer and
commentator than as an original thinker, Proclus was also
the author of numerous nonphilosophical writings, including
astronomical, mathematical, and grammatical works. He wrote
seven hymns and two epigrams, one of which he composed for
the common tomb of himself and his master, Syrianus.
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Protagoras

Greek philosopher
born c. 485 bc, Abdera, Greece
died c. 410
Main
thinker and teacher, the first and most famous of the Greek
Sophists.
Protagoras spent most of his life at Athens, where he
considerably influenced contemporary thought on moral and
political questions. Plato named one of his dialogues after
him. Protagoras taught as a Sophist for more than 40 years,
claiming to teach men “virtue” in the conduct of their daily
lives. He is best known for his dictum “Man is the measure
of all things,” probably an expression of the relativity to
the individual of all perceptions and, according to some, of
all judgments as well. He acquired great wealth and
reputation from his teaching, prompting his appointment as
lawgiver for the Athenian colony of Thurii in Italy. Though
he adopted conventional moral ideas, Protagoras expressed
his agnostic attitude toward belief in the gods in
Concerning the Gods. He was accused of impiety, his books
were publicly burned, and he was exiled from Athens about
415 bc for the rest of his life.
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Pyrrhon of Elis

Greek philosopher
Pyrrhon also spelled Pyrrho
born c. 360 bc
died c. 272
Main
Greek philosopher from whom Pyrrhonism takes its name; he is
generally accepted as the father of Skepticism.
Pyrrhon was a pupil of Anaxarchus of Abdera and in about
330 established himself as a teacher at Elis. Believing that
equal arguments can be offered on both sides of any
proposition, he dismissed the search for truth as a vain
endeavour. While traveling with an expedition under
Alexander the Great, Pyrrhon saw in the fakirs of India an
example of happiness flowing from indifference to
circumstances. He concluded that man must suspend judgment
(practice epochē) on the reliability of sense perceptions
and simply live according to reality as it appears.
Pyrrhonism permeated the Middle and New Academy of Athens
and strongly influenced philosophical thought in
17th-century Europe with the republication of the Skeptical
works of Sextus Empiricus, who had codified Greek Skepticism
in the 3rd century ad. Pyrrhon’s teaching was preserved in
the poems of Timon of Phlius, who studied with him.
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Pythagoras

Greek philosopher and mathematician
born c. 580 bc, Samos, Ionia [now in Greece]
died c. 500, Metapontum, Lucania [now in Italy]
Main
Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the
Pythagorean brotherhood that, although religious in nature,
formulated principles that influenced the thought of Plato
and Aristotle and contributed to the development of
mathematics and Western rational philosophy (see
Pythagoreanism).
Pythagoras migrated to southern Italy about 532 bc,
apparently to escape Samos’s tyrannical rule, and
established his ethico-political academy at Croton (now
Crotone, Italy).
It is difficult to distinguish Pythagoras’s teachings
from those of his disciples. None of his writings have
survived, and Pythagoreans invariably supported their
doctrines by indiscriminately citing their master’s
authority. Pythagoras, however, is generally credited with
the theory of the functional significance of numbers in the
objective world and in music. Other discoveries often
attributed to him (e.g., the incommensurability of the side
and diagonal of a square, and the Pythagorean theorem for
right triangles) were probably developed only later by the
Pythagorean school. More probably the bulk of the
intellectual tradition originating with Pythagoras himself
belongs to mystical wisdom rather than to scientific
scholarship.
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Straton of Lampsacus
Greek philosopher
Straton also spelled Strato, Latin Strato Physicus
died c. 270 bc
Main
Greek philosopher and successor of Theophrastus as head of
the Peripatetic school of philosophy (based on the teachings
of Aristotle). Straton was famous for his doctrine of the
void (asserting that all substances contain void and that
differences in the weight of substances are caused by
differences in the extension of the void), which served as
the theoretical base for the Hellenistic construction of air
and steam engines as described in Hero of Alexandria’s work.
An orthodox Aristotelian, Straton tempered his master’s
interpretation of nature with an insistence on causality and
materialism, denying any theological force at work in the
processes of nature. Straton’s writings as a whole are lost.
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Thales of Miletus

Greek philosopher
flourished 6th century bc
Main
philosopher renowned as one of the legendary Seven Wise Men,
or Sophoi, of antiquity (see philosophy, Western: The
pre-Socratic philosophers). He is remembered primarily for
his cosmology based on water as the essence of all matter,
with the Earth a flat disk floating on a vast sea. The Greek
historian Diogenes Laërtius (flourished 3rd century ad),
quoting Apollodorus of Athens (flourished 140 bc), placed
the birth of Thales during the 35th Olympiad (apparently a
transcription error; it should read the 39th Olympiad, c.
624 bc) and his death in the 58th Olympiad (548–545 bc) at
the age of 78.
No writings by Thales survive, and no contemporary
sources exist; thus, his achievements are difficult to
assess. Inclusion of his name in the canon of the legendary
Seven Wise Men led to his idealization, and numerous acts
and sayings, many of them no doubt spurious, were attributed
to him, such as “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess.”
According to the historian Herodotus (c. 484–c. 425 bc),
Thales was a practical statesman who advocated the
federation of the Ionian cities of the Aegean region. The
poet-scholar Callimachus (c. 305–c. 240 bc) recorded a
traditional belief that Thales advised navigators to steer
by the Little Bear (Ursa Minor) rather than by the Great
Bear (Ursa Major), both prominent constellations in the
Northern Hemisphere. He is also said to have used his
knowledge of geometry to measure the Egyptian pyramids and
to calculate the distance from shore of ships at sea.
Although such stories are probably apocryphal, they
illustrate Thales’ reputation. The poet-philosopher
Xenophanes (c. 560–c. 478 bc) claimed that Thales predicted
the solar eclipse that stopped the battle between King
Alyattes of Lydia (reigned c. 610–c. 560 bc) and King
Cyaxares of Media (reigned 625–585 bc), evidently on May 28,
585. Modern scholars believe, however, that he could not
possibly have had the knowledge to predict accurately either
the locality or the character of an eclipse. Thus, his feat
was apparently isolated and only approximate; Herodotus
spoke of his foretelling the year only. That the eclipse was
nearly total and occurred during a crucial battle
contributed considerably to his exaggerated reputation as an
astronomer.
Thales has been credited with the discovery of five
geometric theorems: (1) that a circle is bisected by its
diameter, (2) that angles in a triangle opposite two sides
of equal length are equal, (3) that opposite angles formed
by intersecting straight lines are equal, (4) that the angle
inscribed inside a semicircle is a right angle, and (5) that
a triangle is determined if its base and the two angles at
the base are given. His mathematical achievements are
difficult to assess, however, because of the ancient
practice of crediting particular discoveries to men with a
general reputation for wisdom.
The claim that Thales was the founder of European
philosophy rests primarily on Aristotle (384–322 bc), who
wrote that Thales was the first to suggest a single material
substratum for the universe—namely, water, or moisture. A
likely consideration in this choice was the seeming motion
that water exhibits, as seen in its ability to become vapour;
for what changes or moves itself was thought by the Greeks
to be close to life itself, and to Thales the entire
universe was a living organism, nourished by exhalations
from water.
Thales’ significance lies less in his choice of water as
the essential substance than in his attempt to explain
nature by the simplification of phenomena and in his search
for causes within nature itself rather than in the caprices
of anthropomorphic gods. Like his successors the
philosophers Anaximander (610–546/545 bc) and Anaximenes of
Miletus (flourished c. 545 bc), Thales is important in
bridging the worlds of myth and reason.
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Xenocrates

died 314 bc, Athens
Greek philosopher, pupil of Plato, and successor of
Speusippus as the head of the Greek Academy, which Plato
founded about 387 bc. In the company of Aristotle he left
Athens after Plato’s death in 348/347, returning in 339 on
his election as head of the Academy, where he remained until
his death.
Xenocrates’ writings are lost except for fragments, but
his doctrines appear to resemble Plato’s as reported by
Aristotle. Among them is the “derivation” of all reality
from the interaction of two opposite principles, “the One”
and “the indeterminate dyad.” It is the dyad that is
responsible for multiplicity, or diversity, evil, and
motion, whereas the One is responsible for unity, good, and
rest. Numbers and geometrical magnitudes are seen as the
first products of this derivation. In addition Xenocrates
divided all of reality into three realms: (1) the sensibles,
or objects of sensation; (2) the intelligibles, or objects
of true knowledge, such as Plato’s “Ideas”; and (3) the
bodies of the heavens, which mediate between the sensibles
and the intelligibles and are therefore objects of
“opinion.” This tripartite division typifies the Academy’s
tendency to bridge the gap between the two traditional modes
of cognition, the mode of sense experience and the mode of
intellection.
A second threefold division in Xenocrates’ thought
separated gods, men, and “demons.” The demons represented
semihuman, semidivine beings, some good and others evil. To
these beings Xenocrates attributed much of what popular
religion attributed to gods, and ritual mysteries were
instituted to propitiate them, especially the evil ones.
Though it is uncertain how literally Xenocrates viewed the
demons, his demonology was highly influential, particularly
on those early Christian writers who identified pagan
deities with evil demons.
The classical distinction differentiating mind, body, and
soul has been attributed by some to Xenocrates and by others
to the Stoic philosopher Poseidonius. The same is true of
the related doctrine that men die twice, the second time
occurring on the Moon and consisting in the mind’s
separation from the soul to make its ascent to the Sun.
Sometimes considered an Atomist for his view that matter is
composed of indivisible units, he held that Pythagoras, who
stressed the importance of numbers in philosophy, was
responsible for the Atomist view of acoustics, in which the
sound perceived as a single entity actually consists of
discrete sounds. The same Pythagorean influence on thinkers
of the Academy can be seen in Xenocrates’ devotion to
tripartite divisions. Yet another such division is found in
his general view of philosophy, which he divided into logic,
physics, and ethics. The origin of philosophy, he
maintained, lies in man’s desire to resolve his anxieties.
Happiness is defined as the acquisition of the perfection
that is peculiar and proper to man; thus, enjoyment consists
in being in contact with the things that are natural to him.
This doctrine, which suggests the primacy of ethics over
speculation in philosophy, foreshadows the Stoic view that
ethical norms are to be derived from observation of the
natural world. Xenocrates admitted, however, that external
items are important for happiness, a notion that the Stoics
rejected.
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Zeno of Citium

Greek philosopher
born c. 335 bc, Citium, Cyprus
died c. 263, Athens
Main
Greek thinker who founded the Stoic school of philosophy,
which influenced the development of philosophical and
ethical thought in Hellenistic and Roman times.
He went to Athens c. 312 bc and attended lectures by the
Cynic philosophers Crates of Thebes and Stilpon of Megara,
in addition to lectures at the Academy. Arriving at his own
philosophy, he began to teach in the Stoa Poikile (Painted
Colonnade), whence the name of his philosophy. Zeno’s
philosophical system included logic and theory of knowledge,
physics, and ethics—the latter being central. He taught that
happiness lay in conforming the will to the divine reason,
which governs the universe. In logic and the theory of
knowledge he was influenced by Antisthenes and Diodorus
Cronus, in physics by Heracleitus. None of his many
treatises, written in harsh but forceful Greek, has survived
save in fragmentary quotations.
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Zeno of Elea

Greek philosopher and mathematician
(c. 495 bc–c. 430 bc), Greek philosopher and mathematician,
whom Aristotle called the inventor of dialectic. He is
especially known for his paradoxes that contributed to the
development of logical and mathematical rigour and that were
insoluble until the development of precise concepts of
continuity and infinity.
Zeno was famous for the paradoxes whereby, in order to
recommend the Parmenidean doctrine of the existence of “the
one” (i.e., indivisible reality), he sought to controvert
the common-sense belief in the existence of “the many”
(i.e., distinguishable qualities and things capable of
motion). Zeno was the son of a certain Teleutagoras and the
pupil and friend of Parmenides. In Plato’s Parmenides,
Socrates, “then very young,” converses with Parmenides and
Zeno, “a man of about forty”; but it may be doubted whether
such a meeting was chronologically possible. Plato’s account
of Zeno’s purpose (Parmenides), however, is presumably
accurate. In reply to those who thought that Parmenides’
theory of the existence of “the one” involved
inconsistencies, Zeno tried to show that the assumption of
the existence of a plurality of things in time and space
carried with it more serious inconsistencies. In early youth
he collected his arguments in a book, which, according to
Plato, was put into circulation without his knowledge.
Zeno made use of three premises: first, that any unit has
magnitude; second, that it is infinitely divisible; and
third, that it is indivisible. Yet he incorporated arguments
for each: for the first premise, he argued that that which,
added to or subtracted from something else, does not
increase or decrease the second unit is nothing; for the
second, that a unit, being one, is homogeneous and that
therefore, if divisible, it cannot be divisible at one point
rather than another; for the third, that a unit, if
divisible, is divisible either into extended minima, which
contradicts the second premise or, because of the first
premise, into nothing. He had in his hands a very powerful
complex argument in the form of a dilemma, one horn of which
supposed indivisibility, the other infinite divisibility,
both leading to a contradiction of the original hypothesis.
His method had great influence and may be summarized as
follows: he continued Parmenides’ abstract, analytic manner
but started from his opponents’ theses and refuted them by
reductio ad absurdum. It was probably the two latter
characteristics which Aristotle had in mind when he called
him the inventor of dialectic.
That Zeno was arguing against actual opponents,
Pythagoreans who believed in a plurality composed of numbers
that were thought of as extended units, is a matter of
controversy. It is not likely that any mathematical
implications received attention in his lifetime. But in fact
the logical problems which his paradoxes raise about a
mathematical continuum are serious, fundamental, and
inadequately solved by Aristotle.
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