Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​They also assert that the cosmos is generated, perishable, and spherical; that the stars are fire, and that by their mixture things on earth come to be; that the moon is eclipsed by falling into the shadow of the earth; that the soul both survives and transmigrates; and that rains are produced according to a change of the air; and they investigate nature in other respects as well, as Hecataeus and Aristagoras relate. They also established laws on behalf of justice, which they attributed to Hermes; and they revered as gods those animals that are useful. They also say that they themselves invented geometry, astronomy, and arithmetic. Now, the matter of the origin stands thus.

​Pythagoras was the first to name philosophy and to call himself a philosopher, when conversing in Sicyon with Leon, the tyrant of the Sicyonians or Phliasians, as Heracleides of Pontus says in his On the Woman without Breath; for he held that no one is wise except god. But previously it was called wisdom, and wise was he who professed this, who would be perfected in the summit of the soul, while a philosopher is one who embraces wisdom. And the wise were also called sophists; and not only they, but poets as well were called sophists, just as Cratinus too in the Archilochoi, praising those around Homer and Hesiod, calls them so.

​The following were accounted wise: Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilon, Bias, Pittacus. To these they add Anacharsis the Scythian, Myson of Chenae, Pherecydes of Syros, Epimenides of Crete; and some also add Peisistratus the tyrant. So much for the wise. Philosophy has had two beginnings, one from Anaximander and the other from Pythagoras; of whom the former had heard Thales, while Pherecydes instructed Pythagoras. And the one was called Ionian, because Thales, being an Ionian—for he was of Miletus—instructed Anaximander; the other Italian from Pythagoras, because he philosophized for the most part in Italy.

​The Ionian school terminates in Clitomachus, Chrysippus, and Theophrastus; the Italian in Epicurus. For from Thales came Anaximander, whose pupil was Anaximenes, whose pupil was Anaxagoras, whose pupil was Archelaus, whose pupil was Socrates, who introduced ethics; whose pupils were the other Socratics and Plato, who established the Old Academy; whose pupils were Speusippus and Xenocrates, whose pupil was Polemon, whose pupils were Crantor and Crates, whose pupil was Arcesilaus, who introduced the Middle Academy; whose pupil was Lacydes, who philosophized according to the New Academy; whose pupil was Carneades, whose pupil was Clitomachus. And thus it ends in Clitomachus.

​It terminates in Chrysippus as follows: from Socrates came Antisthenes, whose pupil was Diogenes the Cynic, whose pupil was Crates the Theban, whose pupil was Zeno of Citium, whose pupil was Cleanthes, whose pupil was Chrysippus. And in Theophrastus as follows: from Plato came Aristotle, whose pupil was Theophrastus. And the Ionian school ends in this manner. The Italian school ends thus: from Pherecydes came Pythagoras, whose pupil was his son Telauges, whose pupil was Xenophanes, whose pupil was Parmenides, whose pupil was Zeno of Elea, whose pupil was Leucippus, whose pupil was Democritus, whose pupils were many, but by name Nausiphanes, whose pupil was Epicurus.

​Of the philosophers, some have been dogmatists, others skeptics: dogmatists are those who declare their views on things as being comprehensible, skeptics those who suspend judgment on them as being incomprehensible. And some of them left behind treatises, while others did not write at all, as according to some Socrates, Stilpo, Philippus, Menedemus, Pyrrho, Theodorus, Carneades, Bryson; and according to some Pythagoras and Ariston of Chios, except for a few letters. Others left a single treatise each: Melissus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras; while Zeno wrote many, Xenophanes more, Democritus more, Aristotle more, Epicurus more, and Chrysippus more.