Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​To someone who was grieving because he was dying abroad, he said: “The descent to Hades is the same from every place.” He is believed to have been the first, as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous History, to declare that Homer’s poetry is about virtue and justice; and Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who was an acquaintance of his, carried this theory still further, being also the first to occupy himself with the poet’s treatment of nature. Anaxagoras was also the first to publish a book in prose. Silenus in the first book of his Histories says that in the archonship of Demylus a stone fell from heaven;

​and that Anaxagoras said that the whole heaven is composed of stones, held together by rapid rotation, and that if this should slacken, they will plunge downwards. Concerning his trial, diverse accounts are given. For Sotion in his Succession of the Philosophers says that he was prosecuted by Cleon for impiety, because he asserted that the sun was a mass of incandescent metal; and that though his pupil Pericles defended him, he was fined five talents and exiled. But Satyrus in his Lives says that the suit was brought by Thucydides, who was politically opposed to Pericles; and that the charge was not only impiety but also Medism; and that he was condemned to death in absentia.

​When both tidings were brought to him, that of his condemnation and that of the death of his children, he is said to have remarked concerning the condemnation: “Nature has long since passed sentence of death both upon them and upon me”; and concerning his children: “I knew that I had begotten mortals.” Some, however, refer this saying to Solon, and others to Xenophon. Demetrius of Phalerum in his On Old Age says that he even buried them with his own hands. Hermippus in his Lives says that he was cast into prison awaiting execution; and Pericles came forward and asked whether they had any charge against himself regarding his conduct in life; and when they said they had none: “Well then,” he said, “I am this man’s disciple; do not therefore be swayed by slanders to put the man to death, but listen to me and release him.” And he was released; but, unable to endure the indignity, he put an end to his own life.

​Hieronymus in the second book of his Scattered Notes says that Pericles brought him before the court, emaciated and wasted away by disease, so that he was acquitted more out of pity than by regular judgment. So much for his trial. He seems also to have borne some grudge against Democritus, having failed to secure an interview with him. Finally he withdrew to Lampsacus and there passed away. When the magistrates of the city asked what he wished to have done for him, he is reported to have said: “That the boys be allowed to play every year during the month in which I die.” And the custom is observed even to this day.

​When he died, the Lampsacenes buried him with honour and inscribed upon his tomb: “Here lies Anaxagoras, who traversed furthest unto the ultimate bound of truth concerning the celestial cosmos.” There is also an epigram of our own upon him: “The sun, Anaxagoras once claimed, is a fiery mass of metal, and on this account he was destined to die; but his friend Pericles rescued him; yet he took himself out of life through the softness of his wisdom.” There have also been three other men named Anaxagoras: one was an Isocratean orator; another was a sculptor, mentioned by Antigonus; and the third was a Zenodotean grammarian.