Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Eudoxus of Cnidus, son of Aeschines, was an astronomer, geometrician, physician, and legislator. He studied geometry under Archytas, and medicine under Philistion the Sicilian, as Callimachus says in his *Pinakes*. Sotion in his *Successions* says that he also heard Plato. For when he was about twenty-three years old and in straitened circumstances, attracted by the reputation of the Socratics, he set out for Athens with Theomedon the physician, being supported by him (some even say he was his favorite); and putting in at Piraeus, he went up to Athens every day and, after listening to the sophists there, returned.

​After spending two months there he returned home, and having raised funds from his friends, he sailed for Egypt with Chrysippus the physician, bearing letters of introduction from Agesilaus to Nectanebo; and Nectanebo introduced him to the priests. After staying there for a year and four months with his chin and eyebrows shaved, he composed, according to some, the *Eight-Year Cycle*. From there he went to Cyzicus and the Propontis, practicing as a sophist; he also visited Mausolus. Then he returned in this manner to Athens with a great many pupils around him, in order, as some say, to vex Plato, because he had initially rejected him.

​Some say that, when Plato was giving a banquet and there were many guests, Eudoxus introduced the semicircular arrangement of couches. Nicomachus, the son of Aristotle, says that he declared pleasure to be the good. He was received in his native city with great honor, as the decree passed concerning him shows. Moreover, he became most illustrious among the Greeks, having written laws for his fellow citizens, as Hermippus says in the fourth book of *On the Seven Sages*, as well as astronomical treatises, geometrical treatises, and certain other remarkable works. He also had three daughters: Actis, Philtis, and Delphis.

​Eratosthenes in his works *To Baton* says that he also composed *Dialogues of Dogs*; though others say that Egyptians wrote them in their own tongue, and that he translated and published them for the Greeks. Chrysippus of Cnidus, son of Erineus, heard him lecture on the gods, the cosmos, and celestial phenomena, while he studied medicine under Philistion the Sicilian. He also left behind most excellent memoirs. He had a son, Aristagoras, whose pupil was Chrysippus son of Aethlius, whose visual healing treatments are reported, since physical theorems fell under his discernment.

​There have been three men named Eudoxus: this man himself; a second from Rhodes who wrote histories; and a third from Sicily, son of Agathocles, a comic poet who won three victories at the City festival and five at the Lenaea, as Apollodorus says in his *Chronology*. We also find another Cnidian physician, about whom Eudoxus says in his *Circuit of the Earth* that he regularly recommended moving the joints continuously by every form of exercise, and likewise the senses. The same writer says that the Cnidian Eudoxus flourished around the hundred and third Olympiad, and discovered the properties of curved lines. He died in his fifty-third year. When he was living in Egypt with Chonuphis of Heliopolis, the Apis bull licked around his cloak. The priests therefore predicted that he would be famous but short-lived, as Favorinus says in his *Memorabilia*.

​We have an epigram on him as follows: "In Memphis there is a tale that Eudoxus once learned his own fate in advance from the bull of beautiful horns. Yet it said nothing; for whence has an ox speech? Nature gave no babbling mouth to the calf Apis. Standing sideways beside him, it licked around his robe, plainly showing this: 'You shall put off life ere long.' Wherefore his doom came swiftly upon him, when he had looked upon the Pleiades ten times five plus three." They called him *Endoxos* (renowned) instead of *Eudoxos* because of the brilliance of his fame. Now that we have gone through the celebrated Pythagoreans, let us next discuss those who are called the "sporadic" philosophers; and we must speak first of Heraclitus.