Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Heraclitus, son of Bloson, or according to some, of Heracon, was an Ephesian. He flourished during the sixty-ninth Olympiad. He was high-minded above all others and haughty, as is clear also from his treatise, in which he says: "Much learning does not teach understanding; else it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus." For he maintained that "Wisdom is one thing: to understand the thought which steers all things through all things." He also used to say that Homer deserved to be cast out of the contests and flogged, and Archilochus likewise.

​He would also say: "One should extinguish hubris more than a fire," and: "The people must fight for the law as for a rampart." He also attacks the Ephesians for having driven out his companion Hermodorus, in the passage where he says: "It is fitting for the Ephesians that all who are grown should hang themselves and leave the city to the young, seeing that they drove out Hermodorus, the most useful man among them, saying: 'Let no one among us be the most useful; but if anyone be such, let him be so elsewhere and among others.'" When he was asked by them to enact laws, he held them in contempt because the city was already in the grip of a wicked constitution.

​Retiring to the sanctuary of Artemis, he played knucklebones with the children; and when the Ephesians stood around him, he said: "Why are you amazed, you vile wretches? Is it not better to do this than to engage in politics with you?" Finally, having grown misanthropic and departed from the company of men, he lived in the mountains, feeding on grass and herbs. However, having contracted dropsy because of this, he returned to the city and inquired of the physicians enigmatically whether they could produce a drought out of a rainstorm; and when they did not understand, he buried himself in a cow-shed, hoping that he would be dried out by the warmth of the dung. But achieving nothing even in this way, he died, having lived sixty years.

​We also have an epigram on him as follows: "Often have I wondered at Heraclitus, how once having endured life thus, ill-fated, he then died; for a cruel disease drenched his body with water, quenched the light in his eyelids, and brought on darkness." Hermippus, however, says that he asked the physicians if anyone could evacuate the moisture by emptying the bowels; and when they gave up, he placed himself in the sun and ordered the boys to plaster him with dung; thus stretched out, he died on the second day and was buried in the marketplace. But Neanthes of Cyzicus says that, being unable to pull off the dung, he remained there, and because of the disfigurement went unrecognized and was devoured by dogs.

​He was wondrous from childhood, since even when young he claimed to know nothing, but upon reaching maturity that he knew everything. He was a pupil of no one, but said that he had sought out himself and learned everything from himself. Sotion, however, states that some said he had heard Xenophanes; and Ariston in his work *On Heraclitus* says that he was cured of the dropsy and died of another disease; and Hippobotus says this as well. The book attributed to him is entitled *On Nature* from its prevailing subject, and is divided into three discourses: one on the universe, one on politics, and one on theology.

​He dedicated it in the sanctuary of Artemis, having chosen, as some say, to write it rather obscurely, so that only those who were capable might approach it, and that it might not be easily despised through being common. Timon also sketches him, saying: "And among them up sprang Heraclitus, cuckoo-voiced, a reviler of the crowd, riddler." Theophrastus says that through melancholia he wrote some parts half-finished, and other parts at different times in inconsistent states. Antisthenes in his *Successions* cites as a proof of his high-mindedness that he yielded the kingship to his brother. The treatise gained such renown that from it followers arose who were called the Heracliteans.