| Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (English) (XML Header) [word count] [lemma count] [Diog. Laert.]. | ||
| <<Diog. Laert. 8.1.44 | Diog. Laert. 8.1.50 (Greek) | >>Diog. Laert. 8.2.58 |
The far-fam'd boxer of the Samians?
I am Pythagoras ; ask the Elians
What were my feats, thou'lt not believe the tale.
Favorinus says that our philosopher used definitions throughout the subject matter of mathematics ; their use was extended by Socrates and his disciples, and afterwards by Aristotle and the Stoics.
Further, we are told that he was the first to call the heaven the universe and the earth spherical, note though Theophrastus says it was Parmenides, and Zeno that it was Hesiod.
8.1.49 It is said that Cylon was a rival of Pythagoras, as Antilochus note was of Socrates.Pythagoras the athlete was also the subject of another epigram as follows note:
Gone to box with other lads
Is the lad Pythagoras,
Gone to the games Olympian
Crates' son the Samian.
The philosopher also wrote the following letter :
Pythagoras to
Anaximenes.
"Even you, O most excellent of men, were you no better born and famed than Pythagoras, would have risen and departed from Miletus. But now your ancestral glory has detained you as it had detained me were I Anaximenes's peer. But if you, the best men, abandon your cities, then will their good order perish, and the peril from the Medes will increase. 8.1.50 For always to scan the heavens is not well, but more seemly is it to be provident for one's mother country. For I too am not altogether in my discourses but am found no less in the wars which the Italians wage with one another."
Having now finished our account of Pythagoras, we have next to speak of the noteworthy Pythagoreans ; after them will come the philosophers whom some denominate "sporadic" [i.e. belonging to no particular school]; and then, in the next place, we will append the succession of all those worthy of notice as far as Epicurus, in the way that we promised. We have already treated of Theano and Telauges : so now we have first to speak of Empedocles, for some say he was a pupil of Pythagoras.
Empedocles was, according to Hippobotus, the son of Meton and grandson of Empedocles, and was a native of Agrigentum. This is confirmed by Timaeus in the fifteenth book of his Histories, and he adds that Empedocles, the poet's grandfather, had been a man of distinction. Hermippus also agrees with Timaeus. So, too, Heraclides, in his treatise On Diseases, note says that he was of an illustrious family, his grandfather having kept racehorses. Eratosthenes also in his Olympic Victories records, on the authority of Aristotle, that the father of Meton was a victor in the 71st Olympiad. note
8.2.52 The grammarian Apollodorus in his Chronology tells us thatHe was the son of Meton, and Glaucus says he went to Thurii, just then founded. note Then farther on he adds :
Those who relate that, being exiled from his home, he went to Syracuse and fought in their ranks against the Athenians seem, in my judgement at least, to be completely mistaken. For by that time either he was no longer living or in extreme old age, which is inconsistent with the story.
For Aristotle and Heraclides both affirm that he died at the age of sixty. The victor with the ridinghorse in the 71st Olympiad was
This man's namesake and grandfather,
so that Apollodorus in one and the same passage indicates the date as well as the fact.
8.2.53But Satyrus in his Lives states that Empedocles was the son of Exaenetus and himself left a son named Exaenetus, and that in the same Olympiad Empedocles himself was victorious in the horse-race and his son in wrestling, or, as Heraclides note in his Epitome has it, in the foot-race. I found note in the Memorabilia of Favorinus a statement that Empedocles feasted the sacred envoys on a sacrificial ox made of honey and barley-meal, and that he had a brother named Callicratides. Telauges, the son of Pythagoras, in his letter to Philolaus calls Empedocles the son of Archinomus.
8.2.54That he belonged to Agrigentum in Sicily he himself testifies at the beginning of his Purifications note:
My friends, who dwell in the great city sloping down to yellow Acragas, hard by the citadel.
So much for his family.
Timaeus in the ninth book of his Histories says he was a pupil of Pythagoras, adding that, having been convicted at that time of stealing his discourses, he was, like Plato, excluded from taking part in the discussions of the school ; and further, that Empedocles himself mentions Pythagoras in the lines note:
And there lived among them a man of superhuman knowledge, who verily possessed the greatest wealth of wisdom.
Others say that it is to Parmenides that he is here referring.
| Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (English) (XML Header) [word count] [lemma count] [Diog. Laert.]. | ||
| <<Diog. Laert. 8.1.44 | Diog. Laert. 8.1.50 (Greek) | >>Diog. Laert. 8.2.58 |
