| Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (English) (XML Header) [word count] [lemma count] [Diog. Laert.]. | ||
| <<Diog. Laert. 8.2.71 | Diog. Laert. 8.3.78 (Greek) | >>Diog. Laert. 8.6.84 |
Thou, Empedocles, didst cleanse thy body with nimble flame, fire didst thou drink from everlasting bowls. note I will not say that of thine own will thou didst hurl thyself into the stream of Etna ; thou didst fall in against thy will when thou wouldst fain not have been found out.
And another note :
Verily there is a tale about the death of Empedocles, how that once he fell from a carriage and broke his right thigh. But if he leapt into the bowls of fire and so took a draught of life, how was it that his tomb was shown still in Megara ?
8.2.76His doctrines were as follows, that there are four elements, fire, water, earth and air, besides friendship by which these are united, and strife by which they are separated. These are his words note : Shining Zeus and life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, who lets flow from her tears the source of mortal life,
where by Zeus he means fire, by Hera earth, by Aidoneus air, and by Nestis water.
"And their continuous change," he says, "never ceases," note as if this ordering of things were eternal. At all events he goes on note :
At one time all things uniting in one through Love, at another each carried in a different direction through the hatred born of strife.
8.2.77The sun he calls a vast collection of fire and larger than the moon ; the moon, he says, is of the shape of a quoit, and the heaven itself crystalline. The soul, again, assumes all the various forms of animals and plants. At any rate he says note :
Before now I was born a boy and a maid, a bush and a bird, and a dumb fish leaping out of the sea.
His poems On Nature and Purifications run to 5000 lines, his Discourse on Medicine to 600. Of the tragedies we have spoken above.
Epicharmus of Cos, son of Helothales, was another pupil of Pythagoras. When three months old he was sent to Megara in Sicily and thence to Syracuse, as he tells us in his own writings. On his statue this epigram is written note :
If the great sun outshines the other stars,
If the great sea is mightier than the streams,
So Epicharmus' wisdom all excelled,
Whom Syracuse his fatherland thus crowned.
He has left memoirs containing his physical, ethical and medical doctrines, and he has made marginal notes in most of the memoirs, which clearly show that they were written by him. He died at the age of ninety.
Archytas of Tarentum, son of Mnesagoras or, if we may believe Aristoxenus, of Hestiaeus, was another of the Pythagoreans. He it was whose letter saved Plato when he was about to be put to death by Dionysius. He was generally admired for his excellence in all fields ; thus he was generalissimo of his city seven times, while the law excluded all others even from a second year of command. We have two letters written to him by Plato, he having first written to Plato in these terms :
"Archytas wishes Plato good health.
8.4.80"You have done well to get rid of your ailment, as we learn both from your own message and through Lamiscus that you have : we attended to the matter of the memoirs and went up to Lucania where we found the true progeny of Ocellus [to wit, his writings]. We did get the works On Law, On Kingship, Of Piety, and On the Origin of the Universe, all of which we have sent on to you ; but the rest are, at present, nowhere to be found ; if they should turn up, you shall have them." This is Archytas's letter ; and Plato's answer is as follows:
"Plato to Archytas greeting.
8.4.81"I was overjoyed to get the memoirs which you sent, and I am very greatly pleased with the writer of them ; he seems to be a right worthy descendant of his distant forbears. They came, so it is said, from Myra, and were among those who emigrated from Troy in Laomedon's time, really good men, as the traditional story shows. Those memoirs of mine about which you wrote are not yet in a fit state ; but such as they are I have sent them on to you. We both agree about their custody, so I need not give any advice on that head. Farewell."
These then are the letters which passed between them.
8.4.82Four men have borne the name of Archytas : (1) our subject ; (2) a musician, of Mytilene ; (3) the compiler of a work On Agriculture ; (4) a writer of epigrams. Some speak of a fifth, an architect, to whom is attributed a book On Mechanism which begins like this : "These things I learnt from Teucer of Carthage." A tale is told of the musician that, when it was cast in his teeth that he could not be heard, he replied, "Well, my instrument shall speak for me and win the day."
Aristoxenus says that our Pythagorean was never defeated during his whole generalship, though he once resigned it owing to bad feeling against him, whereupon the army at once fell into the hands of the enemy.
| Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (English) (XML Header) [word count] [lemma count] [Diog. Laert.]. | ||
| <<Diog. Laert. 8.2.71 | Diog. Laert. 8.3.78 (Greek) | >>Diog. Laert. 8.6.84 |
