Early Greek Philosophy (pre-Socratic fragments and testimony)

Now it is not very hard to see how considerations of a meteorological kind may have led Thales to adopt the view he did. Of all the things we know, water seems to take the most various shapes. It is familiar to us in a solid, a liquid, and a vaporous form, and so Thales may well have thought that he saw the world-process from water and back to water again going on before his very eyes. The phenomenon of evaporation naturally suggests everywhere that the fire of the heavenly bodies is kept up by the moisture which they draw from the sea. Even at the present day, the country people speak of the appearance of sunbeams as “the sun drawing water.” Water comes down again in the rain; and lastly, so the early cosmologists thought, it turns to earth. This seems strange to us, but it may have seemed natural enough to men who were familiar with the river of Egypt which had formed the Delta, and with the torrents of Asia Minor, which bring down unusually large alluvial deposits. At the present day the Gulf of Latmos, on which Miletos used to stand, is completely filled up. Lastly, they thought, earth turns once more to water—an idea derived from the observation of dew, night-mists, and subterranean springs. For these last were not in early times supposed to have anything at all to do with the rain. The “waters under the earth” were regarded as an entirely independent source of moisture.

The view here taken most resembles that of the “Homeric allegorist” Herakleitos (R. P. 12 a). That, however, is also a conjecture, probably of Stoic, as the others are of Peripatetic, origin. [Sidenote: Theology.]

11. The third of the statements mentioned above is supposed by Aristotle himself to imply that Thales believed in a “soul of the world,” though he is careful to mark this as no more than an inference. The doctrine of the world-soul is then attributed quite positively to Thales by Aetios, who gives it in the Stoic phraseology which he found in his immediate source, and identifies the world-intellect with God. Cicero found a similar account of the matter in the Epicurean manual which he followed, but he goes a step further. Eliminating the Stoic pantheism, he turns the world-intellect into a Platonic demiourgos, and says that Thales held there was a divine mind which formed all things out of water. All this is derived from the cautious statement of Aristotle, and can have no greater authority than its source. We need not enter, then, upon the old controversy whether Thales was an atheist or not. It is really irrelevant. If we may judge from his successors, he may very possibly have called water divine; but, if he had any religious beliefs at all, we may be sure they were quite unconnected with his cosmological theory. Arist. de An. Α, 5. 411 a 7 (R. P. 13).

Aet. i. 7, 11 = Stob. i. 56 (R. P. 14). On the sources here referred to, see Appendix, §§ 11, 12. Cicero, de Nat. D. 1. 25 (R. P. 13 b). On Cicero’s source, see Dox. pp. 125, 128. The Herculanean papyrus of Philodemos is, unfortunately, defective just at this point, but it is not likely that the Epicurean manual anticipated Cicero’s mistake.

Nor must we make too much of the saying itself that “all things are full of gods.” It is often supposed to mean that Thales attributed a “plastic life” to matter, or that he was a “hylozoist.” We have seen already how misleading this way of speaking is apt to be, and we shall do well to avoid it. It is not safe to regard such an apophthegm as evidence for anything; the chances are that it belongs to Thales as one of the Seven Wise Men, rather than as founder of the Milesian school. Further, such sayings are, as a rule, anonymous to begin with, and are attributed now to one sage and now to another. On the other hand, it is extremely probable that Thales did say that the magnet and amber had souls. That is no apophthegm, but something more on the level of the statement that the earth floats on the water. It is, in fact, just the sort of thing we should expect Hekataios to record about Thales. It would be wrong, however, to draw any inferences from it as to his view of the world; for to say that the magnet and amber are alive is to imply, if anything, that other things are not. See Introd. § VIII.

Plato refers to the saying πάντα πλήρη θεῶν in Laws, 899 b 9 (R. P. 14 b), without mentioning Thales. That ascribed to Herakleitos in the de part. An. Α, 5. 645 a 17 seems to be a mere variation on it. So in Diog. ix. 7 (R. P. 46 d) Herakleitos is credited with the saying πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι κα δαιμόνων πλήρη. Bäumker, Das Problem der Materie, p. 10, n. 1. II. ANAXIMANDER [Sidenote: Life.] 12. The next name that has come down to us is that of Anaximander, son of Praxiades. He too was a citizen of Miletos, and Theophrastos described him as an “associate” of Thales. We have seen how that expression is to be understood (§ XIV.).

According to Apollodoros, Anaximander was sixty-four years old in Ol. LVIII. 2 (547/6 B.C.); and this is confirmed by Hippolytos, who says he was born in Ol. XLII. 3 (610/9 B.C.), and by Pliny, who assigns his discovery of the obliquity of the zodiac to the same Olympiad. We seem to have here something more than a mere combination of the ordinary type; for, according to all the rules of Alexandrian chronology, Anaximander should have “flourished” in 565 B.C., that is, just half-way between Thales and Anaximenes, and this would make him sixty, not sixty-four, in 546. Now Apollodoros appears to have said that he had met with the work of Anaximander; and his reason for mentioning this must be that he found in it some indication which enabled him to fix its date without having recourse to conjecture. Diels suggests that Anaximander may have given his age at the time of writing as sixty-four, and that the book may have contained some other statement showing it to have been published in 547/6 B.C. Perhaps, however, this hardly does justice to the fact that the year given is just that which preceded the fall of Sardeis and the subjugation of the Lydian empire by the Persians. It may be a more plausible conjecture that Anaximander, writing some years later, incidentally mentioned what his age had been at the time of that great crisis. We know from Xenophanes that the question, “How old were you when the Mede appeared?” was considered an interesting one in those days. At all events, we seem to be justified in believing that Anaximander was a generation younger than Thales. When he died we do not really know.

R. P. 15 d. That the words πολίτης καὶ ἑταῖρος, given by Simplicius, de Caelo, p. 615, 13, are the original words of Theophrastos is shown by the agreement of Cic. Acad. ii. 118, popularis et sodalis. The two passages represent quite independent branches of the tradition. See Appendix, §§ 7, 12. Diog. ii. 2 (R. P. 15); Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (Dox. p. 560); Plin. N.H. ii. 31. Pliny’s dates come from Apollodoros through Nepos. Rhein. Mus. xxxi. p. 24. Xenophanes, fr. 22 (fr. 17, Karsten; R. P. 95 a). Jacoby (p. 190) thinks that Apollodoros fixed the floruit of Anaximander forty years before that of Pythagoras, that is, in 572/1 B.C., and that the statement as to his age in 547/6 is a mere inference from this. The statement that he “died soon after” (Diog. ii. 2; R. P. 15) seems to mean that Apollodoros made him die in the year of Sardeis (546/5), one of his regular epochs. If this is so, Apollodoros cannot have said also that he flourished in the days of Polykrates, and Diels is probably right in supposing that this notice refers to Pythagoras and has been inserted in the wrong place.

Like his predecessor, Anaximander distinguished himself by certain practical inventions. Some writers credited him with that of the gnomon; but that can hardly be correct. Herodotos tells us this instrument came from Babylon, so perhaps it was Anaximander who made it known among the Greeks. He was also the first to construct a map, and Eratosthenes said this was the map elaborated by Hekataios. For the gnomon, see Introd. p. 31, n. 44; and cf. Diog. ii. 1 (R. P. 15); Herod. ii. 109 (R. P. 15 a). Pliny, on the other hand, ascribes the invention of the gnomon to Anaximenes (N.H. ii. 87). The truth seems to be that the erection of celebrated gnomons was traditionally ascribed to certain philosophers. That of Delos was referred to Pherekydes. For the map see Agathemeros, i. 1, Ἀναξίμανδρος ὁ Μιλήσιος ἀκουστὴς Θαλέω πρώτος ἐτόλμησε τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν πίνακι γράψαι, μεθ’ ὃν Ἑκαταῖος ὁ Μιλήσιος ἀνὴρ πολυπλανὴς διηκρίβωσεν, ὥστε θαυμασθῆναι τὸ πρᾶγμα. This is from Eratosthenes. Cf. Strabo, i. p. 7. [Sidenote: Theophrastos on Anaximander’s theory of the primary substance.]

13. Nearly all we know of Anaximander’s system is derived in the last resort from Theophrastos. As to the credibility of what we are told on his authority, it is enough to remark that the original work, which was in the hands of Apollodoros, must certainly have existed in the time of Theophrastos. Moreover, he seems once at least to have quoted Anaximander’s own words, and he criticised his style. Here are the remains of what he said of him in the First Book:— Anaximander of Miletos, son of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and associate of Thales, said that the material cause and first element of things was the Infinite, he being the first to introduce this name for the material cause. He says it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but a substance different from them which is infinite, from which arise all the heavens and the worlds within them.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (Dox. p. 476; R. P. 16). He says that this is eternal and ageless, and that it encompasses all the worlds.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 17 a).

And into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more, “as is ordained; for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the appointed time,” as he says in these somewhat poetical terms.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 16). And besides this, there was an eternal motion, in the course of which was brought about the origin of the worlds.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 17 a). He did not ascribe the origin of things to any alteration in matter, but said that the oppositions in the substratum, which was a boundless body, were separated out.—Simpl. Phys. p. 150, 20 (R. P. 18). See the conspectus of extracts from Theophrastos given by Diels, Dox. p. 133; Vors. pp. 13 sqq. In this and other cases, where the words of the original have been preserved by Simplicius, I have given them alone. On the various writers quoted, see Appendix, § 9 sqq. Simplicius says “successor and disciple” (διάδοχος καὶ μαθητής) in his Commentary on the Physics; but see above, p. 52, n. 2. For the expression τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεῖα, see Diels, Elementum, p. 25, n. 4. In view of this, we must keep the MS. reading εἶναι, instead of writing νυνί with Usener.

Diels (Vors. p. 13) begins the actual quotation with the words ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσις.... The Greek practice of blending quotations with the text tells against this. It is very rare for a Greek writer to open a verbal quotation abruptly. Further, it is safer not to ascribe the terms γένεσις and φθορά in their technical Platonic sense to Anaximander. [Sidenote: The primary substance is not one of the “elements.”] 14. Anaximander taught, then, that there was one eternal, indestructible substance out of which everything arises, and into which everything once more returns; a boundless stock from which the waste of existence is continually being made good. This is only the natural development of the thought we have ventured to ascribe to Thales, and there can be no doubt that Anaximander at least distinctly formulated it. Indeed, we can still follow to some extent the reasoning which led him to do so. Thales had regarded water as the most likely of all the things we know to be that of which all others are forms; Anaximander appears to have asked himself how the primary substance could be one of these particular things. His argument seems to be preserved by Aristotle, who has the following passage in his discussion of the Infinite:—

Further, there cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite, either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they then derive from it, nor without this qualification. For there are some who make this (i.e. a body distinct from the elements) the infinite, and not air or water, in order that the other things may not be destroyed by their infinity. They are in opposition one to another—air is cold, water moist, and fire hot—and therefore, if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time. Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the elements arise.—Arist. Phys. Γ, 5. 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b).

It is clear that in this passage Anaximander is contrasted with Thales and with Anaximenes. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the account given of his reasoning is substantially correct, though the form is Aristotle’s own, and the mention of “elements” is an anachronism. Anaximander was struck, it would seem, by the opposition and strife between the things which go to make up the world; the warm fire was opposed to the cold air, the dry earth to the moist sea. These opposites were at war, and any predominance of one over the other was an “injustice” for which they must make reparation to one another. We may suppose that his thoughts ran somewhat as follows. If Thales had been right in saying that water was the fundamental reality, it would not be easy to see how anything else could ever have existed. One side of the opposition, the cold and moist, would have had its way unchecked, injustice would have prevailed, and the warm and dry would have been driven from the field long ago. We must, then, have something which is not itself one of the warring opposites we know, something more primitive, out of which they arise, and into which they once more pass away. That Anaximander called this something by the name of φύσις, is clear from the doxographers; the current statement that the word ἀρχή in the sense of a “first principle” was introduced by him, is probably due to a misunderstanding of what Theophrastos said.

The conception of elements is not older than Empedokles (§ 106), and the word στοιχεῖα, which is properly translated by elementa, was first used in this sense by Plato. For the history of the term, see Diels, Elementum (1899). The important word ἀλλήλοις was omitted in the Aldine Simplicius, but is in all the MSS. We shall see that in Herakleitos “justice” means the observance of an equal balance between what were called later the elements (§ 72). See also Introd. p. 32, n. 45.

If the words quoted from Theophrastos by Simplicius, Phys. p. 24, 15 (R. P. 16), stood by themselves, no one would ever have supposed them to mean that Anaximander called the Boundless ἀρχή. They would naturally be rendered: “having been the first to introduce this name (i.e. τὸ ἄπειρον) for the ἀρχή”; but the words of Hippolytos (Ref. i. 6, 2), πρῶτος τοὔνομα καλέσας τῆς ἀρχῆς, have led nearly all writers to take the passage in the less obvious sense. We now know, however, that Hippolytos is no independent authority, but rests altogether on Theophrastos; so the natural view to take is that either his immediate source, or he himself, or a copyist, has dropped out τοῦτο before τοὔνομα, and corrupted κομίσας into καλέσας. It is not credible that Theophrastos made both statements. The other passage from Simplicius compared by Usener (p. 150, 23), πρῶτος αὐτὸς ἀρχὴν ὀνομάσας τὸ ὑποκείμενον, does not seem to me to have anything to do with the question. It means simply that Anaximander was the first to name the substratum as the “material cause,” which is a different point altogether. This is how Neuhäuser takes the passage (Anaximander, pp. 7 sqq.); but I cannot agree with him in holding that the word ὑποκείμενον is ascribed to the Milesian. [Sidenote: Aristotle’s account of the theory.]

15. It was natural for Aristotle to regard this theory as an anticipation or presentiment of his own doctrine of “indeterminate matter.” He knew very well, of course, that he himself was the author of that; but it is in accordance with his method to represent his own theories as the distinct formulation of truths which earlier thinkers had only guessed at. It was to be expected, then, that he should sometimes express the views of Anaximander in terms of the theory of “elements.” He knew too that the Boundless was a body, though in his own system there was no room for anything corporeal prior to the elements; so he had to speak of it as a boundless body “alongside of” or “distinct from” the elements (παρὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα). So far as I know, no one has doubted that, when he uses this phrase, he is referring to Anaximander. Arist. Met. Λ, 2. 1069 b 18 (R. P. 16 c). This is taken for granted in Phys. Γ, 4. 203 a 16; 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b), and stated in Γ, 8. 208 a 8 (R. P. 16 a). Cf. Simpl. Phys. p. 150, 20 (R. P. 18).

In a number of other places Aristotle speaks of a thinker, whom he does not happen to name, who held that the primary substance was something “intermediate between” the elements or between two of them. Nearly all the Greek commentators referred this to Anaximander also, but most modern writers refuse to follow them. It is, no doubt, easy to show that Anaximander can have never meant to describe the Boundless in this way, but that is no real objection to the older interpretation. It is difficult to see that it is more of an anachronism to call the Boundless “intermediate between the elements” than to say that it is “distinct from the elements”; and indeed, if once we introduce the elements at all, the former description is in some ways the more adequate of the two. At any rate, if we refuse to understand these passages as referring to Anaximander, we shall have to say that Aristotle paid a great deal of attention to some early thinker, whose very name has been lost, and who not only agreed with some of Anaximander’s views, but also, as is shown by one passage, used some of his most characteristic expressions. We may add that in one or two places Aristotle certainly seems to identify the “intermediate” with the something “distinct from” the elements.

Aristotle speaks four times of something intermediate between Fire and Air (Gen. Corr. Β, 1. 328 b 35; ib. 5. 332 a 21; Phys. Α, 4. 187 a 14; Met. Α, 7. 988 a 30). In five places we have something intermediate between Water and Air (Met. Α, 7. 988 a 13; Gen. Corr. Β, 5. 332 a 21; Phys. Γ, 4. 203 a 18; ib. 5. 205 a 27; de Caelo, Γ, 5. 303 b 12). Once (Phys. Α, 6. 189 b 1) we hear of something between Water and Fire. This variation shows at once that he is not speaking historically. If any one ever held the doctrine of τὸ μεταξύ, he must have known perfectly well which two elements he meant. Arist. de Caelo, Γ, 5. 303 b 12, ὕδατος μὲν λεπτότερον, ἀέρος πυκνότερον, ὃ περιέχειν φασὶ πάντας τοὺς οὐρανοὺς ἄπειρον ὄν. That this refers to Idaios of Himera, as suggested by Zeller (p. 258), seems very improbable. Aristotle nowhere mentions his name, and the tone of his reference to Hippon in Met. Α, 3. 984 a 3 (R. P. 219 a) shows that he was not likely to pay so much attention to the ἐπίγονοι of the Milesian school.

Cf. Phys. Γ, 5. 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b), where Zeller rightly refers τὸ παρὰ τὰ στοιχεῖα to Anaximander. Now, at the end (205 a 25) the whole passage is summarised thus: καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ οὐθεὶς τὸ ἓν καὶ ἄπειρον πῦρ ἐποίησεν οὐδὲ γῆν τῶν φυσιολόγων, ἀλλ’ ἢ ὕδωρ ἢ ἀέρα ἢ τὸ μέσον αὐτῶν. In Gen. Corr. Β, 1. 328 b 35 we have first τι μεταξὺ τούτων σῶμά τε ὂν καὶ χωριστόν, and a little further on (329 a 9) μίαν ὕλην παρὰ τὰ εἰρημένα. In Β, 5. 332 a 20 we have οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ἄλλο τί γε παρὰ ταῦτα, οἶον μέσον τι ἀέρος καὶ ὕδατος ἢ ἀέρος καὶ πυρός.

There is even one place in which he appears to speak of Anaximander’s Boundless as a “mixture,” though his words may perhaps admit of another interpretation. But this is of no consequence for our interpretation of Anaximander himself. It is certain that he cannot have said anything about “elements,” which no one thought of before Empedokles, and no one could think of before Parmenides. The question has only been mentioned at all because it has been the subject of a lengthy controversy, and because it throws great light on the historical value of Aristotle’s statements. From the point of view of his own system, these are abundantly justified; but we shall have to remember in other cases that, when he seems to attribute an idea to some earlier thinker, we are not in the least bound to believe what he says in a historical sense. Met. Λ, 2. 1069 b 18 (R. P. 16 c). Zeller (p. 205, n. 1) assumes an “easy zeugma.” I should prefer to say that καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους τὸ μῖγμα was an afterthought, and that Aristotle really meant τὸ Ἀναξαγόρου ἓν ... καὶ Ἀναξιμάνδρου. Met. Α, 4. 187 a 20 does not assign the “mixture” to Anaximander.

For the literature of this controversy, see R. P. 15. A good deal of light is thrown on this and similar questions by W. A. Heidel, “Qualitative Change in Pre-Socratic Philosophy” (Arch. xix. p. 333). [Sidenote: The primary substance is infinite.]

16. Anaximander’s reason for conceiving the primary substance as boundless was, no doubt, that indicated by Aristotle, namely, “that becoming might not fail.” It is not likely, however, that these words are his own, though the doxographers speak as if they were. It is enough for us to know that Theophrastos, who had seen his book, attributed the thought to him. And certainly the way in which he regarded the world would bring home to him with more than common force the need of a boundless stock of matter. The “opposites” of which our world consists are, we have seen, at war with one another, and their strife is marked by “unjust” encroachments on either side. The warm commits “injustice” in summer, the cold in winter. To redress the balance, they must be absorbed once more in their common ground; and this would lead in the long run to the destruction of everything but the Boundless itself, if there were not an inexhaustible supply of it from which opposites might continually be separated out afresh. We must picture to ourselves, then, an endless mass, which is not any one of the opposites we know, stretching out without limit on every side of the heavens which bound the world we live in. This mass is a body, and out of it our world once emerged by the “separating out” of the opposites, which one day will all be absorbed again in the Boundless, and our world will cease to be.

Phys. Γ, 8. 208 a 8 (R. P. 16 a). That this refers to Anaximander is shown by Aet. i. 3, 3 (R. P. 16 a). The same argument is given in Phys. Γ, 4. 203 b 18, a passage where Anaximander has just been quoted by name, τῷ οὕτως ἂν μόνον μὴ ὑπολείπειν γένεσιν καὶ φθοράν, εἰ ἄπειρον εἴη ὅθεν ἀφαιρεῖται τὸ γιγνόμενον. I cannot, however, believe that the arguments given at the beginning of this chapter (203 b 7; R. P. 17) are Anaximander’s. They bear the stamp of the Eleatic dialectic, and are, in fact, those of Melissos.

I have assumed that the word ἄπειρον means spatially infinite (though not in any precise mathematical sense), not qualitatively indeterminate, as maintained by Teichmüller and Tannery. The decisive reasons for holding that the sense of the word is “boundless in extent” are as follows: (1) Theophrastos said that the primary substance of Anaximander was ἄπειρον and contained all the worlds, and the word περιέχειν everywhere means “to encompass,” not, as has been suggested, “to contain potentially.” (2) Aristotle says (Phys. Γ, 4. 203 b 23) διὰ γὰρ τὸ ἐν τῇ νοήσει μὴ ὑπολείπειν καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς δοκεῖ ἄπειρος εἶναι καὶ τὰ μαθηματικὰ μεγέθη καὶ τὰ ἔξω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ· ἀπείρου δ’ ὄντος τοῦ ἔξω, καὶ σῶμα ἄπειρον εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ κόσμοι. (3) Anaximander’s theory of the ἄπειρον was adopted by Anaximenes, and he identified it with Air, which is not qualitatively indeterminate. [Sidenote: The eternal motion.]

17. The doxographers say it was the “eternal motion” that brought into being “all the heavens and all the worlds within them.” As we have seen (§ VIII), it is not likely that Anaximander himself used the phrase “eternal motion.” That is rather Aristotle’s own version of what he found stated about the “separating out” of opposites. We are not told expressly how Anaximander conceived this to operate, but the term “separating out” suggests some process of shaking and sifting as in a sieve. Now it is just such a process that Plato makes the Pythagorean Timaios describe, and the most probable theory is certainly that here, as in many other cases, he has reproduced a genuinely early view. As we shall see, it is quite likely that the Pythagoreans should have followed Anaximander in this. In any case, it is wrong to identify the “eternal motion” with the diurnal revolution of the heavens, as has sometimes been done. That motion cannot possibly be eternal, for the simple reason that the heavens themselves are perishable. Aristotle says, indeed, that all who believe the world has come into being represent the earth as having been forced into the centre by the circular motion; but, though this doubtless refers to Anaximander among others, it is quite irrelevant here. It has to do only with the formation of the world after it has been once for all separated off and enclosed in its own heaven, and we shall have to remember it when we come to that part of the theory. At present, we have only to do with the motion of the Boundless itself; and, if we wish to picture that, it is much safer to regard it as a sort of shaking up and down which sorts out the opposites from the infinite mass.

Plato, Tim. 52 e, where the elements are separated by being shaken, stirred, and carried in different directions: “just as by sieves and instruments for winnowing corn, the grain is shaken and sifted, and the dense and heavy parts go one way, and the rare and light are carried to a different place and settle there.” For the relation of Pythagoreanism to Anaximander, see below, § 53. Arist. de Caelo, Β, 13. 295 a 9. The identification of the eternal motion with the diurnal revolution is insisted on by Teichmüller and Tannery, and is the real source of the very unnatural interpretation which they give to the word ἄπειρον. It was obviously difficult to credit Anaximander with a belief in an infinite body which revolves in a circle. The whole theory rests upon a confusion between the finite spherical κόσμος within the οὐρανός and the infinite περιέχον outside it. [Sidenote: The innumerable worlds.]

18. We are told more than once that Anaximander believed there were “innumerable worlds in the Boundless,” and it is now usual to regard these with Zeller as an infinite series succeeding one another in time. It may be allowed at once that his disproof of the idea that the worlds are coexistent and eternal is decisive. To suppose that Anaximander regarded this or any other world as eternal, is a flat contradiction of everything we otherwise know, and of the Theophrastean tradition that he taught the world was perishable. We have, then, to decide between the view that, though all the worlds are perishable, there may be an unlimited number of them in existence at the same time, and the view that a new world never comes into existence till the old one has passed away. Now, Zeller allows that there is nothing in the first of these views that is inconsistent with what we know of Anaximander; but he thinks all the statements which have come down to us point rather to the second. It seems to me that this is by no means the case, and, as the matter is of fundamental importance, it will be necessary to examine the evidence once more.

[Plut.] Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. 21 b). The words ἀνακυκλουμένων πάντων αὐτῶν are most naturally to be interpreted as referring to an ἀνακύκλησις or cycle of γένεσις and φθορά in each of a multitude of coexistent worlds. It would be a very strange phrase to use of a succession of single worlds. Zeller, pp. 234 sqq.

In the first place, the doxographical tradition proves that Theophrastos discussed the views of all the early philosophers as to whether there was one world or an infinite number, and there can be no doubt that, when he ascribed “innumerable worlds” to the Atomists, he meant coexistent and not successive worlds. Now, if he had really classed two such different views under one head, he would at least have been careful to point out in what respect they differed, and there is no trace of any such distinction in our tradition. On the contrary, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Archelaos, Xenophanes, Diogenes, Leukippos, Demokritos, and Epicurus are all mentioned together as holding the doctrine of “innumerable worlds” on all sides of this one, and the only distinction drawn between their views is that, while Epicurus made the distances between these worlds unequal, Anaximander said all the worlds were equidistant. Zeller rejected this evidence, which he supposed to be merely that of Stobaios, on the ground that we can have no confidence in a writer who attributes “innumerable worlds” to Anaximenes, Archelaos, and Xenophanes. With regard to the first two, I hope to show that the statement is quite correct, and that it is not even incorrect in the case of the last. In any case, it can be proved that the passage comes from Aetios, and there is no reason for doubting that, in the last resort, it is derived from Theophrastos, though the name of Epicurus may have been added later. This is still further confirmed by what Simplicius says in his commentary on the Physics.

Those who assumed innumerable worlds, e.g. Anaximander, Leukippos, Demokritos, and, at a later date, Epicurus, held that they came into being and passed away ad infinitum, some always coming into being and others passing away. Aet. ii. 1, 3 (Dox. p. 327). Zeller is wrong in understanding κατὰ πᾶσαν περιαγωγήν here of the revolution of a cycle. It means simply “in every direction we turn,” and so does the alternative reading κατὰ πᾶσαν περίστασιν. The six περιστάσεις are πρόσω, ὀπίσω, ἄνω, κάτω, δεξιά, ἀριστερά (Nicom. Introd. p. 85, 11, Hoche), and Polybios uses περίστασις of surrounding space. Aet. ii. 1, 8 (Dox. p. 329), τῶν ἀπείρους ἀποφηναμένων τοὺς κόσμους Ἀναξίμανδρος τὸ ἴσον αὐτοὺς ἀπέχειν ἀλλήλων, Ἐπίκουρος ἄνισον εἶναι τὸ μεταξὺ τῶν κόσμων διάστημα. For Anaximenes, see § 30; Xenophanes, § 59; Archelaos, Chap. X. This is shown by the fact that the list of names is given also by Theodoret. See Appendix, § 10.

Simpl. Phys. p. 1121, 5 (R. P. 21 b). Zeller says (p. 234, n. 4) that Simplicius elsewhere (de Caelo, p. 273 b 43) makes the same statement more doubtfully. But the words ὡς δοκεῖ, on which he relies, are hardly an expression of doubt, and refer, in any case, to the derivation of the doctrine of “innumerable worlds” from that of the ἄπειρον, not to the doctrine itself. It is probable that this too comes from Theophrastos through Alexander. Simplicius does not invent such things. We come lastly to a very important statement which Cicero has copied from Philodemos, the author of the Epicurean treatise on Religion found at Herculaneum, or perhaps from the immediate source of that work. “Anaximander’s opinion was,” he makes Velleius say, “that there were gods who came into being, rising and passing away at long intervals, and that these were the innumerable worlds”; and this must clearly be taken along with the statement of Aetios to the effect that, according to Anaximander, the “innumerable heavens” were gods. Now it is very much more natural to understand the “long intervals” which Cicero mentions as intervals of space than as intervals of time; and, if we take the passage in this way, we have a perfect agreement among all our authorities.

Cicero, de Nat. D. i. 25 (R. P. 21). Aet. i. 7, 12 (R. P. 21 a). The reading of Stob., ἀπείρους οὐρανούς, is guaranteed by the ἀπείρους κόσμους of Cyril, and the ἀπείρους νοῦς (i.e. οὐνους) of the pseudo-Galen. See Dox. p. 11. It may be added that it is very unnatural to understand the statement that the Boundless “encompasses all the worlds” of worlds succeeding one another in time; for on this view there is at a given time only one world to “encompass.” Moreover, the argument mentioned by Aristotle that, if what is outside the heavens is infinite, body must be infinite, and there must be innumerable worlds, can only be understood in this sense, and is certainly intended to represent the reasoning of the Milesians; for they were the only cosmologists who held there was a boundless body outside the heavens. Lastly, we happen to know that Petron, one of the earliest Pythagoreans, held there were just one hundred and eighty-three worlds arranged in a triangle, which shows that views of this sort existed long before the Atomists, and looks like an attempt to introduce some order into Anaximander’s universe. It is simplest to suppose that Cicero found διαστήμασιν in his Epicurean source, and that is a technical term for the intermundia.

Arist. Phys. Γ, 4. 203 b 25, ἀπείρου δ’ ὄντος τοῦ ἔξω (sc. τοῦ οὐρανοῦ), καὶ σῶμα ἄπειρον εἶναι δοκεῖ καὶ κόσμοι (sc. ἄπειροι). It is to be observed that the next words—τί γὰρ μᾶλλον τοῦ κενοῦ ἐνταῦθα ἢ ἐνταῦθα;—show clearly that this refers to the Atomists as well; but the ἄπειρον σῶμα will not apply to them. The suggestion is rather that both those who made the Boundless a body and those who made it a κενόν held the doctrine of ἀπειροι κόσμοι in the same sense. See below, § 53. Cf. Diels, Elementum, pp. 63 sqq. [Sidenote: Origin of the heavenly bodies.] 19. The doxographers have not left us in the dark as to the process by which the different parts of the world arose from the Boundless. The following statement comes ultimately from Theophrastos:— He says that something capable of begetting hot and cold was separated off from the eternal at the origin of this world. From this arose a sphere of flame which grew round the air encircling the earth, as the bark grows round a tree. When this was torn off and enclosed in certain rings, the sun, moon, and stars came into existence.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. 19).

We see from this that when a portion of the Boundless had been separated off from the rest to form a world, it first of all differentiated itself into the two opposites, hot and cold. The hot appears as a sphere of flame surrounding the cold; the cold, as earth with air surrounding it. We are not told, however, in this extract how the cold came to be differentiated into earth, air, and water; but there is a passage in Aristotle’s Meteorology which throws some light on the subject. We read there:— But those who are wiser in the wisdom of men give an origin for the sea. At first, they say, all the terrestrial region was moist; and, as it was dried up by the sun, the portion of it that evaporated produced the winds and the turnings of the sun and moon, while the portion left behind was the sea. So they think the sea is becoming smaller by being dried up, and that at last it will all be dry.—Meteor. Β, 1. 353 b 5.

And the same absurdity arises for those who say that the earth and the terrestrial part of the world at first were moist, but that air arose from the heat of the sun, and that the whole world was thus increased, and that this is the cause of winds and the turnings of the heavens.—Ib. 2. 355 a 21 (R. P. 20 a). In his commentary on the passage, Alexander tells us that this was the view of Anaximander and Diogenes; and what he says is amply confirmed by Anaximander’s theory of the sea as it is given by the doxographers (§ 20). We conclude, then, that after the first separation of the hot and the cold, the heat of the sphere of flame turned part of the moist, cold interior of the world into air or vapour—it is all one at this date—and that the expansion of this mist broke up the sphere of flame itself into rings. I give the theory which he adopted to explain the origin of the heavenly bodies from these rings as it has been preserved by Hippolytos, with some supplements from Aetios:—

The heavenly bodies are wheels of fire separated off from the fire which encircles the world, and enclosed in air. And they have breathing-holes, certain pipe-like passages at which the heavenly bodies are seen. For this reason, too, when the breathing-holes are stopped, eclipses occur. And the moon appears now to wax and now to wane because of the stopping and opening of the passages. The circle of the sun is twenty-seven times the size (of the earth, while that) of the moon is eighteen times as large. The sun is highest of all, and lowest are the wheels of the fixed stars.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 20). Anaximander said the stars were hoop-like compressions of air, full of fire, breathing out flames at a certain point from orifices. The sun was highest of all, after it came the moon, and below these the fixed stars and the planets.—Aetios, ii. 13, 7; 15, 6 (R. P. 19 a). Anaximander said the sun was a ring twenty-eight times the size of the earth, like a cart-wheel with the felloe hollow and full of fire, showing the fire at a certain point, as if through the nozzle of a pair of bellows.—Aet. ii. 20, 1 (R. P. 19 a).

Anaximander said the sun was equal to the earth, but the ring from which it breathes out and by which it is carried round was twenty-seven times as large as the earth.—Aet. ii. 21, 1 (Dox. p. 351). Anaximander said the moon was a ring eighteen times the size of the earth....—Aet. ii. 25, 1 (Dox. p. 355). Anaximander held that thunder and lightning were caused by the blast. When it is shut up in a thick cloud and bursts forth with violence, then the breakage of the cloud makes the noise, and the rift gives the appearance of a flash by contrast with the darkness of the cloud.—Aet. iii. 3, 1 (Dox. p. 367). Anaximander held that wind was a current of air (i.e. vapour) which arose when its finest and moistest particles were set in motion or dissolved by the sun.—Aet. iii. 6, 1 (Dox. p. 374). Rain was produced by the moisture drawn up from the earth by the sun.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6, 7 (Dox. p. 560). Zeller’s difficulty about the meaning of τροπαί here (p. 223, n. 2) seems to be an imaginary one. The moon has certainly a movement in declination and, therefore, τροπαί (Dreyer, Planetary Systems, p. 17, n. 1).

I assume with Diels (Dox. p. 560) that something has fallen out in our text of Hippolytos. I have, however, with Tannery, Science hellène, p. 91, supplied “eighteen times” rather than “nineteen times.” Zeller (p. 224, n. 2) prefers the text of our MS. of Hippolytos to the testimony of Aetios. Aetios goes on to say that the moon also is like a hollow cart-wheel full of fire with an ἐκπνοή. The difference in the figures of Hippolytos and Aetios is due to the fact that one refers to the internal and the other to the external circumferences of the rings. Cf. Tannery, Science hellène, p. 91; and Diels, “Ueber Anaximanders Kosmos” (Arch. x. pp. 231 sqq.).

We saw above that the sphere of flame was broken up into rings by the expansion of the air or vapour that its own heat had drawn up from the moist, cold interior. We must remember that Anaximander knew nothing of the ring of Saturn. There are three of these rings, that of the sun, that of the moon, and, lastly, nearest to the earth, the circle of the stars. The circle of the sun was twenty-seven times, and that of the moon eighteen times as large as the earth, from which we may perhaps infer that the circle of the stars was nine times as large. The numbers nine, eighteen, twenty-seven, play a considerable part in primitive cosmogonies. We do not see the rings of fire as complete circles; for the mist that formed them encloses the fire, and becomes an outer ring of opaque vapour. These outer rings, however, have openings at one point of their circumference, through which the fire escapes, and these are the heavenly bodies we actually see. As Diels points out (Arch. x. p. 229) the explanation given by Gomperz, p. 53, cannot be right. It implies the fifth century theory of μύδροι. Anaximander knew nothing of the “great mass” of the sun.

The true meaning of this doctrine was first explained by Diels (Dox. pp. 25 sqq.). The flames rush forth per magni circum spiracula mundi, as Lucretius has it (vi. 493). The πρηστῆρος αὐλός, to which these are compared, is simply the nozzle of a pair of bellows, a sense which the word πρηστήρ has in Apollonios Rhodios (iv. 776), and has nothing to do with the meteorological phenomenon of the same name, for which see Chap. III. § 71. It is not now necessary to refute the earlier interpretations.

It will be observed that we only hear of three circles, and that the circle of the sun is the highest. The circle of the stars presents some difficulty. It is, in all probability, the Milky Way, the appearance of which may well have suggested the whole theory. It seems that Anaximander must have thought it had more “breathing-holes” than one, though the tradition is silent on this point. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that he regarded it as a sphere. He could not have failed to see that a sphere so placed would make the sun and moon permanently invisible. What, then, are we to say of the fixed stars that do not lie in the Milky Way? There seems to be no way of accounting for them unless we assume that they are the “innumerable worlds” which we have just discussed. As the fire and air which surrounded the world have been broken up into rings, we must be able to see right out into the Boundless, and the fixed stars must be just the worlds, each surrounded by its fiery envelope. It does not seem possible to explain all we are told in any other way; and, if this is right, the statement of some authors, that Anaximander regarded the stars of heaven as gods, may be more than the mere mistake which it is now generally taken to be.

It cannot be the Zodiac; for the planets were not separately studied yet. The Placita and Eusebios both have τοὺς ἀστέρας οὐρανίους instead of τοὺς ἀπείρους οὐρανούς (see above, p. 65, n. 2), and it seems just possible that this is not a mere corruption of the text. The common source may have had both statements. I do not, however, rest the interpretation given above on this very insecure basis. Quite apart from it, it seems to be the only way out of the difficulty. The explanation given of thunder and lightning was very similar. They too were caused by fire breaking through compressed air, that is to say, through the storm-clouds. It seems probable that this is really the origin of the theory, and that Anaximander explained the heavenly bodies on the analogy of lightning, not vice versa. That would be in perfect agreement with the meteorological interest of the time. [Sidenote: Earth and sea.] 20. We turn now to what we are told of the origin of earth and sea from the moist, cold matter which was “separated off” in the beginning, and which filled the inside of the sphere of flame:—

The sea is what is left of the original moisture. The fire has dried up most of it and turned the rest salt by scorching it.—Aet. iii. 16, 1 (R. P. 20 a). He says that the earth is cylindrical in form, and that its depth is as a third part of its. breadth.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. ib.). The earth swings free, held in its place by nothing. It stays where it is because of its equal distance from everything. Its shape is convex and round, and like a stone pillar. We are on one of the surfaces, and the other is on the opposite side.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 20).

The MSS. of Hippolytos have ὑγρὸν στρογγύλον. Roeper read γυρὸν [στρογγύλον], supposing the second word to be a gloss on the first; but Diels has shown (Dox. p. 218) that both are wanted. The first means “convex,” and applies to the surface of the earth; while the second means “round,” and refers to its circuit. As to κίονι λίθῳ, it is not easy to say anything positive. It might, possibly, be a mere corruption of κυλίνδρῳ (cf. Plut. Strom. fr. 2; R. P. 20 a); but, if so, it is a very old one. Aetios (iii. 10, 2), who is quite independent of Hippolytos, has λίθῳ κίονι; Roeper suggested κιονέῃ λίθῳ; Teichmüller, κίονος λιθῷ; while Diels doubtfully puts forward λιθῷ κίονι, which he suggests might be a Theophrastean modernisation of an original λιθέῃ κίονι (Dox. p. 219).

Adopting for a moment the later theory of “elements,” we see that Anaximander put fire on one side as “the hot,” and all the rest on the other as “the cold,” which is also moist. This may explain how Aristotle came to speak of the Boundless as intermediate between fire and water. And we have seen also that the moist element was partly turned into “air” or vapour by the fire, which explains how he could say the Boundless was something between fire and air, or between air and water. See above, p. 58, n. 48.

The moist, cold interior of the world is not, it will be noticed, pure water. It is always called “the moist” or “the moist state.” That is because it has to be still further differentiated under the influence of heat into earth, water, and vapour. The gradual drying up of the water by the fire is a good example of what Anaximander meant by “injustice.” And we see how this injustice brings about the destruction of the world. The fire will in time dry up and burn up the whole of the cold, moist element. But then it will not be fire any longer; it will simply be the “mixture,” if we choose to call it so, of the hot and cold—that is, it will be the same as the Boundless which surrounds it, and will pass away into it.

The view which Anaximander takes of the earth is a great advance upon anything we can reasonably attribute to Thales, and Aristotle has preserved the arguments by which he supported it. It is equally distant from the extremes in every direction, and there is no reason for it to move up or down or sideways. Still, he does not attain to the idea that it is spherical. He believes that we live on a convex disc, and from this the cylindrical form follows as a matter of course. The really remarkable thing is that he should have seen, however dimly, that there is no absolute up and down in the world. Arist. de Caelo, Β, 13. 295 b 10, εἰσὶ δέ τινες οἳ διὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητά φασιν αὐτὴν (τὴν γῆν) μένειν, ὥσπερ τῶν ἀρχαίων Ἀναξίμανδρος· μᾶλλον μὲν γὰρ οὐθὲν ἄνω ἢ κάτω ἢ εἰς τὰ πλάγια φέρεσθαι προσήκειν τὸ ἐπὶ τοῦ μέσου ἱδρυμένον καὶ ὁμοίως πρὸς τὰ ἔσχατα ἔχον. That Aristotle is really reproducing Anaximander seems to be shown by the use of ὁμοιότης in the old sense of “equality.” [Sidenote: Animals.]

21. We have seen enough to show us that the speculations of Anaximander about the world were of an extremely daring character; we come now to the crowning audacity of all, his theory of the origin of living creatures. The Theophrastean account of this has been well preserved by the doxographers:— Living creatures arose from the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun. Man was like another animal, namely, a fish, in the beginning.—Hipp. Ref. i. 6 (R. P. 22 a). The first animals were produced in the moisture, each enclosed in a prickly bark. As they advanced in age, they came out upon the drier part. When the bark broke off, they survived for a short time.—Aet. v. 19, 1 (R. P. 22). Further, he says that originally man was born from animals of another species. His reason is that while other animals quickly find food by themselves, man alone requires a lengthy period of suckling. Hence, had he been originally as he is now, he would never have survived.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 2 (R. P. ib.).

He declares that at first human beings arose in the inside of fishes, and after having been reared like sharks, and become capable of protecting themselves, they were finally cast ashore and took to land.—Plut. Symp. Quaest. 730 f (R. P. ib.). This is to be understood in the light of what we are told about γαλεοί below. Cf. Arist. Hist. An. Ζ, 10. 565 a 25, τοῖς μὲν οὖν σκυλίοις, οὓς καλοῦσί τινες νεβρίας γαλεούς, ὅταν περιρραγῇ καὶ ἐκπέσῃ τὸ ὄστρακον, γίνονται οἱ νεοττοί. Reading ὥσπερ οἱ γαλεοί for ὥσπερ οἱ παλαιοί with Doehner, who compares Plut. de soll. anim. 982 a, where the φιλόστοργον of the shark is described. See p. 74, n. 141.

The importance of these statements has sometimes been overrated and still more often underestimated. Anaximander has been called a precursor of Darwin by some, while others have treated the whole thing as a mythological survival. It is therefore important to notice that this is one of the rare cases where we have not merely a placitum, but an indication, meagre though it be, of the observations on which it was based, and the line of argument by which it was supported. It is clear from this that Anaximander had an idea of what is meant by adaptation to environment and survival of the fittest, and that he saw the higher mammals could not represent the original type of animal. For this he looked to the sea, and he naturally fixed upon those fishes which present the closest analogy to the mammalia. The statements of Aristotle about the galeus levis were shown long ago by Johannes Müller to be more accurate than those of later naturalists, and we now know that these observations were already made by Anaximander. The manner in which the shark nourishes its young furnished him with the very thing he required to explain the survival of the earliest animals.

On Aristotle and the galeus levis, see Johannes Müller, “Ueber den glatten Hai des Aristoteles” (K. Preuss. Akad., 1842), to which my attention has been directed by my colleague, Prof. D’Arcy Thomson. The precise point of the words τρεφόμενοι ὥσπερ οἱ γαλεοί appears from Arist. Hist. An. Ζ, 10. 565 b 1, οἱ δὲ καλούμενοι λεῖοι τῶν γαλεῶν τὰ μὲν ᾠὰ ἴσχουσι μεταξὺ τῶν ὑστερῶν ὁμοίως τοῖς σκυλίοις, περιστάντα δὲ ταῦτα εἰς ἑκατέραν τὴν δικρόαν τῆς ὑστέρας καταβαίνει, καὶ τὰ ζῷα γίνεται τὸν ὀμφαλὸν ἔχοντα πρὸς τῇ ὑστέρᾳ, ὥστε ἀναλισκομένων τῶν ᾠῶν ὁμοίως δοκεῖν ἔχειν τὸ ἔμβρυον τοῖς τετράποσιν. It is not necessary to suppose that Anaximander referred to the further phenomenon described by Aristotle, who more than once says that all the γαλεοί except the ἀκανθίας “send out their young and take them back again” (ἐξαφιᾶσι καὶ δέχονται εἰς ἑαυτοὺς τοὺς νεοττούς, ib. 565 b 23), for which compare also Ael. i. 17; Plut. de soll. anim. 982 a. The placenta and umbilical cord described by Johannes Müller will account sufficiently for all he says. At the same time, I understand that deep-sea fishermen at the present day confirm this remarkable statement also, and two credible witnesses have informed me that they believe they have seen the thing happen with their own eyes. [Sidenote: Theology.]

22. In the course of our discussion of the “innumerable worlds” we saw that Anaximander regarded these as gods. It is true, of course, as Zeller says, that to the Greeks the word θεός meant primarily an object of worship, and he rightly adds that no one would think of worshipping innumerable worlds. This, however, is no real objection to our interpretation, though it serves to bring out an interesting point in the development of Greek theological ideas. The philosophers, in fact, departed altogether from the received usage of the word θεός. Empedokles called the Sphere and the Elements gods, though it is not to be supposed that he regarded them as objects of worship, and in the same way we shall find that Diogenes of Apollonia spoke of Air as a god. As we may learn from the Clouds of Aristophanes, it was just this way of speaking that got philosophers the name of being ἄθεοι. It is of great importance to bear this point in mind; for, when we come to Xenophanes, we shall see that the god or gods he spoke of meant just the world or worlds. It seems also that Anaximander called the Boundless itself divine, which is quite in accordance with the language of Empedokles and Diogenes referred to above. Zeller, p. 230.

For Empedokles, see Chap. V. § 119; and for Diogenes, Chap. X. § 188, fr. 5. The cosmologists followed the theogonists and cosmogonists in this. No one worshipped Okeanos and Tethys, or even Ouranos. Arist. Phys. Γ, 4. 203 b 13 (R. P. 17). III. ANAXIMENES [Sidenote: Life.] 23. Anaximenes of Miletos, son of Eurystratos, was, according to Theophrastos, an “associate” of Anaximander. Apollodoros said, it appears, that he “flourished” about the time of the fall of Sardeis (546/5 B.C.), and died in Ol. LXIII. (528/524 B.C.). In other words, he was born when Thales “flourished,” and “flourished” when Thales died, and this means that Apollodoros had no definite information about his date at all. He most probably made him die in the sixty-third Olympiad because that gives just a hundred years, or three generations, for the Milesian school from the birth of Thales. We cannot, therefore, say anything positive as to his date, except that he must have been younger than Anaximander, and must have flourished before 494 B.C., when the school was, of course, broken up by the destruction of Miletos. Theophr. Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 26).

This follows from a comparison of Diog. ii. 3. with Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 23). In the latter passage we must, however, read τρίτον for πρῶτον with Diels. The suggestion in R. P. 23 e that Apollodoros mentioned the Olympiad without giving the number of the year is inadequate; for Apollodoros did not reckon by Olympiads, but Athenian archons. Jacoby (p. 194) brings the date of his death into connexion with the floruit of Pythagoras, which seems to me less probable. Lortzing (Jahresber., 1898, p. 202) objects to my view on the ground that the period of a hundred years plays no part in Apollodoros’s calculations. It will be seen, however, from Jacoby, pp. 39 sqq., that there is some reason for believing he made use of the generation of 33⅓ years. [Sidenote: His book.]

24. Anaximenes wrote a book which certainly survived until the age of literary criticism; for we are told that he used a simple and unpretentious Ionic, very different, we may suppose, from the poetical prose of Anaximander. We may probably trust this criticism, which comes ultimately from Theophrastos; and it furnishes a good illustration of the truth that the character of a man’s thoughts is sure to find expression in his style. We have seen that the speculations of Anaximander were distinguished for their hardihood and breadth; those of Anaximenes are marked by just the opposite quality. He appears to have thought out his system carefully, but he rejects the more audacious theories of his predecessor. The result is that, while his view of the world is on the whole much less like the truth than Anaximander’s, it is more fruitful in ideas that were destined to hold their ground. Diog. ii. 3 (R. P. 23). Cf. the statement of Theophrastos above, § 13. [Sidenote: Theory of the primary substance.]

25. Anaximenes is one of the philosophers on whom Theophrastos wrote a special monograph; and this gives us an additional guarantee for the trustworthiness of the tradition derived from his great work. The following are the passages which seem to contain the fullest and most accurate account of what he had to say on the central feature of the system:— Anaximenes of Miletos, son of Eurystratos, who had been an associate of Anaximander, said, like him, that the underlying substance was one and infinite. He did not, however, say it was indeterminate, like Anaximander, but determinate; for he said it was Air.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 26). From it, he said, the things that are, and have been, and shall be, the gods and things divine, took their rise, while other things come from its offspring.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28). “Just as,” he said, “our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.”—Aet. i. 3, 4 (R. P. 24).

And the form of the air is as follows. Where it is most even, it is invisible to our sight; but cold and heat, moisture and motion, make it visible. It is always in motion; for, if it were not, it would not change so much as it does.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28). It differs in different substances in virtue of its rarefaction and condensation.—Phys. Op. fr. 2 (R. P. 26). When it is dilated so as to be rarer, it becomes fire; while winds, on the other hand, are condensed Air. Cloud is formed from Air by felting; and this, still further condensed, becomes water. Water, condensed still more, turns to earth; and when condensed as much as it can be, to stones.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7 (R. P. 28). On these monographs see Dox. p. 103. See the conspectus of extracts from Theophrastos given in Dox. p. 135. “Felting” (πίλησις) is the regular term for this process with all the early cosmologists, from whom Plato has taken it (Tim. 58 b 4; 76 c 3). A more condensed form of the same doxographical tradition is given by Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 3 (R. P. 25). [Sidenote: Rarefaction and condensation.]

26. At the first glance, this undoubtedly looks like a falling off from the more refined doctrine of Anaximander to a cruder view; but a moment’s reflexion will show that this is not altogether the case. On the contrary, the introduction of rarefaction and condensation into the theory is a notable advance. In fact, it makes the Milesian cosmology thoroughly consistent for the first time; since it is clear that a theory which explains everything by the transformations of a single substance is bound to regard all differences as purely quantitative. The infinite substance of Anaximander, from which the opposites “in it” are “separated out,” cannot, strictly speaking, be thought of as homogeneous, and the only way to save the unity of the primary substance is to say that all diversities are due to the presence of more or less of it in a given space. And when once this important step has been taken, it is no longer necessary to make the primary substance something “distinct from the elements,” to use Aristotle’s inaccurate but convenient phrase; it may just as well be one of them.

Simplicius, Phys. p. 149, 32 (R. P. 26 b), says, according to the MSS., that Theophrastos spoke of rarefaction and condensation in the case of Anaximenes alone. We must either suppose with Zeller (p. 193, n. 2) that this means “alone among the oldest Ionians” or read πρῶτου for μόνου with Usener. The regular terms are πύκνωσις and ἀραίωσις or μάνωσις. Plutarch, de prim. frig. 947 f (R. P. 27), says that Anaximenes used the term τὸ χαλαρόν for the rarefied air. [Sidenote: Air.]

27. The air that Anaximenes speaks of includes a good deal that we should not call by that name. In its normal condition, when most evenly distributed, it is invisible, and it then corresponds to our “air”; it is identical with the breath we inhale and the wind that blows. That is why he called it πνεῦμα. On the other hand, the old idea, familiar to us in Homer, that mist or vapour is condensed air, is still accepted without question. In other words, we may say that Anaximenes supposed it to be a good deal easier to get liquid air than it has since proved to be. It was Empedokles, we shall see, who first discovered that what we call air was a distinct corporeal substance, and was not identical either with vapour or with empty space. In the earlier cosmologists “air” is always a form of vapour, and even darkness is a form of it. It was Empedokles who cleared up this point too by showing that darkness is a shadow.

For the meaning of ἀήρ in Homer, see Schmidt, Synonomik, § 35; and for its survival in Ionic prose, Hippokrates, Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, τόπων, 15, ἀήρ τε πολὺς κατέχει τὴν χώρην ἀπὸ τῶν ὑδάτων. Plato is still conscious of the old meaning of the word; for he makes Timaios say ἀέρος (γένη) τὸ μὲν εὐαγέστατον ἐπίκλην αἰθὴρ καλούμενος, ὁ δὲ θολερώτατος ὁμίχλη καὶ σκότος (Tim. 58 d). The view given in the text has been criticised by Tannery, “Une nouvelle hypothèse sur Anaximandre” (Arch. viii. pp. 443 sqq.), and I have slightly altered my expression of it to meet these criticisms. The point is of fundamental importance, as we shall see, for the interpretation of Pythagoreanism. It was natural for Anaximenes to fix upon Air in this sense as the primary substance; for, in the system of Anaximander, it occupied an intermediate place between the two fundamental opposites, the sphere of flame and the cold, moist mass within it (§ 19). We know from Plutarch that he fancied air became warmer when rarefied, and colder when condensed. Of this he satisfied himself by a curious experimental proof. When we breathe with our mouths open, the air is warm; when we breathe with our lips closed, it is cold. Plut. de prim. frig. 947 f (R. P. 27).

[Sidenote: The world breathes.] 28. This argument from human breathing brings us to an important point in the theory of Anaximenes, which is attested by the single fragment that has come down to us. “Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.” The primary substance bears the same relation to the life of the world as to that of man. Now this, we shall see, was the Pythagorean view; and it is also an early instance of the argument from the microcosm to the macrocosm, and so marks the first beginnings of an interest in physiological matters. Aet. i. 3, 4 (R. P. 24). See Chap. II. § 53. [Sidenote: The parts of the world.] 29. We turn now to the doxographical tradition concerning the formation of the world and its parts:— He says that, as the air was felted, the earth first came into being. It is very broad and is accordingly supported by the air.—Ps.-Plut. Strom. fr. 3 (R. P. 25).

In the same way the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are of a fiery nature, are supported by the air because of their breadth. The heavenly bodies were produced from the earth by moisture rising from it. When this is rarefied, fire comes into being, and the stars are composed of the fire thus raised aloft. There were also bodies of earthy substance in the region of the stars, revolving along with them. And he says that the heavenly bodies do not move under the earth, as others suppose, but round it, as a cap turns round our head. The sun is hidden from sight, not because it goes under the earth, but because it is concealed by the higher parts of the earth, and because its distance from us becomes greater. The stars give no heat because of the greatness of their distance.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7, 4-6 (R. P. 28). Winds are produced when air is condensed and rushes along under propulsion; but when it is concentrated and thickened still more, clouds are generated; and, lastly, it turns to water.—Hipp. Ref. i. 7, 7 (Dox. p. 561). The stars are fixed like nails in the crystalline vault of the heavens.—Aet. ii. 14, 3 (Dox. p. 344).

They do not go under the earth, but turn round it.—Ib. 16, 6 (Dox. p. 346). The sun is fiery.—Ib. 20, 2 (Dox. p. 348). It is broad like a leaf.—Ib. 22, 1 (Dox. p. 352). The heavenly bodies are diverted from their courses by the resistance of compressed air.—Ib. 23, 1 (Dox. p. 352). The moon is of fire.—Ib. 25, 2 (Dox. p. 356). Anaximenes explained lightning like Anaximander, adding as an illustration what happens in the case of the sea, which flashes when divided by the oars.—Ib. iii. 3, 2 (Dox. p. 368). Hail is produced when water freezes in falling; snow, when there is some air imprisoned in the water.—Aet. iii 4, 1 (Dox. p. 370). The rainbow is produced when the beams of the sun fall on thick condensed air. Hence the anterior part of it seems red, being burnt by the sun’s rays, while the other part is dark, owing to the predominance of moisture. And he says that a rainbow is produced at night by the moon, but not often, because there is not constantly a full moon, and because the moon’s light is weaker than that of the sun.—Schol. Arat. (Dox. p. 231). The earth was like a table in shape.—Aet. iii. 10, 3 (Dox. p. 377).

The cause of earthquakes was the dryness and moisture of the earth, occasioned by droughts and heavy rains respectively.—Ib. 15, 3 (Dox. p. 379). The text is very corrupt here. I retain ἐκπεπυκνωμένος, because we are told above that winds are condensed air, and I adopt Zeller’s ἀραιῷ εἰσφέρηται (p. 246, n. 554).

We have seen that Anaximenes was quite justified in going back to Thales in regard to his general theory of the primary substance; but it cannot be denied that the effect of this upon the details of his cosmology was unfortunate. The earth is once more imagined as a table-like disc floating upon the air. The sun, moon, and planets are also fiery discs which float on the air “like leaves.” It follows that the heavenly bodies cannot be thought of as going under the earth at night, but only as going round it laterally like a cap or a millstone. This curious view is also mentioned in Aristotle’s Meteorology, where the elevation of the northern parts of the earth, which makes it possible for the heavenly bodies to be hidden from sight, is referred to. In fact, whereas Anaximander had regarded the orbits of the sun, moon, and stars as oblique with reference to the earth, Anaximenes regarded the earth itself as inclined. The only real advance is the distinction of the planets, which float freely in the air, from the fixed stars, which are fastened to the “crystalline” vault of the sky. The source of this is Poseidonios, who used Theophrastos. Dox. p. 231.

Theodoret (iv. 16) speaks of those who believe in a revolution like that of a millstone, as contrasted with one like that of a wheel. Diels (Dox. p. 46) refers these similes to Anaximenes and Anaximander respectively. They come, of course, from Aetios (Appendix, § 10), though they are given neither by Stobaios nor in the Placita. Β, 1. 354 a 28 (R. P. 28 c). We do not know how Anaximenes imagined the “crystalline” sky. It is probable that he used the word πάγος as Empedokles did. Cf. Chap. V. § 112. The earthy bodies, which circulate among the planets, are doubtless intended to account for eclipses and the phases of the moon. See Tannery, Science hellène, p. 153. For the precisely similar bodies assumed by Anaxagoras, see below, Chap. VI. § 135. See further

[Sidenote: Innumerable worlds.] 30. As might be expected, there is the same difficulty about the “innumerable worlds” ascribed to Anaximenes as about those of Anaximander, and most of the arguments given above (§ 18) apply here also. The evidence, however, is far less satisfactory. Cicero says that Anaximenes regarded air as a god, and adds that it came into being. That there is some confusion here is obvious. Air, as the primary substance, is certainly eternal, and it is quite likely that Anaximenes called it “divine,” as Anaximander did the Boundless; but it is certain that he also spoke of gods who came into being and passed away. These arose, he said, from the air. This is expressly stated by Hippolytos, and also by St. Augustine. These gods are probably to be explained like Anaximander’s. Simplicius, indeed, takes another view; but he may have been misled by a Stoic authority. Cic. de nat. D. i. 26 (R. P. 28 b). On what follows see Krische, Forschungen, pp. 52 sqq. Hipp. Ref. i. 7, 1 (R. P. 28). Aug. de civ. D. viii. 2: “Anaximenes omnes rerum causas infinito aëri dedit: nec deos negavit aut tacuit; non tamen ab ipsis aërem factum, sed ipsos ex aëre ortos credidit” (R. P. 28 b).

Simpl. Phys. p. 1121, 12 (R. P. 28 a). The passage from the Placita is of higher authority than this from Simplicius. Note, further, that it is only to Anaximenes, Herakleitos, and Diogenes that successive worlds are ascribed even here. With regard to Anaximander, Simplicius is quite clear. For the Stoic view of Herakleitos, see

following a Stoic authority is suggested by the words καὶ ὕστερον οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς. Cf. also Simpl. de Caelo, p. 202, 13. [Sidenote: Influence of Anaximenes.]

31. It is not quite easy for us to realise that, in the eyes of his contemporaries, and for long after, Anaximenes was a much more important figure than Anaximander. And yet the fact is certain. We shall see that Pythagoras, though he followed Anaximander in his account of the heavenly bodies, was far more indebted to Anaximenes for his general theory of reality (§ 53). We shall see further that when, at a later date, science revived once more in Ionia, it was “the philosophy of Anaximenes” to which it attached itself (§ 122). Anaxagoras adopted many of his most characteristic views (§ 135), and some of them even found their way into the cosmology of the Atomists. Diogenes of Apollonia went back to the central doctrine of Anaximenes, and once more made Air the primary substance, though he also tried to combine it with the theories of Anaxagoras (§ 188). We shall come to all this later on; but it seemed desirable to point out at once that Anaximenes marks the culminating point of the line of thought which started with Thales, and to show how the “philosophy of Anaximenes” came to mean the Milesian doctrine as a whole. This it can only have done because it was really the work of a school, of which Anaximenes was the last distinguished representative, and because his contribution to it was one that completed the system he had inherited from his predecessors. That the theory of rarefaction and condensation was really such a completion of the Milesian system, we have seen already (§ 26), and it need only be added that a clear realisation of this fact will be the best clue at once to the understanding of the Milesian cosmology itself and to that of the systems which followed it. In the main, it is from Anaximenes that they all start.

In particular, the authority of Anaximenes was so great that both Leukippos and Demokritos adhered to his theory of a disc-like earth. Cf. Aet. iii. 10, 3-5 (Περὶ σχήματος γῆς), Ἀναξιμένης τραπεζοειδῆ (τὴν γῆν). Λεύκιππος τυμπανοειδῆ. Δημόκριτος δισκοειδῆ μὲν τῷ πλάτει, κοίλην δὲ τῷ μέσῳ. This, in spite of the fact that the spherical form of the earth was already a commonplace in circles affected by Pythagoreanism.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION [Sidenote: Migrations to the West.] 32. So far we have not met with any trace of direct antagonism between science and popular beliefs, though the views of the Milesian cosmologists were really as inconsistent with the religions of the people as with the mythology of the anthropomorphic poets. Two things hastened the conflict—the shifting of the scene to the West, and the religious revival which swept over Hellas in the sixth century B.C. For the theological views of Anaximander and Anaximenes, see § 22 and 30. The chief figures in the philosophical history of the period were Pythagoras of Samos and Xenophanes of Kolophon. Both were Ionians by birth, and yet both spent the greater part of their lives in the West. We see from Herodotos how the Persian advance in Asia Minor occasioned a series of migrations to Sicily and Southern Italy; and this, of course, made a great difference to philosophy as well as to religion. The new views had probably grown up so naturally and gradually in Ionia that the shock of conflict and reaction was avoided; but that could no longer be so, when they were transplanted to a region where men were wholly unprepared to receive them. Cf. Herod. i. 170 (advice of Bias); vi. 22 sqq. (Kale Akte).

Another, though a somewhat later, effect of these migrations was to bring Science into contact with Rhetoric, one of the most characteristic products of Western Hellas. Already in Parmenides we may note the presence of that dialectical and controversial spirit which was destined to have so great an influence on Greek thought, and it was just this fusion of the art of arguing for victory with the search for truth that before long gave birth to Logic. [Sidenote: The religious revival.]

33. Most important of all in its influence on philosophy was the religious revival which culminated about this time. The religion of continental Hellas had developed in a very different way from that of Ionia. In particular, the worship of Dionysos, which came from Thrace, and is barely mentioned in Homer, contained in germ a wholly new way of looking at man’s relation to the world. It would certainly be wrong to credit the Thracians themselves with any very exalted views; but there can be no doubt that, to the Greeks, the phenomenon of ecstasy suggested that the soul was something more than a feeble double of the self, and that it was only when “out of the body” it could show its true nature. To a less extent, such ideas were also suggested by the worship of Demeter, whose mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis; though, in later days, these came to take the leading place in men’s minds. That was because they were incorporated in the public religion of Athens.

On all this, see Rohde, Psyche, pp. 327 sqq. It is probable that he exaggerated the degree to which these ideas were already developed among the Thracians, but the essential connexion of the new view of the soul with Northern worships is confirmed by the tradition over and over again.

Before the time with which we are dealing, tradition shows us dimly an age of inspired prophets—Bakides and Sibyls—followed by one of strange medicine-men like Abaris and Aristeas of Prokonnesos. With Epimenides of Crete, we touch the fringe of history, while Pherekydes of Syros is the contemporary of the early cosmologists, and we still have some fragments of his discourse. It looked as if Greek religion were about to enter upon the same stage as that already reached by the religions of the East; and, but for the rise of science, it is hard to see what could have checked this tendency. It is usual to say that the Greeks were saved from a religion of the Oriental type by their having no priesthood; but this is to mistake the effect for the cause. Priesthoods do not make dogmas, though they preserve them once they are made; and in the earlier stages of their development, the Oriental peoples had no priesthoods either in the sense intended. It was not so much the absence of a priesthood as the existence of the scientific schools that saved Greece. See Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 461. The exaggerated rôle often attributed to priesthoods is a survival of French eighteenth century thinking. [Sidenote: The Orphic religion.]

34. The new religion—for in one sense it was new, though in another as old as mankind—reached its highest point of development with the foundation of the Orphic communities. So far as we can see, the original home of these was Attika; but they spread with extraordinary rapidity, especially in Southern Italy and Sicily. They were first of all associations for the worship of Dionysos; but they were distinguished by two features which were new among the Hellenes. They looked to a revelation as the source of religious authority, and they were organised as artificial communities. The poems which contained their theology were ascribed to the Thracian Orpheus, who had himself descended into Hades, and was therefore a safe guide through the perils which beset the disembodied soul in the next world. We have considerable remains of this literature, but they are mostly of late date, and cannot safely be used as evidence for the beliefs of the sixth century. We do know, however, that the leading ideas of Orphicism were quite early. A number of thin gold plates with Orphic verses inscribed on them have been discovered in Southern Italy; and though these are somewhat later in date than the period with which we are dealing, they belong to the time when Orphicism was a living creed and not a fantastic revival. What can be made out from them as to the doctrine has a startling resemblance to the beliefs which were prevalent in India about the same time, though it seems impossible that there should have been any actual contact between India and Greece at this date. The main purpose of the Orgia was to “purify” the believer’s soul, and so enable it to escape from the “wheel of birth,” and it was for the better attainment of this end that the Orphics were organised in communities. Religious associations must have been known to the Greeks from a fairly early date; but the oldest of these were based, at least in theory, on the tie of kindred blood. What was new was the institution of communities to which any one might be admitted by initiation. This was, in fact, the establishment of churches, though there is no evidence that these were connected with each other in such a way that we could rightly speak of them as a single church. The Pythagoreans came nearer to realising that.

See E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. §§ 453-460, who rightly emphasises the fact that the Orphic theogony is the continuation of Hesiod’s work. As we have seen, some of it is even older than Hesiod. For the gold plates of Thourioi and Petelia, see the Appendix to Miss Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, where the text of them is discussed and a translation given by Professor Gilbert Murray. This was the oldest name for these “mysteries,” and it simply means “sacraments” (cf. ἔοργα). Orgia are not necessarily “orgiastic.” That association of ideas merely comes from the fact that they belonged to the worship of Dionysos. Herodotos mentions that Isagoras and those of his γένος worshipped the Karian Zeus (v. 66), and it is probable that the Orgeones attached by Kleisthenes to the Attic phratriai were associations of this kind. See Foucart, Les associations religieuses chez les Grecs.

A striking parallel is afforded to all this by what we are told in Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites, p. 339. “The leading feature that distinguished them” (the Semitic mysteries of the seventh century B.C.) “from the old public cults with which they came into competition, is that they were not based on the principle of nationality, but sought recruits from men of every race who were willing to accept initiation through the mystic sacraments.” [Sidenote: Philosophy as a Way of Life.]

35. We have to take account of the religious revival here, chiefly because it suggested the view that philosophy was above all a “way of life.” Science too was a “purification,” a means of escape from the “wheel.” This is the view expressed so strongly in Plato’s Phaedo, which was written under the influence of Pythagorean ideas. Sokrates became to his followers the ideal “wise man,” and it was to this side of his personality the Cynics mainly attached themselves. From them proceeded the Stoic sage and the Christian saint, and also the whole brood of impostors whom Lucian has pilloried for our edification. Saints and sages are apt to appear in questionable shapes, and Apollonios of Tyana showed in the end where this view may lead. It was not wholly absent from any Greek philosophy after the days of Pythagoras. Aristotle is as much possessed by it as any one, as we may see from the Tenth Book of the Ethics, and as we should see still more distinctly if we possessed such works as the Protreptikos in their entirety. Plato, indeed, tried to make the ideal wise man of service to the state and mankind by his doctrine of the philosopher king. It was he alone, so far as we know, that insisted on philosophers descending by turns into the cave from which they had been released and coming to the help of their former fellow-prisoners. That was not, however, the view that prevailed, and the “wise man” became more and more detached from the world. Apollonios of Tyana was quite entitled to regard himself as the spiritual heir of Pythagoras; for the theurgy and thaumaturgy of the late Greek schools was but the fruit of the seed sown in the generation before the Persian Wars.

The Phaedo is dedicated, as it were, to Echekrates and the Pythagorean society at Phleious, and it is evident that Plato in his youth was impressed by the religious side of Pythagoreanism, though the influence of Pythagorean science is not clearly marked till a later period. Note specially the ἄτραπος of Phd. 66 b 4. In Rep. x. 600 b 1, Plato speaks of Pythagoras as the originator of a private ὁδός τις βίου. Cf. especially the point of view of the Auction of Lives (Βίων πρᾶσις). For the Προτρεπτικός of Aristotle, see Bywater in J. Phil. ii. p. 55; Diels in Arch. i. p. 477; and the notes on Ethics, i. 5, in my edition. Plato, Rep. 520 c 1, καταβατέον οὖν ἐν μέρει. The allegory of the Cave seems to be Orphic, and I believe Professor Stewart’s suggestion (Myths of Plato, p. 252, n. 2), that Plato had the κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου in mind, to be quite justified. The idea of rescuing the “spirits in prison” is thoroughly Orphic. [Sidenote: No doctrine in the “Mysteries.”]

36. On the other hand, it would be wrong to suppose that Orphicism or the Mysteries suggested any definite doctrines to philosophers, at least during the period which we are about to consider. We have admitted that they really implied a new view of the soul, and we might therefore have expected to find that they profoundly modified men’s theory of the world and their relation to it. The striking thing is that this did not happen. Even those philosophers who were most closely in touch with the religious movement, like Empedokles and the Pythagoreans, held views about the soul which really contradicted the theory implied by their religious practices. There is no room for an immortal soul in any philosophy of this period. Up to Plato’s time immortality was never treated in a scientific way, but merely assumed in the Orphic rites, to which Plato half seriously turns for confirmation of his own teaching. For Empedokles, see § 119; for the Pythagoreans, see § 149. Cf. Phd. 69 c 2, καὶ κινδυνεύουσι καὶ οἱ τὰς τελετὰς ἡμῖν οὗτοι καταστήσαντες οὐ φαῦλοί τινες εἶναι, ἀλλὰ τῷ ὄντι πάλαι αἰνίττεσθαι κ.τ.λ. The gentle irony of this and similar passages ought to be unmistakable.

All this is easily accounted for. With us a religious revival generally means the vivid realisation of a new or forgotten doctrine, while ancient religion has properly no doctrine at all. “The initiated,” Aristotle said, “were not expected to learn anything, but merely to be affected in a certain way and put into a certain frame of mind.” Nothing was required but that the ritual should be correctly performed, and the worshipper was free to give any explanation of it he pleased. It might be as exalted as that of Pindar and Sophokles, or as material as that of the itinerant mystery-mongers described by Plato in the Republic. The essential thing was that he should duly sacrifice his pig. Arist. fr. 45, 1483 a 19, τοὺς τελουμένους οὐ μαθεῖν τι δεῖν, ἀλλὰ παθεῖν καὶ διατεθῆναι. I. PYTHAGORAS OF SAMOS [Sidenote: Character of the tradition.]

37. It is no easy task to give an account of Pythagoras that can claim to be regarded as history. Our principal sources of information are the Lives composed by Iamblichos, Porphyry, and Laertios Diogenes. That of Iamblichos is a wretched compilation, based chiefly on the work of the arithmetician Nikomachos of Gerasa in Judaea, and the romance of Apollonios of Tyana, who regarded himself as a second Pythagoras, and accordingly took great liberties with his materials. Porphyry stands, as a writer, on a far higher level than Iamblichos; but his authorities do not inspire us with more confidence. He, too, made use of Nikomachos, and of a certain novelist called Antonius Diogenes, author of a work entitled Marvels from beyond Thule. Diogenes quotes, as usual, a considerable number of authorities, and the statements he makes must be estimated according to the nature of the sources from which they were drawn. So far, it must be confessed, our material does not seem promising. Further examination shows, however, that a good many fragments of two much older authorities, Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos, are embedded in the mass. These writers were both disciples of Aristotle; they were natives of Southern Italy, and contemporary with the last generation of the Pythagorean school. Both wrote accounts of Pythagoras; and Aristoxenos, who was personally intimate with the last representatives of scientific Pythagoreanism, also made a collection of the sayings of his friends. Now the Neopythagorean story, as we have it in Iamblichos, is a tissue of incredible and fantastic myths; but, if we sift out the statements which go back to Aristoxenos and Dikaiarchos, we can easily construct a rational narrative, in which Pythagoras appears not as a miracle-monger and religious innovator, but simply as a moralist and statesman. We might then be tempted to suppose that this is the genuine tradition; but that would be altogether a mistake. There is, in fact, a third and still earlier stratum in the Lives, and this agrees with the latest accounts in representing Pythagoras as a wonder-worker and a religious reformer.

See E. Rohde’s admirable papers, “Die Quellen des Iamblichus in seiner Biographie des Pythagoras” (Rh. Mus. xxvi., xxvii.). Iamblichos was a disciple of Porphyry, and contemporary with Constantine. The Life of Pythagoras has been edited by Nauck (1884). Nikomachos belongs to the beginning of the second century A.D. There is no evidence that he added anything to the authorities he followed, but these were already vitiated by Neopythagorean fables. Still, it is to him we chiefly owe the preservation of the valuable evidence of Aristoxenos. Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras is the only considerable extract from his History of Philosophy, in four books, that has survived. The romance of Antonius is the original parodied by Lucian in his Vera Historia. The importance of the life in Laertios Diogenes lies in the fact that it gives us the story current at Alexandria before the rise of Neopythagoreanism and the promulgation of the gospel according to Apollonios of Tyana.

Some of the most striking miracles of Pythagoras are related on the authority of Andron’s Tripod, and of Aristotle’s work on the Pythagoreans. Both these treatises belong to the fourth century B.C., and are therefore untouched by Neopythagorean fancies. Further, it is only by assuming the still earlier existence of this view that we can explain the allusions of Herodotos. The Hellespontine Greeks told him that Salmoxis or Zamolxis had been a slave of Pythagoras, and Salmoxis is a figure of the same class as Abaris and Aristeas. Andron of Ephesos wrote a work on the Seven Wise Men, called The Tripod, in allusion to the well-known story. The feats ascribed to Pythagoras in the Aristotelian treatise remind us of an ecclesiastical legend. For example, he kills a deadly snake by biting it; he was seen at Kroton and Metapontion at the same time; he exhibited his golden thigh at Olympia, and was addressed by a voice from heaven when crossing the river Kasas. The same authority stated that he was identified by the Krotoniates with Apollo Hyperboreios (Arist. fr. 186). Herod. iv. 95.

It seems, then, that both the oldest and the latest accounts agree in representing Pythagoras as a man of the class to which Epimenides and Onomakritos belonged—in fact, as a sort of “medicine-man”; but, for some reason, there was an attempt to save his memory from this imputation, and that attempt belonged to the fourth century B.C. The significance of this will appear in the sequel. [Sidenote: Life of Pythagoras.] 38. We may be said to know for certain that Pythagoras passed his early manhood at Samos, and was the son of Mnesarchos; and he “flourished,” we are told, in the reign of Polykrates. This date cannot be far wrong; for Herakleitos already speaks of him in the past tense.

Cf. Herod. iv. 95, and Herakleitos, fr. 17 (R. P. 31 a). Herodotos represents him as living at Samos. On the other hand, Aristoxenos said that he came from one of the islands which the Athenians occupied after expelling the Tyrrhenians (Diog. viii. 1). This suggests Lemnos, from which the Tyrrhenian “Pelasgians” were expelled by Miltiades (Herod. vi. 140), or possibly some other island which was occupied at the same time. There were also Tyrrhenians at Imbros. This explains the story that he was an Etrurian or a Tyrian. Other accounts bring him into connexion with Phleious, but that is perhaps a pious invention of the Pythagorean society which flourished there at the beginning of the fourth century B.C. Pausanias (ii. 13, 1) gives it as a Phleiasian tradition that Hippasos, the great-grandfather of Pythagoras, had emigrated from Phleious to Samos. Eratosthenes identified Pythagoras with the Olympic victor of Ol. XLVIII. 1 (588/7 B.C.), but Apollodoros gave his floruit as 532/1, the era of Polykrates. He doubtless based this on the statement of Aristoxenos quoted by Porphyry (V. Pyth. 9), that Pythagoras left Samos from dislike to the tyranny of Polykrates (R. P. 53 a). For a full discussion, see Jacoby, pp. 215 sqq. Herakl. fr. 16, 17 (R. P. 31, 31 a).

The extensive travels attributed to Pythagoras by late writers are, of course, apocryphal. Even the statement that he visited Egypt, though far from improbable if we consider the close relations between Polykrates of Samos and Amasis, rests on no sufficient authority. Herodotos, it is true, observes that the Egyptians agreed in certain practices with the rules called Orphic and Bacchic, which are really Egyptian, and with the Pythagoreans; but this does not imply that the Pythagoreans derived these directly from Egypt. He says also in another place that the belief in transmigration came from Egypt, though certain Greeks, both at an earlier and a later date, had passed it off as their own. He refuses, however, to give their names, so he can hardly be referring to Pythagoras. Nor does it matter; for the Egyptians did not believe in transmigration at all, and Herodotos was simply deceived by the priests or the symbolism of the monuments. It occurs first in the Bousiris of Isokrates, § 28 (R. P. 52).

Herod. ii. 81 (R. P. 52 a). The comma at Αἰγυπτίοισι is clearly right. Herodotos believed that the worship of Dionysos was introduced from Egypt by Melampous (ii. 49), and he means to suggest that the Orphics got these practices from the worshippers of Bakchos, while the Pythagoreans got them from the Orphics. Herod. ii. 123 (R. P. ib.). The words “whose names I know, but do not write” cannot refer to Pythagoras; for it is only of contemporaries that Herodotos speaks in this way (cf. i. 51; iv. 48). Stein’s suggestion that he meant Empedokles seems to me convincing. Herodotos may have met him at Thourioi. Nor is there any reason to suppose that οἱ μὲν πρότερον refers specially to the Pythagoreans. If Herodotos had ever heard of Pythagoras visiting Egypt, he would surely have said so in one or other of these passages. There was no occasion for reserve, as Pythagoras must have died before Herodotos was born. Aristoxenos said that Pythagoras left Samos in order to escape from the tyranny of Polykrates. It was at Kroton, a city already famous for its medical school, that he founded his society. How long he remained there we do not know; he died at Metapontion, whither he had retired on the first signal of revolt against his influence.

Porph. V. Pyth. 9 (R. P. 53 a). From what Herodotos tells us of Demokedes (iii. 131) we can see that the medical school of Kroton was founded before the time of Pythagoras. Cf. Wachtler, De Alcmaeone Crotoniata, p. 91. It may be taken as certain that Pythagoras spent his last days at Metapontion; Aristoxenos said so (ap. Iambl. V. Pyth. 249), and Cicero (De Fin. v. 4) speaks of the honours which continued to be paid to his memory in that city (R. P. 57 c). Cf. also Andron, fr. 6 (F.H.G. ii. 347). [Sidenote: The Order.]

39. There is no reason to believe that the detailed statements which have been handed down with regard to the organisation of the Pythagorean Order rest upon any historical basis, and in the case of many of them we can still see how they came to be made. The distinction of grades within the Order, variously called Mathematicians and Akousmatics, Esoterics and Exoterics, Pythagoreans and Pythagorists, is an invention designed to explain how there came to be two widely different sets of people, each calling themselves disciples of Pythagoras, in the fourth century B.C. So, too, the statement that the Pythagoreans were bound to inviolable secrecy, which goes back to Aristoxenos, is intended to explain why there is no trace of the Pythagorean philosophy proper before Philolaos. For these distinctions, see Porphyry (V. Pyth. 37) and Iamblichos (V. Pyth. 80), quoted R. P. 56 and 56 b. The name ἀκουσματικοί is clearly related to the ἀκούσματα, with which we shall have to deal shortly (§ 44).

For the “mystic silence,” see Aristoxenos, ap. Diog. viii. 15 (R. P. 55 a). Tannery, “Sur le secret dans l’école de Pythagore” (Arch. i. pp. 28 sqq.), thinks that the mathematical doctrines were the secrets of the school, and that these were divulged by Hippasos; but the most reasonable view is that there were no secrets at all except of a ritual kind.

The Pythagorean Order was simply, in its origin, a religious fraternity of the type described above, and not, as has sometimes been maintained, a political league. Nor had it anything to do with the “Dorian aristocratic ideal.” Pythagoras was an Ionian, and the Order was originally confined to Achaian states. Nor is there the slightest evidence that the Pythagoreans favoured the aristocratic rather than the democratic party. The main purpose of the Order was to secure for its own members a more adequate satisfaction of the religious instinct than that supplied by the State religion. It was, in fact, an institution for the cultivation of holiness. In this respect it resembled an Orphic society, though it seems that Apollo, rather than Dionysos, was the chief Pythagorean god. That is doubtless why the Krotoniates identified Pythagoras with Apollo Hyperboreios. From the nature of the case, however, an independent society within a Greek state was apt to be brought into conflict with the larger body. The only way in which it could then assert its right to exist was by identifying the State with itself, that is, by securing the control of the sovereign power. The history of the Pythagorean Order, so far as it can be traced, is, accordingly, the history of an attempt to supersede the State; and its political action is to be explained as a mere incident of that attempt.

Plato, Rep. x. 600 a, implies that Pythagoras held no public office. The view that the Pythagorean sect was a political league, maintained in modern times by Krische (De societatis a Pythagora conditae scopo politico, 1830), goes back, as Rohde has shown (loc. cit.), to Dikaiarchos, the champion of the “Practical Life,” just as the view that it was primarily a scientific society goes back to the mathematician and musician Aristoxenos. The former antedated Archytas, just as the latter antedated Philolaos (see Chap. VII. § 138). Grote’s good sense enabled him to see this quite clearly (vol. iv. pp. 329 sqq.). Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii. § 502, Anm. It is still necessary to insist upon this, as the idea that the Pythagoreans represented the “Dorian ideal” dies very hard. In his Kulturhistorische Beiträge (Heft i. p. 59), Max C. P. Schmidt imagines that later writers call the founder of the sect Pythagoras instead of Pythagores, as he is called by Herakleitos and Demokritos, because he had become “a Dorian of the Dorians.” The fact is simply that Πυθαγόρας is the Attic form of Πυθαγόρης, and that the writers in question wrote Attic. Similarly, Plato calls Archytas, who did belong to a Dorian state, Archytes, though Aristoxenos and others retained the Dorian form of his name.

Kylon, the chief opponent of the Pythagoreans, is described by Aristoxenos (Iambl. V. Pyth. 248) as γένει καὶ δόξῃ καὶ πλούτῳ πρωτεύων τῶν πολιτῶν. Taras, later the chief seat of the Pythagoreans, was a democracy. The truth is that, at this time, the new religion appealed to the people rather than the aristocracies, which were apt to be “free-thinking” (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iii. § 252). Xenophanes, not Pythagoras, is their man. We have the authority of Aristotle, fr. 186, 1510 b 20, for the identification of Pythagoras with Apollo Hyperboreios. The names of Abaris and Aristeas stand for a mystical movement parallel to the Orphic, but based on the worship of Apollo. The later tradition makes them predecessors of Pythagoras; and that this has some historical basis, appears from Herod. iv. 13 sqq., and above all from the statement that Aristeas had a statue at Metapontion, where Pythagoras died. The connexion of Pythagoras with Zamolxis belongs to the same order of ideas. As the legend of the Hyperboreans is Delian, we see that the religion taught by Pythagoras was genuinely Ionian in its origin. [Sidenote: Downfall of the Order.]

40. For a time the new Order seems actually to have succeeded in securing the supreme power, but reaction came at last. Under the leadership of Kylon, a wealthy noble, Kroton was able to assert itself victoriously against the Pythagorean domination. This, we may well believe, had been galling enough. The “rule of the saints” would be nothing to it; and we can still imagine and sympathise with the irritation felt by the plain man of those days at having his legislation done for him by a set of incomprehensible pedants, who made a point of abstaining from beans, and would not let him beat his own dog because they recognised in its howls the voice of a departed friend (Xenophanes, fr. 7). This feeling would be aggravated by the private religious worship of the Society. Greek states could never pardon the introduction of new gods. Their objection to this was not, however, that the gods in question were false gods. If they had been, it would not have mattered so much. What they could not tolerate was that any one should establish a private means of communication between himself and the unseen powers. That introduced an unknown and incalculable element into the arrangements of the State, which might very likely be hostile to those citizens who had no means of propitiating the intruding divinity.

Aristoxenos’s version of the events which led to the downfall of the Pythagorean Order is given at length by Iamblichos. According to this, Pythagoras had refused to receive Kylon into his Society, and he therefore became a bitter foe of the Order. From this cause Pythagoras removed from Kroton to Metapontion, where he died. The Pythagoreans, however, still retained possession of the government of Kroton, till at last the partisans of Kylon set fire to Milo’s house, where they were assembled. Of those in the house only two, Archippos and Lysis, escaped. Archippos retired to Taras; Lysis, first to Achaia and then to Thebes, where he became later on the teacher of Epameinondas. The Pythagoreans who remained concentrated themselves at Rhegion; but, as things went from bad to worse, they all left Italy except Archippos.