Here Anaxagoras lies, who reached of truth The farthest bounds in heavenly speculations.
We ourselves also have written an epigram on him:
Wise Anaxagoras did call the sun A mass of glowing iron; and for this Death was to be his fate. But Pericles Then saved his friend; but afterwards he died A victim of a weak philosophy.
There were also three other people of the name of Anaxagoras, none of whom combined all kinds of knowledge. But one was an orator and a pupil of Isocrates; another was a statuary, who is mentioned by Antigonus; another is a grammarian, a pupil of Zenodotus.
Archelaus was a citizen of either Athens or Miletus, and his father’s name was Apollodorus; but, as some say, Mydon. He was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and the master of Socrates.
He was the first person who imported the study of natural philosophy from Ionia to Athens, and he was called the Natural Philosopher because natural philosophy terminated with him, as Socrates introduced ethical philosophy. And it seems probable that Archelaus too meddled in some degree with moral philosophy, for in his philosophical speculations he discussed laws and what was honorable and just. And Socrates borrowed from him; and because he enlarged his principles, he was thought to be the inventor of them.
He used to say that there were two primary causes of generation: heat and cold; and that all animals were generated out of mud; and that what are accounted just and disgraceful are not so by nature, but only by law. And his reasoning proceeds in this way: He says that water being melted by heat, when it is submitted to the action of fire, by which it is solidified, becomes earth; and when it is liquefied, becomes air. And, therefore, the earth is surrounded by air and influenced by it, and so is the air by the revolutions of fire. And he says that animals are generated out of hot earth, which sends up a thick mud something like milk for their food. So too he says that it produced men.
And he was the first person who said that sound is produced by the percussion of the air; and that the sea is filtered in the hollows of the earth in its passage, and so is condensed; and that the sun is the greatest of the stars, and that the universe is boundless.
But there were three other people of the name of Archelaus: one, a geographer, who described the countries traversed by Alexander; the second, a man who wrote a poem on objects which have two natures; and the third, an orator, who wrote a book containing the precepts of his art.
Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a statuary, and of Phaenarete, a midwife; as Plato records in his Theaetetus, he was a citizen of Athens, of the borough of Alopece.
Some people believed that he assisted Euripides in his poems; in reference to which idea, Mnesimachus speaks as follows:
The Phrygians are a new play of Euripides, But Socrates has laid the main foundation.
And again he says:
Euripides: patched up by Socrates.
And Callias, in his Captives, says:
A.: Are you so proud, giving yourself such airs?
B.: And well I may, for Socrates is the cause.
And Aristophanes says, in his Clouds:
This is Euripides, who doth compose Those argumentative wise tragedies.
But, having been a pupil of Anaxagoras, as some people say, but of Damon as the other story goes, related by Alexander in his Successions, after the condemnation of Anaxagoras, he became a disciple of Archelaus, the natural philosopher. And, indeed, Aristoxenus says that he was very intimate with him.
But Duris says that he was a slave, and employed in carving stones. And some say that the Graces in the Acropolis are his work; and they are clothed figures. And that it is in reference to this that Timon says, in his Silloi:
From them proceeded the stone polisher, The reasoning legislator, the enchanter Of all the Greeks, making them subtle arguers, A cunning pedant, a shrewd Attic quibbler.
For he was very clever in all rhetorical exercises, as Idomeneus also assures us. But the thirty tyrants forbade him to give lessons in the art of speaking and arguing, as Xenophon tells us. And Aristophanes turns him into ridicule in his Comedies, as making the worse appear the better reason. For he was the first man, as Phavorinus says in his Universal History, who, in conjunction with his disciple Aeschines, taught men how to become orators. And Idomeneus makes the same assertion in his essay on the Socratic School. He, likewise, was the first person who conversed about human life; and was also the first philosopher who was condemned to death and executed. And Aristoxenus, the son of Spintharas, says that he lent money in usury; and that he collected the interest and principal together, and then, when he had got the interest, he lent it out again. And Demetrius, of Byzantium, says that it was Criton who made him leave his workshop and instruct men, out of the admiration which he conceived for his abilities.
He then, perceiving that natural philosophy had no immediate bearing on our interests, began to enter upon moral speculations, both in his workshop and in the marketplace. And he said that the objects of his search were—
Whatever good or harm can man befall In his own house.