Chapter 3. ANAXAGORAS1
(500-428 B.C.)
[
6]
Anaxagoras, the son of Hegesibulus or Eubulus,
was a native of Clazomenae. He was a pupil of
Anaximenes, and was the first who set mind above
matter, for at the beginning of his treatise, which
is composed in attractive and dignified language, he
says, "All things were together; then came Mind
and set them in order." This earned for Anaxagoras
himself the nickname of Nous or Mind, and Timon
in his
Silli says of him
2:
Then, I ween, there is Anaxagoras, a doughty champion,
whom they call Mind, because forsooth his was the mind
which suddenly woke up and fitted closely together all that
had formerly been in a medley of confusion.
He was eminent for wealth and noble birth, and
furthermore for magnanimity, in that he gave up
his patrimony to his relations.
[
7]
For, when they
accused him of neglecting it, he replied, "Why then
do you not look after it?" And at last he went into
retirement and engaged in physical investigation
without troubling himself about public affairs. When
some one inquired, "Have you no concern in your
native land?" "Gently," he replied, "I am greatly
concerned with my fatherland," and pointed to the
sky.
He is said to have been twenty years old at the invasion of Xerxes and to have lived seventy-two years.
Apollodorus in his
Chronology says that he was
born
in the 70th Olympiad,
3 and died in the
first year of
the 88th Olympiad.
4 He began to study
philosophy
at Athens in the archonship of Callias
5 when he was
twenty; Demetrius of Phalerum states this in his
list of archons; and at Athens they say he remained
for thirty years.
[
8]
He declared the sun to be a mass of red-hot metal
and to be larger than the Peloponnesus, though
others ascribe this view to Tantalus; he declared
that there were dwellings on the moon, and moreover
hills and ravines. He took as his principles the
homoeomeries or homogeneous molecules; for just
as gold consists of fine particles which are called
gold-dust, so he held the whole universe to be compounded of minute bodies having parts homogeneous
to themselves. His moving principle was Mind; of
bodies, he said, some, like earth, were heavy, occupying the region below, others, light like fire, held the
region above, while water and air were intermediate
in position. For in this way over the earth, which
is flat, the sea sinks down after the moisture has
been evaporated by the sun.
[
9]
In the beginning the
stars moved in the sky as in a revolving dome, so
that the celestial pole which is always visible was
vertically overhead; but subsequently the pole took
its inclined position. He held the Milky Way to be
a reflection of the light of stars which are not shone
upon by the sun; comets to be a conjunction of
planets which emit flames; shooting-stars to be a
sort of sparks thrown off by the air. He held that
winds arise when the air is rarefied by the sun's
heat; that thunder is a clashing together of the
clouds, lightning their violent friction; an earthquake a subsidence of air into the earth.
Animals were produced from moisture, heat, and
an earthy substance; later the species were propagated by generation from one another, males from
the right side, females from the left.
[
10]
There is a story that he predicted the fall of the
meteoric stone at Aegospotami, which he said would
fall from the sun.
6
Hence Euripides, who was his
pupil, in the
Phathon calls the sun itself a
"golden
clod."
7 Furthermore,
when he went to Olympia,
he sat down wrapped in a sheep-skin cloak as if it
were going to rain; and the rain came. When
some one asked him if the hills at Lampsacus would
ever become sea, he replied, "Yes, it only needs
time." Being asked to what end he had been
born, he replied, "To study sun and moon and
heavens." To one who inquired, "You miss the
society of the Athenians?" his reply was, "Not I,
but they miss mine." When he saw the tomb of
Mausolus, he said, "A costly tomb is an image of
an estate turned into stone."
8
[
11]
To one
who complained that he was dying in a foreign land, his
answer was, "The descent to Hades is much the same
from whatever place we start."
Favorinus in his
Miscellaneous History says
Anaxagoras was the first to maintain that Homer in his
poems treats of virtue and justice, and that this
thesis was defended at greater length by his friend
Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who was the first to busy
himself with Homer's physical doctrine. Anaxagoras
was also the first to publish a book with diagrams.
9
Silenus
10 in the
first book of his
History gives the
archonship of Demylus
11 as the date when the meteoric
stone fell,
[
12]
and says that Anaxagoras declared the
whole firmament to be made of stones; that the
rapidity of rotation caused it to cohere; and that if
this were relaxed it would fall.
12
Of the trial of Anaxagoras different accounts are
given. Sotion in his
Succession of the
Philosophers
says that he was indicted by Cleon on a charge of
impiety, because he declared the sun to be a mass
of red-hot metal; that his pupil Pericles defended
him, and he was fined five talents and banished.
Satyrus in his
Lives says that the prosecutor was
Thucydides, the opponent of Pericles, and the charge
one of treasonable correspondence with Persia as
well as of impiety; and that sentence of death was
passed on Anaxagoras by default.
[
13]
When news was
brought him that he was condemned and his sons
were dead, his comment on the sentence was, "Long
ago nature condemned both my judges and myself
to death"; and on his sons, "I knew that my
children were born to die." Some, however, tell
this story of Solon, and others of Xenophon. That
he buried his sons with his own hands is asserted by
Demetrius of Phalerum in his work
On Old Age.
Hermippus in his
Lives says that he was confined
in
the prison pending his execution; that Pericles
came forward and asked the people whether they
had any fault to find with him in his own public
career; to which they replied that they had not.
"Well," he continued, "I am a pupil of Anaxagoras;
do not then be carried away by slanders and put
him to death. Let me prevail upon you to release
him." So he was released; but he could not brook
the indignity he had suffered and committed suicide.
[
14]
Hieronymus in the second book of his
Scattered
Notes states that Pericles brought him into court so
weak and wasted from illness that he owed his
acquittal not so much to the merits of his case as to
the sympathy of the judges. So much then on the
subject of his trial.
He was supposed to have borne Democritus a
grudge because he had failed to get into communication with him.
13 At length he
retired to Lampsacus
and there died. And when the magistrates of the
city asked if there was anything he would like done
for him, he replied that he would like them to grant
an annual holiday to the boys in the month in which
he died; and the custom is kept up to this day.
[
15]
So, when he died, the people of Lampsacus gave
him honourable burial and placed over his grave the
following inscription
14:
Here Anaxagoras, who in his quest
Of truth scaled heaven itself, is laid to rest.
I also have written an epigram upon him
15:
The sun's a molten mass,
Quoth Anaxagoras;
This is his crime, his life must pay the price.
Pericles from that fate
Rescued his friend too late;
His spirit crushed, by his own hand he dies.
There have been three other men who bore the
name of Anaxagoras [of whom no other writer gives
a complete list]. The first was a rhetorician of the
school of Isocrates; the second a sculptor, mentioned
by Antigonus; the third a grammarian, pupil of
Zenodotus.
