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Chapter 3. EPICHARMUS (c. 550-460 B.C.)

[78] Epicharmus of Cos, son of Helothales, was another pupil of Pythagoras. When three months old he was sent to Megara in Sicily and thence to Syracuse, as he tells us in his own writings. On his statue this epigram is written1 :

If the great sun outshines the other stars,

If the great sea is mightier than the streams,

So Epicharmus' wisdom all excelled,

Whom Syracuse his fatherland thus crowned.

He has left memoirs containing his physical, ethical and medical doctrines, and he has made marginal notes in most of the memoirs, which clearly show that they were written by him. He died at the age of ninety.

1 Anth. Pal. vii. 78.

Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Diogenes Laertius. R.D. Hicks. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1972 (First published 1925).

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