Italic and Ionic, and their founders._
As far as concerns the literature of the Greeks, whose language holds a
more illustrious place than any of the languages of the other nations,
history mentions two schools of philosophers, the one called the Italic
school, originating in that part of Italy which was formerly called
Magna Græcia; the other called the Ionic school, having its origin in
those regions which are still called by the name of Greece. The Italic
school had for its founder Pythagoras of Samos, to whom also the term
"philosophy" is said to owe its origin. For whereas formerly those who
seemed to excel others by the laudable manner in which they regulated
their lives were called sages, Pythagoras, on being asked what he
professed, replied that he was a philosopher, that is, a student or
lover of wisdom; for it seemed to him to be the height of arrogance to
profess oneself a sage.[292] The founder of the Ionic school, again,
was Thales of Miletus, one of those seven who were styled the "seven
sages," of whom six were distinguished by the kind of life they lived,
and by certain maxims which they gave forth for the proper conduct of
life. Thales was distinguished as an investigator into the nature of
things; and, in order that he might have successors in his school, he
committed his dissertations to writing. That, however, which especially
rendered him eminent was his ability, by means of astronomical
calculations, even to predict eclipses of the sun and moon. He thought,
however, that water was the first principle of things, and that of it
all the elements of the world, the world itself, and all things which
are generated in it, ultimately consist. Over all this work, however,
which, when we consider the world, appears so admirable, he set nothing
of the nature of divine mind. To him succeeded Anaximander, his pupil,
who held a different opinion concerning the nature of things; for he
did not hold that all things spring from one principle, as Thales
did, who held that principle to be water, but thought that each thing
springs from its own proper principle. These principles of things he
believed to be infinite in number, and thought that they generated
innumerable worlds, and all the things which arise in them. He thought,
also, that these worlds are subject to a perpetual process of alternate
dissolution and regeneration, each one continuing for a longer or
shorter period of time, according to the nature of the case; nor did
he, any more than Thales, attribute anything to a divine mind in the
production of all this activity of things. Anaximander left as his
successor his disciple Anaximenes, who attributed all the causes of
things to an infinite air. He neither denied nor ignored the existence
of gods, but, so far from believing that the air was made by them,
he held, on the contrary, that they sprang from the air. Anaxagoras,
however, who was his pupil, perceived that a divine mind was the
productive cause of all things which we see, and said that all the
various kinds of things, according to their several modes and species,
were produced out of an infinite matter consisting of homogeneous
particles, but by the efficiency of a divine mind. Diogenes, also,
another pupil of Anaximenes, said that a certain air was the original
substance of things out of which all things were produced, but that
it was possessed of a divine reason, without which nothing could be
produced from it. Anaxagoras was succeeded by his disciple Archelaus,
who also thought that all things consisted of homogeneous particles,
of which each particular thing was made, but that those particles were
pervaded by a divine mind, which perpetually energized all the eternal
bodies, namely, those particles, so that they are alternately united
and separated. Socrates, the master of Plato, is said to have been the
disciple of Archelaus; and on Plato's account it is that I have given
this brief historical sketch of the whole history of these schools.