Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origin of a Discipline
Author: Christopher Moore
Date: 2019-12-17 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Philosophy
Description: An original and provocative book that illuminates the origins of philosophy in ancient Greece by revealing the surprising early meanings of the word "philosopher" Calling Philosophers Names provides a groundbreaking account of the origins of the term philosophos or "philosopher" in ancient Greece. Tracing the evolution of the word's meaning over its first two centuries, Christopher Moore shows how it first referred to aspiring political sages and advice-givers, then to avid conversationalists about virtue, and finally to investigators who focused on the scope and conditions of those conversati
Publisher: Princeton University Press

C A L L I N G

P H I L O S O P H E R S

N A M E S

CALLING

PHI LOS O PHERS

NAMES

On the Origin of a Discipline

C H R I S T O P H E R M O O R E

P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

Prince ton and Oxford

Copyright © 2020 by Prince ton University Press

Published by Prince ton University Press

41 William Street, Prince ton, New Jersey 08540

6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
press . princeton . edu

All Rights Reserved

LCCN 2019935934

ISBN 9780691195056

ISBN (e- book) 9780691197425

British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available

Editorial: Rob Tempio and Matt Rohal

Production Editorial: Natalie Baan

Text and Jacket Design: Pamela Schnitter

Production: Merli Guerra and Brigid Ackerman

Publicity: Alyssa Sanford and Julia Hall

Copyeditor: David Robertson

Jacket art: Anne Wilson, Bump (still from Errant Behaviors), 2004.

Video and sound installation. Composer: Shawn Decker; Animator: Cat Solen;

Post-production Animator and Mastering: Daniel Torrente. Copyright 2004

Anne Wilson. Courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery.

This book has been composed in Times New Roman and Adobe Garamond

Printed on acid- free paper. ∞

Printed in the United States of Amer i ca

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Sandra Peterson
παρέχω ἐμαυτὸν ἐρωτᾶν, καὶ ἐάν τις βούληται ἀποκρινόμενος
ἀκούειν ὧν ἂν λέγω.

Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true phi los o phers, we mortals should
not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man
gives himself out for a phi los o pher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman,
he must have “broken his digester.”

— MELVILLE, MOBY- DICK

Why do I wish to call our pre sent activity philosophy, when we also call Plato’s
activity philosophy? Perhaps because of a certain analogy between them, or perhaps
because of the continuous development of the subject. Or the new activity may take
the place of the old because it removes mental discomforts the old was supposed to.

— WITTGENSTEIN

CONTENTS

Acknowl edgments
xi

Selected Abbreviations and Editions xiii

Map of Places Mentioned xx–xxi

CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Origins of Philosophia 1

ORIGINS

CHAPTER 2 Heraclitus against the Philosophoi 37

CHAPTER 3 What Philosophos Could Have Meant: A Lexical Account

66

CHAPTER 4 Pythagoreans as Philosophoi 107

DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 5 Fifth- Century Philosophoi 127

CHAPTER 6 Socrates’s Prosecution as Philosophos 157

CHAPTER 7 Non- Academic Philosophia 194

ACAD EMY

CHAPTER 8 Plato’s Saving of the Appearances

221

CHAPTER 9 Aristotle’s Historiography of Philosophia 260

CHAPTER 10 Ambivalence about Philosophia beyond the Discipline

288

EPILOGUE Con temporary Philosophy and the History of the Discipline 317

Appendix: Versions of the Pythagoras Story

321

Classical Uses of Philosoph- Discussed in This Book

331

Phil- Prefixed Words Appearing in This Book

335

Bibliography

337

Index

371

Index Locorum

393

ACKNOWL EDGMENTS

This book concerns the origins of the term “phi los o pher,” not of my becoming
a professional one, but my having written it depends on my employment, and
the love of wisdom, or its direction and refinement, that occasioned it and for
both I have many debts here to acknowledge.

In college, Nancy Crumbine and Roy Sorensen modeled two ways to think
philosophically. Amplifying their salutary effects were Jim Moor, Amy Allen

(see below), Sam Levey, Christie Thomas, and Bernie Gert. Bill Scott taught
me Greek.

In gradu ate school, Sandra Peterson gave me a direction for a sort of an-
cient philosophy I could emulate, then respond to, and draw inspiration from.

Her writings on the origins of the term “philosophy” have motivated the whole
of my own work, especially when our views have differed. My classmate Josh

Kortbein brought me into the richest conversations about philosophy, its aspi-
rations, and its disciplinary norms.

This proj ect began when I taught at Skidmore and received early encour-
agement at a research pre sen ta tion from the late classicist and college presi-
dent David Porter. Elizabeth Belfiore provided early advice on the resulting
paper, as she did so often, and a certain anonymous referee, in rejecting that
paper, observed that I had a proj ect much larger than an article in my hands.

I presented studies for this monograph at Penn State, Bryn Mawr, the Center
for Hellenic Studies, Duquesne, Vassar, Penn State– Altoona, and at the annual
conferences of CAMWS, SAGP, and NPSA, and two meetings of the West

Coast Plato Workshop.

I wrote much of the book at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in

Washington, DC. I cannot imagine a more commodious, welcome, beautiful,
and bibliographically well- outfitted place to live and work. Gregory Nagy
and Lanah Koelle served exemplarily as hosts. I had critical conversations
about Pindar with Sven Schipporeit and about Alcmaeon with Stavros Kou-
loumentas. Some of the book’s leading arguments and narrative ele ments
took shape in the crucible of questioning by Paul Kosmin, who also provided
a model of scholarly pre sen ta tion. I thank Radcliffe Edmonds for additional
support. The Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State, Susan

Welch, made my semester in Washington pos si ble, and supported me in other
fundamental ways. I revised the book with research leave funded by the Penn
xii ACK NOW L

EDGM ENTS

State Center for Humanities and Information, for which I thank its director,

Eric Hayot.

I had valuable early email exchanges on relevant topics with Robin Boyes
and Del Reed. My student Brendan Bernicker read the first three chapters with
assiduity. Amy Allen, now my department head at Penn State, arranged and
funded a seminar for my manuscript; thus my colleagues Vincent Colapietro,

Eduardo Mendieta, Mark Munn, and Mark Sentesy read the whole thing, giv-
ing me many useful suggestions and much encouragement. The three outside
readers— Andrew Ford, Doug Hutchinson, and Chris Raymond— discussed
the proj ect with me at heroic lengths during the seminar and for months fol-
lowing; their interest and commitment has meant the most to my continued
understanding of the nature and value of the proj ect. Benjamin Randolph and

Joshua Billings read and commented on the penultimate draft, with canny ad-
vice for improving its rhetorical shape. Kate Baldanza helped me sharpen up
the introduction. Kris Klotz proofread the book, and Blythe Woolston prepared
the index.

Rob Tempio at Prince ton University Press identified this book proj ect as
one worth taking on; his commitment to intellectual history and to philosophy
in its ancient cultural context made him the ideal editor. His four readers for
the manuscript each helped, in his or her own way, to make the work rather
less disappointing than it other wise would have been. I am thankful to the rest
of the Prince ton University Press staff involved in this complicated proj ect,
especially Natalie Baan.

To be sure, despite my deep appreciation for all named above, none is to be
taken to agree with all or any par tic u lar claims I make in what follows. Then
again, that might be a necessary condition of our sharing in the disciplinary
life of philosophia.

During copyediting, my daughter was born, whose name, Lydia, as luck
would have it, has par tic u lar aptness for this book. She is already a conver-
sationalist after her fashion, and I eagerly await our learning together how to
obey the Delphic “Philosophos ginou!”

SELECTED ABBREVIATIONS

AND EDITIONS

Aesch.

Aeschylus. Page, D., ed. Aeschyli Septem Quae

Supersunt Tragoedias. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1972.

fr.

fragment (in TrGF)

Sept.

Seven against Thebes

Supp.

Suppliant Maidens

Alcm.

Alcman (in PMG)

Ambrose

Migne, J. P., ed. Sancti Ambrosii Mediolanensis Epis-
copi Opera Omnia. Patrologia Latina 14–17, Paris:

Migne, 1845.

Ammonius

Busse, A., ed. Ammonius in Porphyrii Isagogen sive

Quinque Voces. Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca

4.3. Berlin: Reimer, 1891.

Anac.

Anacreon (in P)

Anon. Iambl.

Anonymus Iamblichi (in LM)

Apul.

Apuleius. Jones, C. P., ed. Apuleius. Apologia, Florida,

De Deo Socratis. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Apol.

Apologia

Flor.

Florida

Ar.

Aristophanes. Wilson, N. G., ed. Aristophanis Fabulae.

2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Ach.

Acharnians

Av. Birds

Eccl.

Ecclesiazusae (Assemblywomen)

Eq. Knights

Nub. Clouds

Ran. Frogs

Thesm.

Women at the Thesmophoria

Vesp.

Wasps

Arist. Aristotle

An. post.

Posterior Analytics

Ath. Pol.

Constitution of the Athenians

Cael.

De Caelo (On the Heavens)

xiv A BBR EV I ATIONS A N D EDITIONS

De an.

De Anima (On the Soul)

Eth. Nic.

Nicomachean Ethics. Bywater, I, ed. Aristotelis Ethica

Nicomachea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1894.

Gen. corr.

On Generation and Corruption

M. A

Metaphysics. Primavesi, O., ed. “Aristotle, Metaphysics

A: A New Critical Edition with Introduction.” In Aris-
totle’s “Metaphysics” Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum,
edited by C. Steel, 385–516. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2012.

M. B– N

Metaphysics. Jaeger, W., ed. Aristotelis Metaphysica.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957.

[MXG]

On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias

Part. an.

Parts of Animals

Phys.

Physics

Poet.

Poetics

Pol.

Politics

Rh.

Rhe toric. Ross, W. D., ed. Aristotelis Ars Rhetorica.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.

Soph. el.

Sophistical Refutations

Top.

Topics

Bacchyl.

Bacchylides. Snell, B. and H. Maehler, eds. Bacchylides.

Carmina cum fragmentis. 10th ed. Leipzig, Teubner,

1970.

BNJ

Worthington, I., ed. Brill’s New Jacoby. 2nd ed. Leiden:

Brill, 2018–.

BNP

Schneider, H., M. Landfester, and H. Cancik, eds.

Brill’s New Pauly. Leiden: Brill, 1996–.

Cic. Cicero

Tusc.

Tusculan Disputations. Fohlen, G. , ed. Cicéron:

Tusculanes. 2 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1930–31.

Clem.

Clement of Alexandria

Strom.

Stromata (Miscellanies). Stählin, O., ed. Clemens Alex-
andrinus: Stromata. Leipzig: J. C. Henrichs, 1906.

DK

Diels, H. and W. Kranz, eds. Die Fragmente der Vor-
sokratiker. 6th ed. Berlin: Weidmann, 1951.

DL

Diogenes Laertius. Dorandi, T., ed. Diogenes Laertius:

Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2013.

DS

Diodorus Siculus. Diodore de Sicile: Bibliothèque His-
torique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1972–.

A BBR EV I ATIONS A N D EDITIONS xv

Diss. Log.

Dissoi Logoi (in LM)

EGF

Davies, M., ed. Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta.

Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1988.

EGM

Fowler, R. L., ed. Early Greek Mythography. 2 vols.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 and 2013.

Eur.

Euripides. Diggle, J, ed. Euripides Fabulae. 3 vols.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981–94.

Andr.

Andromache

El.

Electra

Hec.

Hecuba

Hel.

Helen

Heracl.

Children of Heracles

Hipp.

Hippolytus

IA

Iphigenia at Aulis

IT

Iphigenia among the Taurians

Phoen.

Phoenician Women

[Rhes.] [Rhesus]

fr.

fragment (in TrGF)

Euseb. Eusebius

Chron.

Helm, R., ed. Eusebius Werke: Die Chronik des Hiero-
nymus. Bd. 7. Berlin: Akademie- Verlag, 1913–26.

Praep. evang.

Mras, K., ed. Eusebius Werke: Die Praeparatio evan-
gelica. Bd. 8. Berlin: Akademie- Verlag, 1954–56.

Flor. Monac.

Munich Florilegium

Gnom. Vat.

Vatican Gnomologium

Gorg.

Gorgias of Leontini (in LM)

Hdt.

Herodotus. Wilson, N. G., ed. Herodoti Historiae.

2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Hermias

Lucarini, C. M. and C. Moreschini, eds. Hermias Alex-
andrinus: In Platonis Phaedrum Commentarii. Berlin:

De Gruyter, 2008.

Hes.

Hesiod. Most, G. W., ed. Hesiod. Rev. ed. 2 vols. Loeb

Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2018.

Op.

Works and Days

[Sc.]

Shield of Heracles

Theog.

Theogony

HJ

Hutchinson, D. S. and M. R. Johnson, eds. Aristotle:

Protrepticus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming.

xvi A BBR EV I ATIONS A N D EDITIONS

Homer

Monro, D. R. and T. W. Allen, eds. Homeri Opera.

2nd ed. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922.

Il.

Iliad

Od.

Odyssey

Iambl.

Iamblichus of Chalcis

DCMS

On General Mathematical Science. Festa, N., ed.

Iamblichi De communi mathematica scientia. Leipzig:

Teubner, 1891.

Pro.

Protrepticus (Exhortation to Philosophy). Pistelli, E.

ed. Iamblichi Protrepticus. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1967.

VP

On the Pythagorean Way of Life. Nauck, A. ed. Iamblichi

De vita Pythagorica. St. Petersburg: Eggers, 1884.

Ibyc.

Ibycus (in PMG)

IG

Kirchhoff, A. and U. von Wilamowitz Moellendorff,
eds. Inscriptiones Graecae. 62 fasc. Berlin: Walter de

Gruyter, 1873–.

Isid.

Isidore of Seville. Lindsay, W. M., ed. Isidori Hispalen-
sis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX.

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911.

Isoc.

Isocrates. Mandilaras, B. G., ed. Isocrates: Opera

Omnia. 3 vols. Munich and Leipzig: Teubner/Saur,

2003.

LM

Laks, A. and G. Most. Early Greek Philosophy. 9 vols.

Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2017.

LSJ

Liddell, H. G., R. Scott, and H. S. Jones. A Greek- English

Lexicon. 9th ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–40.

Lys.

Lysias. Carey, C., ed. Lysiae Orationes cum Fragmen-
tis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Nicom.

Nicomachus of Gerasa. Hoche, R., ed. Nicomachi Ger-
aseni Pythagorei Introductionis Arithmeticae Libri II.

Leipzig: Teubner, 1866.

Ench.

Manual of Harmonics

Isag. Arithm.

Introduction to Arithemetic

OCD

Hornblower, S., A. Spawforth, and E. Eidinow. Oxford

Classical Dictionary. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2012.

OED

Simpson, J. A. and E.S.C. Weiner. Oxford En glish Dic-
tionary. 2nd ed. 20 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

A BBR EV I ATIONS A N D EDITIONS xvii

P

Page, D. L., ed. Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1962.

PCG

Kassel, R. and C. Austin, eds. Poetai Comici Graeci.

8 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983–95.

Pind.

Pindar. Race, W. H., ed. Pindar. Rev. ed. 2 vols. Loeb

Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2012.

Isthm.

Isthmian Odes

Nem.

Nemean Odes

Ol.

Olympian Odes

Pae.

Paeans

Pyth.

Pythian Odes

Pl.

Plato. Burnet, J. ed. Platonis Opera. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1900–7.

Alc.

Alcibiades

Alc. II

Alcibiades II

Ap.

Apology of Socrates

Chrm.

Charmides

Cra.

Cratylus

Criti.

Critias

Epin.

Epinomis

Euthyd.

Euthydemus

Grg.

Gorgias

Hp. mai.

Hippias Major

Hp. mi.

Hippias Minor

Leg.

Laws

Menex.

Menexenus

Phd.

Phaedo

Phdr.

Phaedrus

Phlb.

Philebus

Prm.

Parmenides

Prt.

Protagoras

R.

Republic. S. R. Slings, ed. Platonis Rempublicam.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

RL ( Rival) Lovers ( Erastai or Anterastai)

Symp.

Symposium

Soph.

Sophist

Tht.

Theaetetus

Tim.

Timaeus
xviii A BBR EV I ATIONS A N D EDITIONS

PLF

Lobel, E. and D. Page, eds. Poetarum Lesbiorum Frag-
menta. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.

Plut.

Plutarch. Nachstädt, W., W. Sieveking, and J.B. Titch-
ener, eds. Plutarchi Moralia. 7 vols. Leipzig: Teubner,

1966–71.

PMG

Davies, M. and D. L. Page, eds. Poetarum Melicorum

Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon

Press. 1991.

Porph. Porphyry

VP

Life of Pythagoras. des Places, Édouard, ed. Porphyre:

Vie de Pythagore, Lettre à Marcella. Paris: Les Belles

Lettres, 1982.

Quint. Quintilian

Inst.

Institutes of Oratory. Winterbottom, M., ed. M. Fabi

Quintiliani Institutionis Oratoriae Libri Duodecim.

2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Ross

Ross, W. D., ed. Aristotelis Fragmenta Selecta. Oxford:

Oxford University Press 1955.

Σ

Scholiast

Simon.

Simonides (in P)

Sol.

Solon (in W)

Soph.

Sophocles. Lloyd- Jones, H. and N. G. Wilson, eds.

Sophoclis Fablulae. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1990.

Ant.

Antigone

El.

Electra

OC

Oedipus at Colonus
fr.

fragment (in TrGF)

SSR

Giannantoni, G., ed. Socratis et Socraticorum Rel-
iquiae. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1991.

Stob.

Stobaeus. Wachsmuth, C. and O. Hense, eds. Joan-
nis Stobaei Anthologium. 5 vols. Berlin: Weidmann,

1884–1912.

TCT

Grafton, A., G. Most, and S. Settis. The Classical

Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

2010.

Thgn.

Theognis (in W)

Thuc.

Thucydides. Jones, H. S. and J. E. Powell, eds.

Thucydidis Historiae. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1942.

A BBR EV I ATIONS A N D EDITIONS xix

TrGF

Snell, B., R. Kannicht, and S. Radt, eds. Tragicorum

Graecorum Fragmenta. 6 vols. Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck and Ruprecht, 1971–2004.

Val. Max.

Valerius Maximus. Shackleton Bailey, D. R., ed. Vale-
rius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings. 2 vols.

Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2000.

VM

De Vetere Medicina. Schiefsky, M. J., ed. Hippocrates:

On Ancient Medicine. Leiden: Brill, 2005

W

West, M. L., ed. Iambi et Elegi Graeci. 2 vols. Oxford,

Oxford University Press, 1989–92.

Xen.

Xenophon. Marchant, E. C., ed. Xenophontis Opera

Omnia. 2nd ed. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921.

An.

Anabasis

Cyn.

Cynegeticus (On Hunting with Dogs)

Cyr.

Cyropedia

Hell.

Hellenika (History of Greece)

Mem.

Memorabilia (Memoirs of Socrates)

Oec.

Oeconomicus (On Estate Management)

Symp.

Symposium (Banquet)

YC

Yuen- Collingridge, Rachel. “Historical Lexicogra-
phy and the Origins of Philosophy: Herodotus’ Use
of φιλοσοφέειν, σοφιστής and Cognates.” PhD diss.,

Macquarie University, 2012.

Note on Reference to “Presocratic” Fragments

The text of ancient writings by and about the early Greek writers eventually
called “phi los o phers” comes from LM, unless noted, and is cited by both DK
and LM number, if available. In DK, “A” precedes testimonia, “B” precedes
fragments. In LM, “P” precedes information about the phi los o pher, “D” pre-
cedes fragments or doctrinal statements, and “R” precedes later reception of
the phi los o pher’s thought.

Other abbreviations are generally from OCD. Translations are my own
unless other wise credited.

Euboea

A d

Delphi

B l a c k
r i

Thebes
a t

S e a
i c

Athens

A

Sicyon

T

S

T

Piraeus I

M
e

T

H

R

A C E

Corinth

Elis

Phlius

CA

A
a

Mycenae

Heraclea

G

Olympia

T h r a c i a n

Argos

N

C i t i e s

Byzantium

A

PELOPONNESE

Abdera

Metapontum

Apollonia

Elea

G

Thasos

R

Sparta

Lampsacus

Cyzicus

T y r h e n n i a n

AE

T

C

H

S e a

E

ELLESPONT

A

Corcyra

S S A L

H

Y

Croton

A

Mytilene

0

50

100 km

Lesbos
e

I o n i a n

Euboea

A S I A
g

0

25

50 miles

Rhegium
e

S I C I L Y

S e a

Sardis

Chios
a

I O N I A

Mt Aetna

Tauromenium
n

M I N O R

Colophon

Acragas

C Y

Ephesus

C

Samos

Leontinoi

L

S

Priene

A D e

Miletus

C

E

A
a

R

Syros

S

I A

Chalcis

M
see inset

Rhodes
e

S e a o f C r e t e
d
i
t

Soli
e
r

CYPRUS

0

100

200

300

400 km
r
a
n

CRETE

S
e
a
e
a
n

0

50

100

150

200

250 miles

S C Y T H I A

C

Aral
a

Sea
s

B l a c k S e a
p ian

G

R

S

EE
e

C

Gerasa
a

E Delphi

T R I A

C

A

Ai Khanoum

B

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

P E R S I A

Babylon

Cyrene

Uruk

0

500

1000

1500 km

E G Y P T

CHALDAEA

Oxyrhynchus

E G Y P T

0

250

500

750

1000 miles

Euboea

A d

Delphi

B l a c k
r i

Thebes
a t

S e a
i c

Athens

A

Sicyon

T

S

T

Piraeus I

M
e

T

H

R

A C E

Corinth

Elis

Phlius

CA

A
a

Mycenae

Heraclea

G

Olympia

T h r a c i a n

Argos

N

C i t i e s

Byzantium

A

PELOPONNESE

Abdera

Metapontum

Apollonia

Elea

G

Thasos

R

Sparta

Lampsacus

Cyzicus

T y r h e n n i a n

AE

T

C

H

S e a

E

ELLESPONT

A

Corcyra

S S A L

H

Y

Croton

A

Mytilene

0

50

100 km

Lesbos
e

I o n i a n

Euboea

A S I A
g

0

25

50 miles

Rhegium
e

S I C I L Y

S e a

Sardis

Chios
a

I O N I A

Mt Aetna

Tauromenium
n

M I N O R

Colophon

Acragas

C Y

Ephesus

C

Samos

Leontinoi

L

S

Priene

A D e

Miletus

C

E

A
a

R

Syros

S

I A

Chalcis

M
see inset

Rhodes
e

S e a o f C r e t e
d
i
t

Soli
e
r

CYPRUS

0

100

200

300

400 km
r
a
n

CRETE

S
e
a
e
a
n

0

50

100

150

200

250 miles

S C Y T H I A

C

Aral
a

Sea
s

B l a c k S e a
p ian

G

R

S

EE
e

C

Gerasa
a

E Delphi

T R I A

C

A

Ai Khanoum

B

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

P E R S I A

Babylon

Cyrene

Uruk

0

500

1000

1500 km

E G Y P T

CHALDAEA

Oxyrhynchus

E G Y P T

0

250

500

750

1000 miles

C A L L I N G

P H I L O S O P H E R S

N A M E S

1

Introduction: The Origins of Philosophia

A History of Philosophia, Not of Philosophy

This book tells a new story of the origin of philosophia— the Greek name, and
the discipline that it came to name. It begins around 500 BCE, with the coin-
age not of a self- lauding “love of wisdom” but with a wry verbal slight, and
concludes a century and a half later, in the maturity of an institution that
is continuous with today’s departments of philosophy. This phenomenon—
accommodating a name- calling name and consolidating a structured group
around it— recurs through history, as the cases of the Quakers, Shakers, Freaks,
and queer activists illustrate.1 A norm- policing name, at first distasteful, gets
appropriated, facilitates a new and ennobling self- understanding, and then gov-
erns a productive and tight- knit social enterprise. I argue that such is the ori-
gin of philosophia.

The name philosophos seems to have begun as “sage- wannabe,” a bemused
label for a person’s repetitive and presumed excessive efforts to join the cate-
gory of sophoi, the po liti cal advice- giving sages of the Greek world. The label stuck. Eventually, a fashion for etymological invention glossed philosophos
as “lover of wisdom.” The gloss caught on, but not because it had recovered
a historical truth; rather, it sounded good, and provided a happy construction
on what those called it were feeling. In this way, every philosophy instruc-
tor’s class- opening exhortation to philosophy anachronizes, retrojecting fourth-
century BCE linguistic play onto the term’s coinage many generations earlier.

Relatedly, most historians of ancient philosophy, guilty not of anachronism but
of partiality to the fourth century, ignore the word’s early years, treating it as
an unremarkable term meaning “cultivator of one’s intellect,” a word that on

1 For the Shakers, see Evans 1859, ch. 1, ¶26 (with ¶¶15–22): “Sometimes, after sitting awhile in silent meditation, they were seized with a mighty trembling, under which they would often express the indignation of God against all sin. At other times, they were exercised with singing, shouting, and leaping for joy, at the near prospect of salvation. They were often exercised with great agitation of body and limbs, shaking, running, and walking the floor, with a variety of other operations and signs, swiftly passing and repassing each other, like clouds agitated with a mighty wind. These exercises, so strange in the eyes of the beholders, brought upon them the appellation of Shakers, which has been their most common name of distinction ever since.”

2 CH A PTER 1
their reading happened to catch Plato’s fancy, who then singlehandedly made
it a technical term and a distinctive life- defining goal. Neither view— “lover
of wisdom” or “intellectual cultivator”— squares with the evidence from the
first century of the expression’s use, and neither attends to the way reflection
on the expression contributed to the very thing to which the fraught term
applied. Just as a sand grain irritates the oyster into making a pearl, a once-
irritating word, PHILOSOPHOS, helped bring about the discipline of philosophia
among the pearls of fourth- century BCE Athens.

In its focus on the origin of philosophia, this book differs from studies that
seek the origin of philosophy, whether in Greece or elsewhere. Such studies
must start by deciding what counts for us moderns as philosophy, then figure
out what kind of ancient evidence would justify our finding philosophy in some
early practice, and fi nally gather what ever evidence is available and explain
how this evidence could identify the origin of such practices.2 These studies
have cogent goals, to be sure, tracing back our distinctive reason- giving en-
terprise, studying the conditions under which it arose, and reconstructing the
dialectical pro cess by which familiar concepts, distinctions, and prob lems
became salient. Their work is genuinely philosophical, because recognizing
reasons as reasons means acknowledging and evaluating the normative force
of vari ous claims. But they confront serious methodological challenges when
they encounter the equivocal evidence on which the issue of origins must rely.

The basis on which we are to ascertain the existence of some “philosophy”

way back when seems undecideable. After all, what counts as philosophy now
is hardly obvious, given the complexity of our practices, not to mention the
diversity and disagreements within the field. What counts as ancient evidence
for (our idea of) philosophy is no easier to decide. Some might look for explicit
dialectical engagement, others for explicit argumentative inference, and yet
others for non- theistic explanation. Adding to the difficulty, our evidence for
the earliest candidate phi los o phers comes to us pre- interpreted by later phi-
los o phers, such as Aristotle, who might perhaps have to take responsibility
for making them philosophical in our sense. To be sure, the best such studies
confront these methodological challenges explic itly and provide deep insight
into the nature of philosophy, what ever it may be, in the ancient world. Yet none
avoids a fealty to present- day ideas. Perhaps a rational demonstration is a ratio-
nal demonstration, in 500 BCE as much as now. But was any par tic u lar case
of rational demonstration philosophy? Was anything nondemonstrative or

2 Sassi 2018 provides one of the clearest recent examples of this approach (see p. 277n50
below for her application of this method to Thales). Frede 2000 and Palmer 2009 contain subtle reflections on the historiography of the development of ancient philosophy. See also Lloyd 1970,

“Preface” and 1–15; Collins 2000, 82–92.

I NTRODUCTION 3
nonrational philosophy? How many people had to share in this demonstrative
practice for “philosophy” to become recognizable or count as a practice, in-
stitution, and discipline? These are intractable questions, and there is no ready
criterion to which one might appeal.

Fortunately, there is a criterion for something, when we shift approaches.

Rather than strug gle to apply our own complicated concepts to a complicated
past, we might study the concepts that our forebears used. This is the contex-
tualist or historicizing approach. Unable to decide on the first “phi los o phers,”

we can still decide on the first “philosophoi.” Whereas for historians of phi-
losophy, the earliest known phi los o phers may have been Thales and Anaxi-
mander, for historians of philosophia, the earliest known philosophoi were those called philosophoi in the earliest attestations of the term: as it seems to turn
out, people associated with Pythagoras or early fifth- century BCE Ionians. The
history of philosophia eventually includes Thales and Anaximander, but only
once early Academic (fourth century BCE) authors strove to identify and bap-
tize precursors. The evidence we have allows us to see the development of a
cultural phenomenon that the Greeks could themselves see, reflect on, react
to, and consciously or unconsciously modify, one that may have begun in

Magna Graeca rather than Asia Minor.3 The Greeks certainly talked about
philosophia; why they did so, and what effect on philosophia came about as a result, is the concern of this book.

A new approach to the origins of the discipline is encouraged not just by the
desire to track ancient rather than modern concepts, to discuss social rather
than purely rational phenomena. It is also encouraged by a puzzling feature of
ancient histories of philosophy. Over more than a millennium of accounts, and
with provocative regularity, ancient authors advert to the origin of the very
word philosophos. No other discipline pauses with such care to reflect on the
introduction of its name— not astronomy, not poetics, not mathe matics. Not
only that, but from at least the fourth century BCE, these historians, other-
wise impresarios of disagreement, partisans of some school, or skeptics about
all factions, took a single and unwavering view of that origin; we know of no
rejections, suspicions, or alternative accounts.4 The story they told of that
lexical origin, the analy sis of which provides a narrative thread for my book,
took varied forms, and differences among them are impor tant; but the striking
consensus about the core claim is even more impor tant. We find the account
in Aristotle, and in his once- famous colleague Heraclides Ponticus; in a rig-

3 Ionia may have had the conditions for coinage of the term (see Emlyn- Jones 1980, 97–111, 164–77), but we lack any evidence for the coinage of the term there.

4 We do of course know of differing accounts of the development of the discipline; see, for example, Laks 2018.

4 CH A PTER 1
orous second- century BCE historian of phi los o phers, Sosicrates of Rhodes;
in the (conjectured) first- century CE encyclopedist of philosophy Aëtius; in
the Roman philosopher- rhetorician Cicero and rhetorician- philosopher Quin-
tilian; in the omnivorous historians Valerius Maximus and Diodorus Sicu-
lus; in the Platonist intellectuals Apuleius and Maximus; in the neo- Platonist
scholars Iamblichus and Hermias; in the Christian- philosophical apologists

Augustine and Clement; in the Church Fathers Ambrose and Isidore; and in
two biographers of Greek phi los o phers who may have read more sources than
anyone else, Diogenes Laertius and Eusebius.5

The version attributed to Sosicrates (fl. < 145 BCE) provides a con ve-
niently compressed starting place.6 We find it in Diogenes Laertius’s Life of

Pythagoras, one of the late chapters of his Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers (ca. third century CE), a sequence of biographies of earlier Greek thinkers
and the essential extant source for ancient philosophy anecdotes. In his work,

Sosicrates sets out the history of philosophical teacher- student relationships,
and Diogenes generally relies on him for his rigorous historical skepticism.7

Here he quotes or paraphrases Sosicrates’s work on academic lineages, called

Successions:

[Pythagoras], being asked by Leon tyrant of Phlius what he was (τίς εἴη), said

[he was] a philosophos (φιλόσοφον).8 And he likened life to a festival, since some come to it to compete, some for business, some, indeed the best, as spectators;
thus in life some are slavish, he said, born (φύονται)9 as hunters after reputa-
tion and excess, but philosophoi [are hunters] after truth (ἀληθείας).10 (DL 8.8) 5 Aët. 1.3.7; Cic. Tusc. 5.3.8–9; Quint. Inst. 12.1.19; Val. Max. 8.7 ext. 2; DS 10 fr. 24; Apul.

Apol. 4.7; Flor. 15.22; Max. Tyr. 1.2a; Iambl. VP 12 with Pro. 9; Hermias In Phdr. 278a; August.

De civ. D. 8.2; De trin. 14.1.2; Clem. Strom. 1.61.4; Ambrose De Abr. 2.7.37; Isid. 8.6, 14.6; DL

1.12, 8.8; Euseb. Praep. evang. 10.14.3; Chron. 14.2–4 Helm. See the Appendix for all texts.

6 For the date, see Strabo 10.4.3, with discussion in Giannattasio Andria 1989 and BNJ 461.

7 Contrarian views on life- dates: 1.38 (Thales), 1.49 and 1.62 (Solon), 1.68 (Chilon), 1.95

(Periander), 1.101 (Anacharsis); contrarian views on literary authenticity: 2.84 (Aristippus), 6.80 (Diogenes), 7.163 (Ariston of Chion); precise anecdotes: 1.75 (Pittacus), 1.106–7 (Myson’s father), 6.82 (Monimus, a student of Diogenes), 6.13 (first cloak- doubler). See also Ath.

4.163f (a Pythagorean’s fashion innovations), 10.422c (Crates, cf. DL 6.90). This Sosicrates may have written a famously rigorous History of Crete (DS 5.80; Ath. 6.263f; Σ Eur. Hipp.

47; Σ Ar. Av. 521).

8 One version of this text (Φ, the Vatican excerpt) prints φιλόσοφος as direct speech; this pre sents Pythagoras as having actually used the term, and might pre sent this brief account as abstracting from a longer dramatic version.

9 Marcovich 1999 conjectures φαίνονται (“appear”) for φύονται, against all manuscripts.

The verb one chooses determines the degree of Pythagorean doctrine of soul- transmigration found in this passage, and may affect one’s view of its sources.

10 For the Greek of this passage, see Appendix, p. 321.

I NTRODUCTION 5

On the surface, this two- sentence tale is simple; but it also has impor tant im-
plications. Pythagoras calls himself a philosophos; uses an analogy to describe
philosophoi and to differentiate them from other kinds of people; and says that
philosophoi strive after an elusive truth. That Leon, from a city neighboring

Corinth between the Peloponnese and Attica, has to ask what Pythagoras takes
himself to be suggests that Pythagoras acts or speaks in an unfamiliar way.

That the story takes place during Pythagoras’s life, around the end of the sixth
century or early in the fifth century BCE, and that Leon does not know the
word philosophos, or at least not when applied to oneself, implies the word’s
coinage in that period. That Pythagoras has to provide an elaborate analogy to
explain the term tells us that the meaning of philosophos is not transparent or
apparent from its putative parts even to elite Greek speakers. That Pythagoras
does not find it appropriate to define the word philosophos in terms either of
love or of wisdom, but only in the rhyming terms of observation ( theatai)

and hunting ( thêratai),11 implies that he did not coin the term himself: were
the implausibility of describing oneself with a private neologism not enough,
he would need to explain why he created and used the word philosophos in
par tic u lar. That philosophoi are compared as a group to Olympic athletes and traveling salespeople suggests that they could be recognized as a type.12 Finally, that Pythagoras is the protagonist of this story means that Pythagoras
was viewed as an archetypal philosophos.

Already we see reasons against accepting the standard accounts of “phi-
los o pher” as meaning (etymologically) “lover of wisdom” or (initially) “intel-
lectual cultivator”; other versions of the Pythagoras story provide similar rea-
sons. If the former meaning were obvious, Pythagoras would not have needed
to explain who philosophoi are; at most he might have discussed the way his
actions or speeches reveal his love of wisdom. If the latter were valid, again he
would not have needed to explain who philosophoi are; Leon would have to be
obtuse not to appreciate the basic idea of cultivating one’s intellect. Nothing
said here precludes people from later saying that philosophos means “lover of wisdom” or using it to mean “intellectual cultivator.” In fact, we find both in
the fourth century BCE, as early as the work of Plato and Alcidamas, and then
more prominently in Aristotle. But calling philosophoi “lovers of wisdom” is

11 One might won der, given Sosicrates’s late date, whether this meta phor relies on Plato’s

“hunting for what’s real” (τὴν τοῦ ὄντος θήραν, Phd. 66c2; cf. Iambl. Pro. 13.64,2 and 20.99,15), but since the meta phorical use of hunting for a quasi- abstract object exists from the fifth century BCE, this cannot be determined. Other impor tant fourth- century BCE hunting references are at Xen. Cyn. 12–13; Pl. Soph. 218d–223b.

12 It may be worth noting that Pythagoras’s adopted hometown, Croton, enjoyed amazing
success at athletic festivals (Dunbabin 1948, 369–70), and that Pythagoras’s con temporary Xenophanes also vaunted his intellectual sophia over athletic glory (B2/D61).

6 CH A PTER 1
a conscious achievement; of course, using the term to mean “intellectual cul-
tivator” in a broad and undifferentiated sense is another achievement, though
this one is perhaps less deliberate.13

This book’s argument has two parts. The first concerns the coinage of the
word philosophos. Phil- prefixed terms in the sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, at the time philosophos was coined, tend to be name- calling names.

They tend to call out those so named for excessive activity related to a social
practice referred to synecdochally by the word’s second ele ment; there is no
evidence that the phil- prefix indicated the affection of “love.” For example,
philaitios, with the second ele ment aitia, “cause,” or in its social context,

“ legal motion,” means excessive activity in lawsuits, or “litigious.” This word
has pejorative rather than laudatory valence, and it does not impute an af-
fection for causes or legal motions.14 The second ele ment in philosophos is soph- , the root of sophos, which, as I argue later, referred at the end of the sixth century BCE particularly to “sages,” culturally prominent, socially
elite, intellectually wide- ranging civic and domestic advisers typified though
not exhausted by the “Seven Sophoi” of the early sixth century BCE. So
calling someone philosophos would seem to impute an excessive tendency
to act like sages or to seek after the status of sages (broadly construed),
presumably through advice- giving and study, where this practice or aspira-
tion would seem dubious, problematic, or even ridicu lous. Word invention
would satisfy the impulse to label certain people who act in ways that are
not adequately described by any other label. The po liti cal, intellectual, and
religious circle of Pythagoreans in late sixth- century and early fifth- century

BCE Magna Graeca provides the most plausible agent for occasioning this
linguistic creation and subsequent diffusion (what ever the nature of that
group’s constitution).

The second part of my argument concerns the trajectory of the term
philosophos. Through the fifth century BCE it was applied to people acting
like those Pythagoreans: giving sage advice about ethical and existential

13 The earliest extant Greek use known to me of philein sophian, “loving wisdom,” is in the Septuagint Prov. 29.3 (second century– first century BCE); the earliest use of philian sophias,

“love of wisdom,” in Nicomachus’s Introduction to Arithmetic 1.1.1.2 (60–120 CE— John Philoponus attributes to Nicomachus this definition of philosophy [ In Nic. Isag. Arithm. 1.8; cf. 1.52, 15.2, 21.20]); and the earliest use of philos sophias, “lover of wisdom,” in Euseb. Vit.

Const. 4.2.8 (fourth century CE). Pl. Lys. 212d8 (. . . ἂν μὴ ἡ σοφία αὐτοὺς ἀντιφιλῇ) admittedly gets close.

14 Aesch. fr. 326a.14 (attributed to the poet’s voice); Supp. 485; there is a maxim, Μὴ
φιλαίτιος ἴσθι (“ Don’t be litigious”), found in an addendum to the (fourth- century BCE) list attributed to Sosiades (Stob. 3.1.173, in the Brussels codex).

I NTRODUCTION 7
issues, making arguments that are grounded in hypotheses about the na-
ture of the kosmos, and talking with erudition and precision about po liti-
cal matters of no immediate relevance. In time, the word could sometimes
shake off the pejorative sense, becoming a sort of neutral label, for example
for the self- constituting group of people who practiced formal debate about
impor tant matters for the sake of the debate, as an exercise of dialectical
skill, rather than for po liti cal or forensic purposes, as an expression of Sage
wisdom. As a neutral label, it could be self- applied, as increasingly it was
around the turn of that century— but not universally so, since its original
negativity had not yet been, and may never have been, entirely eradicated.

Those being called philosophoi or calling themselves philosophoi sought
to vindicate the appellation, and did so in vari ous ways. Some gave new
explanations for the very actions that led to the scornful name; some in-
ven ted alternative etymologies of the term philosophos; and some looked
backward and assembled a noble lineage of great thinkers, with whom they
could carry on current debates, calling them the first and paradigmatic phi-
losophoi. It is worth noting that a story of similar structure could perhaps
be told about the sophistai, another group of people whose name is formed
from the soph- root, perhaps around the same time and in parallel, though
prob ably without significant interchange with the philosophoi until the end
of the fifth century BCE.15

In brief, past scholarship has treated the word philosophos as definable by
a phrase. I think we should treat it as defined rather more by application—

“ those people are akin to those we call philosophoi”— and the choice of word
a result of name- calling name conventions. Treated this way, philosophos is
defined, at the start, as in a family resemblance with the Pythagoreans, and the
specific word philosophos serves to denote this family resemblance because
the Pythagoreans were, in effect, sophos- wannabes. Only later could pro cesses of abstraction liberate the term philosophos from its archetype.

Though this account of the origin of philosophia differs from an account
of the origin of philosophy, it complements rather than replaces it. The name
is reactive, not motivating. What got philosophy going may indeed have been
won der, or the leisured pursuit of scientific understanding, or the appreciation

15 The word sophistês first appears in Pind. Isthm. 5.28 ( after 480 BCE), and must have been in circulation before that. The - istês ending denotes a professional status, referring initially to clever advice- giving and musical instruction. There develops a canonical set of prac ti tion ers certainly by the early fourth century BCE (cf. Pl. Prt. 316c5–317c2), though prob ably by the late fifth century BCE, and gains a technical meaning by the time of Aristotle’s works. Much more ought to be said, but space does not allow it here. See Edmunds 2006; Billings and Moore forthcoming, “Introduction.”

8 CH A PTER 1
of and confidence in large- scale claims defended by reasons.16 Perhaps it was
the moral seriousness that drove Socrates to avoid wrongdoing by learning
what he could learn. Perhaps it was the fear of death and the Empedoclean quest
for self- purification and psychic health. Perhaps nautical astronomy, or agri-
cultural meteorology, or genealogical grandstanding played a role; perhaps it
was influence from Egypt or Babylon or Chaldaea.17 Scholarship on ancient
philosophy has learned much from pursuing these hypotheses. But none alone
explains why people got called philosophoi, and none explains the develop-
ment of an enduring discipline— a mutually self- aware group of coordinated
prac ti tion ers with a historical consciousness of their forerunners— named pre-
cisely philosophia. What they do aim to explain is why people like the Py-
thagoreans did what they did, what they did, and why and how others after
the Pythagoreans did what they did. An account of the origins of philosophy
takes an internal perspective, asking why, for example, Thales put water at the
center of a unified cosmic account, whereas an account of the origins of phi-
losophia, which I attempt to provide in this book, takes an external perspec-
tive, asking why someone would ever call Thales philosophos.

Internal and external accounts of origins both rely on thinner evidentiary
bases than we would hope for. We no more have in de pen dent statements of

Pythagoras’s self- descriptions than we do of the reasoning that brought him
to theorize the soul, life, or the kosmos. Our interpretation of the patterns of
phil- prefixed names depends on infrequent uses at somewhat indeterminate
moments after their coinage. My primary theses, which are my best explana-
tions for the broad range of evidence that is mustered here, must still count
ultimately as open to doubt and revision. In light of this weak evidentiary tis-
sue, the story I tell may be judged a merely likely story. Even if so, it should
appear likelier than the alternatives. My methodology is to study the meaning
of a compound name by reconstructing the morphosemantic limitations and
the historical occasions for its coinage; track the changes to its meaning with
an eye to patterns of diffusion; and treat its ascendency to discipline- name on
a parallel with other reappropriated names. At the book’s conclusion, I reflect
on the relevance of this study to our understanding of philosophy today. What

I think seemed most incredible to con temporary observers of Pythagoreans or
their look- alikes was their commitment to the precise discussion of (seemingly)

background issues— issues that amount neither to urgent decisions nor to sala-
cious social gossip—as instrumental for, even constitutive of, the good life.

16 For the latter, see, e.g., Barnes 1982, 3–12; Osborne 2004, 133–35.

17 For an ancient perspective on the non- Greek origins of or influences on philosophia, see, e.g., DL 1.1–11; for a more recent perspective, see West 1971.

I NTRODUCTION 9

The same incredulity, I believe, characterizes present- day popu lar attitudes
toward philosophy.

Heraclides Ponticus’s History of Philosophia

Sosicrates’s version of the story about Pythagoras’s self- appellation as phi-
losophos provides key evidence about the origins of philosophia, with re-
spect to both the word and the origin of the discipline it eventually came to
name. To the extent that something about the story is true or plausible, we
learn something impor tant and distinctive about the earliest uses of the term
philosophos. To the extent that people told the story—as we will see, by the
fourth century BCE, just when we also see the formation of a recognizable
discipline—we learn something impor tant and distinctive about the uses of
the term philosophos at the time that the discipline eventually came to be. Thus, this book addresses three questions about the story. What about it is historically
reliable? Why would the term philosophos still be worth discussing in the
fourth century BCE? And how did this story come to be told in this form?

The earliest name associated with the authorship of the Pythagoras story
is Heraclides Ponticus, a member of Plato’s Acad emy. Born around 390 BCE,

Heraclides grew up in Heraclea, a town on the Pontus, the Black Sea. Now a
city named Karadeniz Ereğli and Turkey’s leading steel town, classical Heraclea
forged intellectuals, including the mythographer Herodorus and his Socratic-
aligned son Bryson.18 Like many others, Heraclides moved to Athens in his
youth, and rose to prominence; his school of choice was the Acad emy, by then
a de cade old.19 Early school histories tell us that he served as acting director
during one of Plato’s sojourns to Sicily, and at Plato’s death he was deemed
a candidate for the permanent post.20 The esteem may speak to his adminis-
trative skill or social graces, but it prob ably also reflects the breadth of his
interests and his literary flair, insofar as he wrote philosophical dialogues and
treatises with a Platonic vigor.21 Dozens in number, they ranged from argu-
mentative engagements with Heraclitus and Democritus to literary criticism
of Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, and Sophocles, and from histories of invention

18 On Heraclea’s intellectual scene, see Burstein 1976, 5, 39–66; Desideri 1991, esp. 8–11, 14–15. Famous names include the Academic Chion, the Pythagorean Zopyrus, the Peripatetic

Chamaeleon, and the Stoic Heracleotes.

19 DL 3.46, 5.86; see Gottschalk 1980, 2–6; Mejer 2009.

20 Acting director: Suda η 461, though doubt is expressed by Guthrie 1978, 483, and the claim is denied by Voss 1896, 11–13. Candidate for post: PHerc. 1021 col. vi.41– vii.10.

21 Vigor: DL 5.89.

10 CH A PTER 1
and discovery to po liti cal, legal, and ethical studies.22 Cicero treated the dia-
logues in par tic u lar as vital models of the genre,23 and others expressed their
appreciation as well.24

Heraclides gave special attention to the history of Pythagoreanism. Dio-
genes Laertius attributes to him works of historical research (ἱστορικά), one
of which is called On the Pythagoreans, and says that he studied with Pythago-
reans.25 In Porphyry’s study of vegetarianism, Heraclides provides his ear-
liest source for the gustatory and sacrificial practices of Pythagoras and the

Pythagoreans, their most promiment and telling idiosyncrasies.26 Clement of

Alexandria cites Heraclides for Pythagoras’s core ethical beliefs.27 And the fact
that several doxographers of philosophy cite Heraclides’s remarkable cosmo-
logical view that each star is its own kosmos as a view of the Pythagoreans
suggests that Heraclides himself cited the sharing and did so with approval.28

A version of the story of Pythagoras’s self- naming elsewhere attributed to

Sosicrates appears in Heraclides’s work called variously On Diseases, Causes of Diseases, or, from a famous episode, On the Woman Not Breathing.29 The work is lost, but Diogenes Laertius quotes or paraphrases parts of it throughout his Life of Empedocles; we also have second hand citations in Galen, Pliny,
and Origen.30 None gives a plot summary, and none gives the context for the

Pythagoras- as- philosophos episode. Nevertheless, these fragments hint at
a work concerned with Empedocles and Pythagoras, and so (presumably)

Pythagoras as an essential pre de ces sor of Empedocles. This context pro-
vides clues to the provenance or plausibility of the Pythagoras story, and thus
about the origin of the term philosophia. We begin with the material about

Empedocles.

22 List of works: DL 5.86–88.

23 Cic. Att. 13.19.4, 15.4.3, 15.13.3, 15.27.2, 16.2.6, 16.11.3, 16.12; QFr. 3.5.1.

24 E.g., Gell. NA 8 fr. xv; the extent of the reception of his work through antiquity is powerful evidence.

25 DL 5.88, 5.86 (διήκουσε). Suda ε 1007 prob ably suggests that Heraclides wrote about Pythagoras himself.

26 Porph. Abst. 1.26.2–4.

27 Clem. Strom. 2.21.130.3 (~ Theodoret Graec. aff. cur. 11.8), namely, “knowledge of the perfection of the numbers of the soul is happiness” (or “. . . of the numbers is happiness of the soul”).

28 Aët. 2.13; Euseb. Praep. evang. 15.30.8; ps- Gal. Hist. phil. 52; Theodoret Graec. aff. cur.

4.20.29 Source: Cic. Tusc. 5.3.9 with DL 1.12. Names: Αἰτίαι περὶ νόσων: DL 5.87; Περὶ νόσων: DL 8.51, 8.60; Περὶ τῆς ἄπνου: DL 1.12; Ἄπνους: Gal. De loc. aff. 6.5, De diff. R. 1.8. None are sure to go back to Heraclides.

30 Fragments collected in Schütrumpf 2008, frr. 82–95 (A– D); Wehrli 1969, frr. 76–89; Voss 1896, frr. 67–78.

I NTRODUCTION 11

Diogenes treats On Diseases as historically authoritative about Empedo-
cles’s life.31 As for its details of Empedocles’s pyroclastic death in Mt. Aetna, he
treats it as a plausible contender. In the dialogue, he says, Heraclides narrates
what happened after Empedocles cured an intractable patient (the “ woman not
breathing”). Empedocles held a sacrifice and feast on the land of Peisianax, the
patient’s father. The attendees then left for the night’s sleep, leaving Empedocles
by himself. When they returned in the morning, nobody could find him. A ser-
vant reported having heard, in the middle of the night, an exceedingly loud
sound calling to Empedocles, and then saw a heavenly light and the illumination
of torches. Pausanias, a special friend of Empedocles’s, started to tell people to
resume their search, but then reversed himself, telling them rather to pray and to
sacrifice to Empedocles “as to one having become a god” (καθαπερεὶ γεγονότι
θεῷ, DL 8.67–68). In this way, Heraclides describes the origins of Empedocles’s
apotheosis and cult following. The fact that Timaeus of Tauromenium, a fourth-
century BCE historian, is said to have taken issue with aspects of the story
shows the extent to which contemporaries and successors took Heraclides’s de-
tailed account as a basically valid position in biographical debate. It also shows
the centrality of Empedocles’s death in understanding the sort of person— and
thus perhaps what sort of philosopher—he really was.

As On Disease’s colloquial title, On the Woman Not Breathing, implies, a therapeutic marvel captured the attention of an audience— and, structurally, it
led directly to Empedocles’s disputed apotheosis. Heraclides says that Emped-
ocles explained to Pausanias what was going on with the unbreathing woman

(τὴν ἄπνουν), presumably at the feast celebrating his success in saving her (DL

8.60). He had preserved the body of this woman, Pantheia of Acragas, for thirty
days despite a lack of breath or pulse (8.61). Other doctors had failed to under-
stand the case.32 It is on these grounds (ὅθεν), Diogenes says, that Heraclides
calls Empedocles both a doctor and a seer, but also from the following lines

(λαμβάνων ἅμα καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων τῶν στίχων, 8.61), which are ten of the first
twelve lines of Empedocles’s poem (or one of them):

Friends, you who dwell in the great city beside the yellow Acragas

1

On the lofty citadel and who care for good deeds

31 DL 8.51. In the following paragraph (8.52), Diogenes may attribute to Heraclides Empedocles’s death at 60 (the manuscripts print “Heraclitus,” but F. W. Sturz conjectured “Heraclides”

in 1805, and Dorandi 2013 thinks this may be right). That Diogenes actually first attributes the view to Aristotle, “and also” (ἔτι τε) to Heraclides, suggests that Aristotle may have cited Heraclides for the information.

32 Gal. De loc. aff. 6 (they were greatly puzzled); DL 8.69 (citing Hermippus: the other doctors had given up hope).

12 CH A PTER 1

. . .

I greet you! I, who for you am an immortal god, no longer mortal

I go among you, honored, as I am seen,

5

Crowned with ribbons and with blooming garlands.

Whenever I arrive with these in the flourishing cities,

I am venerated by men and by women; they follow me,

Thousands of them, asking where is the road to benefit:

Some of them desire prophecy, others ask to hear,

10

For illnesses of all kinds, a healing utterance,

. . . 33 (Empedocles B112/D4, trans. Laks and Most)

Empedocles says that people ask him to heal and predict the future (10–11). Di-
ogenes seems to say that Heraclides includes these lines in his work— how else
could he know that Heraclides relied on them?— but whether put in Empedo-
cles’s or another character’s mouth, or presented by the narrator (Heraclides?)

himself, we do not know. In any event, Diogenes treats the Pantheia episode as
clinching the claim that Empedocles rather than other doctors knew both how
to bring the woman back alive and how to foresee that she would return to the
living. Diogenes does not, however, indicate why Heraclides wanted to show

Empedocles’s superiority, which he may well have taken to be factual.34 We
must turn to the two extant Pythagoras passages for information.

In his Life of Pythagoras, Diogenes says that Heraclides presented Pythag-
oras telling the following detailed story about himself.35 He had been born a

33 DL 8.62. See DS 13.83.1 for line 3: “Respectful harbors for strangers, inexperienced in wickedness,” and Clem. Strom. 6.30.1 for line 12: “Pierced for a long time by terrible < pains>.”

34 As Origen ( C. Cels. 2.15.40) observes, Plato’s Myth of Er pre sents a similar situation; more convincingly, Aristotle speaks of suspended animation in his lost Eudemus, or On the Soul (frr. 9 and 11 Ross), and the phenomenon is not unknown in the con temporary world. In 2014, a Polish woman was declared dead, as having no pulse or breath, and left in a body bag for eleven hours (http:// www . bbc . com / news / world - europe - 30048087). Heraclides may have been inspired by Democritus’s work, which was eventually called Περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου (DL 9.46; Suda τ 1019; Procl. In R. 2.113.6–9; a work by the same name is attributed to Protagoras at DL 9.55, and Socrates in Pl. Ap. 29b4–5 says that he does not know sufficiently “about those [ things] in Hades” [περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου], apparently a topic appropriate for sophoi to know), a collection of reports about seemingly dead people who came back to life. The symptomatology had recurrent interest (Tert. De anim. 43; Aët. 5.25.3 [Leucippus], 4.4.7 [Democritus]), and assertions of death remained challenging (Celsus Med. 2.6). For details see Leszl 2006.

35 DL 8.4–5. Though Diogenes does not cite the work, all editors attribute this story to On Diseases (even if with reservations; Gottschalk 1980, 14, does not use it in his reconstruction of the dialogue) rather than to the book the title of which alone we know, On the Things [or: Those]

in Hades; though Pythagoras is said to have narrated about Hades, this quotation or paraphrase includes no such narration itself, and this passage points to a work concerned with Pythagoras’s retained memory and metempsychosis rather than with the events in Hades themselves.

I NTRODUCTION 13
man named Aethalides and was believed to be a son of Hermes. When Hermes
came to him to grant him any wish he desired except for immortality, he
chose to retain all his memories through both life and death. So when, having
died, he ended up reincarnated as, or, literally, “came into” (εἰς . . . ἐλθεῖν)

Euphorbus— the Trojan hero eventually struck by Menelaus—he reported his
earlier experiences as human, as flora, and as fauna, both on Earth and in

Hades. When he died as Euphorbus he went into (μεταβῆναι . . . εἰς) Hermoti-
mus, who wished to make the curious history of his soul credible, and did so
by identifying a relic from his run-in with Menelaus. Then he became a De-
lian fisherman and fi nally Pythagoras, who remembered every thing. This story
serves to prove Pythagoras’s theory of metempsychosis, for Pythagoras’s di-
vine memory allows him to remember the transfers of his soul.

One passage definitively known from On Diseases tells of Pythagoras’s self-
application of the name philosophos. We have seen what looks like a loose
abridgment in Sosicrates; also, we know a closer version with an explicit at-
tribution, translated into Latin, from Cicero.36 It comes in the final quarter of
the preamble to Book 5 of his Tusculan Disputations. Cicero is explaining that
philosophy does not get the credit it deserves because its benefits predate its
naming. Cultural benefactors were once called “wise men” rather than phi los-
o phers, he says; only with Pythagoras did this change.

This name [sc. sapientes] for them [sc. the descendants of the wise men] spread
all the way to the time of Pythagoras. People say that he went to Phlius, as Hera-
clides Ponticus writes, the pupil of Plato and a man foremost in learning ( quem,
ut scribit auditor Platonis Ponticus Heraclides, uir doctus in primis, Phliuntem
ferunt uenisse), and discussed certain issues learnedly and at length with Leon,
the ruler of the Phliusians. When Leon marveled at his talent and eloquence, he
asked him to which profession ( arte) he most dedicated himself. He in turn said
that it was not a profession that he knew, but that he was a “phi los o pher.” Leon,
astonished at the novelty of the term, asked what kind of people phi los o phers
were and what the difference was between them and the rest of mankind. Py-
thagoras answered that he thought human life was similar to the kind of festival
which is held with a magnificent display of games in a gathering from the whole
of Greece. For there some people seek the glory and distinction of a crown by
training their bodies, and others are drawn by the profit and gain in buying or
selling, but there is a certain class of people, and this quite the most free, who
look for neither applause nor gain, but come for the sake of seeing and look

36 On differences between Cicero’s and Sosicrates’s versions that are irrelevant to the pre sent argument, see YC 1.320n10.

14 CH A PTER 1
thoroughly with great attention at what is being done and how. In the same way,
he said, we have arrived into this life from another life and nature ( ex alia uita
et natura), as if from some city into some crowd at a festival, and some de-
vote themselves to glory and others to money, but there are certain rare people
who count all matters for nothing and eagerly contemplate the nature of things

( rerum naturam studiose intuerentur). These people call themselves students of
wisdom ( sapientiae studiosos)— that is, phi los o phers ( philosophos)— and just as there it was most fitting for a free character to watch while seeking nothing
for oneself, so in life the contemplation and understanding of things ( studiis
contemplationem rerum) far surpasses all other pursuits.37 ( Tusc. 5.3.8–9, trans.

Schütrumpf 2008, modified)

So, Heraclides (in On Diseases; see below) has Pythagoras travel to Phlius,
display to Leon his intellectual wares, attribute his acumen to his being a phi-
losophos, differentiate philosophoi from profit- and honor- seekers with an

“Olympic games” analogy, and say that philosophoi “have come into this life
from another life and nature” to study the nature of things. Because this clos-
ing language reflects the “coming into” language found in the metempsycho-
sis passage (reflected in Sosicrates’s φύονται; see p. 4 above), the passages fit
well together. Perhaps for Heraclides it is Pythagoras’s telling his life story to

Leon that incites Leon’s astonishment, and since that story does not advance

Cicero’s account, Cicero glosses it as a “learned” discussion of “certain issues.”

Alternatively, Pythagoras’s story of his soul’s adventure might follow the de-
scription of philosophoi in the conversation with Leon, perhaps as a personal
justification; in this case, the learned and lengthy conversation might have been
about the soul more generally.38 The apparent unity of the Empedocles story

(cure, explanation, and apotheosis) suggests unity here as well.

In On Diseases, Pythagoras explains what philosophoi do: they understand
the world as befits free people, which includes recognizing the immortality
and peregrinations of the soul. Empedocles, elsewhere assumed to belong in
the Pythagorean tradition (see chapter 5, pp. 140–42), understands the relation between immortal soul and mortal body from a medical and prognostic perspective. Empedocles surely is himself being treated as a philosophos. What

37 For the Latin of this passage, see Appendix, pp. 321–22.

38 The Academic Dicaearchus reports that the three best known Pythagorean doctrines (the
rest being mysterious) were soul- immortality and transformation of living things, a universal life cycle, and kinship of all living things (Porph. VP 19); these were publicly known around the time of Pythagoras’s life (Xenophanes B7/D64; Hdt. 4.95) (see chapter 4). If the conversation occurred at an athletic event, maybe Pythagoras’s dietetics are at issue (see Guthrie 1962, 187–95, for references). Or might he be giving leadership advice (cf. Hdt. 1.30–32)?

I NTRODUCTION 15
we have in Heraclides’s work, then, is a cele bration of philosophia. This cele-
bration asserts the following: philosophia befits noble people, seeks knowledge
on its broadest construal, gives insight into the nature of death and the soul,
cures other wise hopeless patients, and contributes in a fashion to one’s own
immortality—as a recognition of it, or the purification that is a prerequisite
to it. Given the vibrant prose formulation, the fascination of the episodes, and
their historical relevance, this work appears to be a wholehearted exhortation
to philosophia, an early instance of the protreptikos log os genre.

Admittedly, not all readers of the fragmentary On Diseases have judged it
to be an exhortation to philosophy. Its most recent commentator, Philip van
der Eijk, follows an interpretative tradition that puts it in the history of medi-
cine.39 He allows that it is an unusual medical text, one mixed with the lives
and sayings of famous healers, and spiced by stories of the miraculous, but
one that still asserts an intriguing physiological view. Galen treated the section
on the unbreathing woman seriously as an analy sis of seizures. Yet van der

Eijk’s view, like those of his pre de ces sors, takes almost no account of the Py-
thagoras story.40 Nor does his view show how many lines of the dialogue those
who later cited it actually knew. I suspect that they had only brief excerpts
or paraphrases, the latter suggested by their disagreement over basic facts.41

The putatively medical sections of philosophical works were sometimes ex-
cerpted by later authors; if one should rely on the ancient citations of Plato’s

Charmides, for example, that dialogue would appear basically medical, even
though it is in fact a protreptic to Socratic philosophizing.42 A further point is

39 Van der Eijk 2009, 239–40, 244–48; earlier, Lonie 1965, 133–43; Mayhew 2010, 460–61.

40 Van der Eijk gives it only about a page, 243–44; neither Lonie 1965, Guthrie 1978, 483–90, nor Mayhew 2010 mention the philosophos story at all; and it plays no real role in Dillon 2003, 204–15. Seeing no clear relevance to the overall dialogue, though admitting that Pythagoras and Empedocles had medical interests, citing Celsus’s On Medicine (proem 7–9), van der Eijk won ders whether the philosophos passage even comes from a dif fer ent work, e.g., On the Pythagoreans or On Those in Hades.

41 There is no evidence that sources other than Diogenes Laertius actually read the work (and he himself may not have). Origen ( C. Cels. 2.16) cites Heraclides’s story, along with Plato’s myth of Er, about those who spend twelve days in Hades, as an example of resurrection that non- Christians believe, and Pliny ( HN 7.52.175) cites Heraclides’s “celebrated book” about the woman who revived after not breathing for seven days as an example of the curability of the feminine disease of “a turning of the womb.” Galen cites Heraclides or his work (τὸ βιβλίον
ἄπνους) three times: at De trem. 6 as a familiar reference point about shivering; at De diff. R.

1.8 for the unbreathing woman representing the condition, as opposed to fever, where breathing (and by parallel the pulse) slows so much as to make the person look dead; and at De loc. aff. 6
for one kind of hysteria, in which Heraclides’s woman experiences the most puzzling kind of condition, having effectively no breath or pulse, only some core warmth. All these accounts could come from very short excerpts or paraphrases.

42 The densest set of ancient references to the Charmides are to the “Thracian doctors of Zalmoxis” section (156d3–157b1), which we know was excerpted (at least in Stob. 4.37.23, under

16 CH A PTER 1
that the excerpts suggest authorship for a lay audience rather than for technical
prac ti tion ers.

The more plausible view, that On Diseases is a protreptic to philosophy, is
found in H. B. Gottschalk’s 1980 book, Heraclides of Pontus. He argues per-
suasively that Heraclides sought “to make propaganda for the contemplative
life by drawing an idealized portrait of one of its greatest exponents [sc. Em-
pedocles], who was shown on the last day of his life on earth which was also
the day of his ultimate triumph.”43 He sees Heraclides’s dialogue as combining
the banquet format of Plato’s Symposium with the death and exaltation format
of the Phaedo: people talk about Empedocles’s resurrection of the unbreathing
woman at a festal cele bration, and then Pausanias or others talk about Em-
pedocles’s disappearance at its conclusion. Both parts of the dialogue reflect
on the nature of soul, as immortal and in de pen dent from the body, and pre sent
philosophy as the right way to understand it. The Pythagoras scene in par tic-
u lar “contains a statement of the ideals under lying Empedocles’s way of life”:

the superiority of philosophia, as a reflection on the nature of things, over the mere medical skill of non- philosophical doctors.

What matters here is that Pythagoras’s self- appellation fits a historical nar-
rative about philosophy’s power, and the story is read by Cicero and Diogenes

Laertius as historically reliable about the sorts of things Pythagoras said as
well as about the last days of Empedocles. The consequence is that the Py-
thagoras self- appellation story appears to be part of an ennobling account of
the history of philosophy that, what ever poetic license Heraclides must have
taken for his account to become read over the ensuing centuries, seemed basi-
cally true.

From Sosicrates’s précis of this story, we have inferred a late sixth- or early
fifth- century BCE coinage date for the term philosophos, the term’s opacity,
and Pythagoras’s archetypal role in the image of the philosophos. Cicero’s Hera-
clidean version confirms and expands these inferences. The word philosophos
entered the vernacular around the time, and even the place, of Pythagoras; the
word is new to Leon, but Heraclides appears not to say that Pythagoras in ven ted
it. Pythagoras’s surprising self- labeling is occasioned by, and apparently ex-
plains, his talented and eloquent discussion of questions of interest to a po liti-
cal leader like Leon. Pythagoras does link the word philosophos to something
the chapter heading “On Health and Considering One’s Survival,” immediately following a citation from Hippocrates): Apul. Apol. 26.4; Clem. Strom. 1.15.58.3; Jul. Or. 8.244a; Caesars 309c; Max. Tyr. 28.4; Hermias In Phdr. 274c, Maximus Planudes Compendia e Platonis dialogis 143.

On the dialogue, see Moore and Raymond 2019.

43 Gottschalk 1980, 32 (this quotation), 13–22 (structure of dialogue), 23–33 (Pythagoras passage).

I NTRODUCTION 17
like its roots, which may be expressed in Latin as sapientiae studiosus. And
this apparently plausible story was told in the middle of the fourth century

BCE, when Heraclides wrote On Diseases. Thus we have a reasonable account
of a founding moment in the history of philosophia.

A Related Account of Pythagoras’s Self- Appellation

A surprising fact about Diogenes Laertius’s inclusion, in Book 8 of his Lives
of the Eminent Phi los o phers, of the story about Pythagoras’s self- naming that he takes from Sosicrates, is that he had already included a dif fer ent version of
the story in Book 1.44 More remarkable again is that the Book 1 version, found
in the treatise’s Preface, mentions Heraclides’s story— which Sosicrates’s must
ultimately have relied on— but then rejects it in favor of another source of in-
formation. The functions of the two versions of the story differ, to be sure: in
the Book 8 Life of Pythagoras, Diogenes gathers anecdotes about Pythagoras,
whereas in the Book 1 Preface he argues that philosophia began in Greece, on
the grounds that philosophia is a Greek word. This is his evidence:

Pythagoras first called philosophia by its name and himself philosophos, in Sicyon when talking to Leon tyrant of the Sicyonians, or of Phliusians as

Heraclides Ponticus in the Woman Not Breathing says; for nobody is wise

(σοφόν) but god. Previously (θᾶττον δέ),45 people spoke of sophia, and a sophos 44 The magnitude of the Lives, and the importance of the pre sent story in two distinct contexts, perhaps excuses Diogenes here; the basic historical compatibility of the two stories (identified below) perhaps does too. Nevertheless, it seems clear that he is drawing from distinct archives at these two points, and he may not have completed an overall consistency-ensuring revision of his treatise; see Most 2018.

45 There has been confusion about θᾶττον δέ. Hicks 1925 translates: “All too quickly the study was called wisdom and its professor a sage, to denote his attainment of mental perfection; while the student who took it up was a phi los o pher or lover of wisdom”— but it would be absurd to write that as soon as Pythagoras started calling sophia “philosophia,” it started being called sophia again. Similarly Caponigri 1969, 5; YC 1.1, 1.318 (“rapidly”); Mensch 2018, 8 (“before very long”). Reale 2005, 17: “too readily [ troppo facilmente] was the name ‘wisdom’ given,” but this would need to be better relativized to the time of Pythagoras’s self- naming. Reich 1967 argues for “all too quickly [ allzu schnell],” which he then glosses “all too hastily [ allzu voreilig],”

in explicit contrast to “formerly [ ehedem],” on the grounds that, from Pythagoras’s perspective, people spoke of wisdom too hastily, without thinking enough about what they are doing; but this is overly nuanced and without evidence. Nor can θᾶττον δέ here mean “often,” since it would not make sense of the linguistic advance marked by Pythagoras’s self- appellation. θᾶττον [δέ]

means “ earlier, sooner, before,” at DL 2.39, 2.120, 2.139, 5.39, 6.56 (Mericus Causobonus translating as antea, according to Dorandi 2013 ad loc., who refers to 1.12), and LSJ s.v. ταχύς C.i.2.

The adverb is correctly translated by Anonymous 1758; Zevort 1847; and Yonge 1901.

18 CH A PTER 1
as the promulgator (ἐπαγγελλόμενος) of it—he who has a perfected soul in the
highest degree— but [now in Pythagoras’s time] the one eagerly welcoming

(ἀσπαζόμενος) sophia is [called] a philosophos.46 (DL 1.12)

The similarities with Heraclides’s version are apparent. Pythagoras calls him-
self philosophos but does not invent the term, he does so famously in a con-
versation with Leon, he has to explain his use of the term, and the meaning of
the term is basically the same: being receptive of truth and wisdom (though

Sosicrates’s telling provides a more active emphasis). The key difference
with Heraclides’s version is also clear. Aside from the geo graph i cal dispute,
to which we will return, Pythagoras gives a dif fer ent explanation for calling
himself philosophos, using no festival analogy or reference to athletes, mer-
chants, and spectators. Leon might have expected him to call himself sophos,
presumably because people in the past treated those who spoke from and lived
with sophia—as Pythagoras appeared to do—as sophoi.47 But Pythagoras has
come to find the name inappropriate, as befitting only a god. The name phi-
losophos works better; it means “eagerly welcoming” or “following” sophia, which makes no epistemically hazardous claims about the possession of wisdom.48 Heraclides’s version emphasizes the philosophos’s differential objects of
pursuit— truth rather than glory and profit— whereas this version emphasizes
differential orientations toward one object — invitation rather than embodiment.

This story is obviously not the Heraclidean one we know from Cicero and

Sosicrates. Nor should we assume it is from an other wise unquoted section of

On Diseases. Tiziano Dorandi’s recent edition of Diogenes’s Lives, adopted by the editors of the Loeb Classical Library’s Early Greek Philosophy, rightly
punctuates the passage such that Heraclides is cited only for the alternative
citizenry over whom Leon might be tyrant, the “Phliusians.”49 Many earlier
editors did not include a comma after “Sicyons,” however, which leaves Hera-
clides saying, absurdly, that Leon was tyrant “over the Sicyonians or Phliu-

46 For the Greek of this passage, see Appendix, p. 324. Indicating the importance ascribed to this passage, Suda σ 806 replicates this passage verbatim from καὶ σοφός (“and a sophos . . .”).

47 By the fifth century BCE, the verb ἐπαγγέλλω, which here in the middle I translate “promulgate,” can mean “offer willingly” (LSJ s.v. A.4); only in the fourth century BCE can it also mean “profess” or “make a profession of,” especially in description of Sophists (A.5). The story does not clarify which connotation is meant— the latter implies pre sen ta tion of oneself as lecturer or even as professional, whereas the former does not— though perhaps Pythagoras himself could only have used the earlier connotation.

48 Before the fifth century BCE, ἀσπάζομαι means “greet, welcome” (LSJ s.v. A.1); only in the late fifth and early fourth century BCE can the term mean “eagerly follow, cling to” (A.3); again, the story does not clarify which connotation is meant, and again perhaps Pythagoras himself could only have used the earlier connotation.

49 See Dorandi 2013 ad loc. and LM 4.374.

I NTRODUCTION 19
sians.” Yet Heraclides does not in fact say this according to Sosicrates or

Cicero, and such ambivalence would quite gainsay the vibrancy and deter-
minate detail of Heraclides’s famous story.50 Diogenes often cites authorities
only for divergent details, even when there are major narrative differences
between his sources (typified by his uses of Sosicrates, cited in note 3 above).

The existence of this non- Heraclidean version of the Pythagoras story has a
fundamental consequence. There must be a core story shared by both versions,
in which Pythagoras calls himself philosophos to Leon and has to explain its
use. We see that for some reason Diogenes prefers the non- Heraclidean ver-
sion, the one that includes the “not- sophos” explanation, since he quotes or
paraphrases it and not Heraclides’s in his Preface, even though both would
support his claim about the Greek origin of philosophia. (As we will see in
chapter 3, other fourth- century BCE authors follow the non- Heraclidean version rather than that of Heraclides.) There is no reason to believe that the
non- Heraclidean version— whose author I will call the “Sicyon author” (i.e.,

“Sicyon- version author”)— derives from Heraclides. There might even be rea-
son to believe that Heraclides took a credible pre- existing story and adapted

Pythagoras’s reasons to suit his protreptic goals.51 The Sicyon author’s ver-
sion emphasizes continuity with sophoi; as we will see in later chapters, the
ambition to assem ble lineages of sophoi dates back to the mid- fifth century

BCE, and so we would expect some attempts to fit Pythagoras, Pythagoreans,
and similar philosophoi into such “sophos lineages,” as we might call them.52

The disagreement about Leon’s place of tyranny is not surprising: Phlius and

Sicyon share borders near Corinth; po liti cal upheaval struck Sicyon during
the relevant period, perhaps making the determination of rulership confus-
ing; associates of Aristotle and Heraclides engaged in new research into Sicyon
in the fourth century BCE; and Phlius played an impor tant role in early Py-
thagoreanism.53 The overwhelming sense is that Heraclides’s version of the

50 For the debate, see, e.g., Joly 1956, 21–28; Malingrey 1961, 30–31; Guthrie 1962, 164–45.

Editors who attribute the disjunction to Heraclides rather than Diogenes include Cobet 1878a; Long 1964; Marcovich 1999; Schütrumpf 2008 ad fr. 84. Anonymous 1833 puts commas on
either side of ἤ Φλιασίων, with unclear meaning. Genaille 1965 hides behind modern citation conventions, translating “. . . Leon, tyran des Sicyoniens, appelés parfois Phliasiens ( cf. Héra-clide du Pont, livre sur l’ Apnon)” (my italics).

51 Riedweg 2004 and 2005, 94–96, describes the sufficient fifth- century BCE materials available to such a historian; see note 67 below for fuller assessment.

52 This is not especially controversial; see the opening paragraph of OCD s.v. “philosophy, history of.”

53 Leon is not other wise known. The controversy over Phlius and Sicyon has much to do
with Pythagorean history (similar controversies: Euseb. Praep. evang. 10.3.4.5–9), but in no simple way. The cities were neighbors on the Corinthian Gulf (Xen. Hell. 7.2.20; Skalet 1928, 26–27; Lolos 2011, 22), whence settlers to Croton departed (Dunbabin 1948, 250, 269). Phlius

20 CH A PTER 1

Pythagoras story is neither the only nor the first, even as his account is the
longest, is the most detailed, and is distinguished as the only one attributed to
an author. Because of the conflation in latter- day scholarship of all versions
of the Pythagoras story to his account, the historical real ity of any version—
and thus any evidence about the origins of the discipline we might infer from
one— tends to stand on the plausibility of Heraclides’s exposition.54

Burkert against Heraclides: An Academic Fiction?

From the fourth century BCE to the sixth century CE, Heraclides’s story was
taken as fact. Now, however, it has little currency, and thus plays almost no
role in attempts to understand the origins of philosophia. This is not altogether had also sent settlers to Pythagoras’s home island of Samos, among whom were Hippasus, a purported great- grandfather of Pythagoras (Paus. 2.13.2; DL 8.1; cf. Delatte 1922, 148; Burnet 1930, 87n5; Minar 1942); Porphyry also cites early views that Phlius was Pythagoras’s hometown

( VP 5). Phlius was the home place of at least four fifth- century BCE Pythagoreans, including Echecrates (Iambl. VP 35.251, 267; DL 8.46; BNP s.v. “Leon [2]”; Zhmud 2013, 148; this does not require, as Riedweg 2004 asserts, that any Pythagoras story must postdate their establishment there). Sicyon was Greece’s oldest city (Euseb. Chron. 62), and in the early sixth century BCE
it hosted the “best of the Greeks,” in the form of the suitors of Agariste, daughter of its tyrant Cleisthenes, leading Greek of his generation, and mother of Athens’s demo cratizer Cleisthenes (Hdt. 6.126–30; see Hammond 1956, 46; Griffin 1982, 52–56, 97; Parker 1994, 423–24). In the following de cades, the city supported Greece’s most consequential musical innovators (Skalet 1928, 178–80; Griffin 1982, 57, 158–62), a lineage of which appeared in Heraclides’s history of music (Barker 2014, 50). Despite the cultural knowledge we have of these cities, we know nothing of their po liti cal histories at the time of Pythagoras, and thus cannot resolve the controversy.

Sicyon might have had a tyrant after Cleisthenes’s death around 569 BCE and before its last tyrant, Aischines, had the latter, in fact, been deposed by the Spartans at the end of the sixth century BCE; our source, Rylands Papyrus 18 (see BNJ 105 ad F1), is unclear. This possibility has its supporters (e.g., Cavaignac 1919; White 1958; Parker 1992; BNP s.v. “Sicyon”; Leahy 1968, 4n12, includes older bibliography), though others support an earlier date for the last tyrant, which would make a Pythagorean meeting with one impossible (e.g., Hammond 1956; Leahy

1968; OCD s.v. “Sicyon”). BNJ 105 ad F2 takes Aristotle to assert in the Politics that Cleisthenes was Sicyon’s last tyrant ( Pol. 1316a30–31), but this passage marks instead only a regime change between Myron and Cleisthenes. For general histories of the pertinent (“Orthagorid”) period, see Skalet 1928, 52–62; Andrewes 1956, 54–61; Griffin 1982, 37–61; Lolos 2011, 61–65. Should Sicyon have had a tyrant during the maturity of Pythagoras, this fact would presumably have been recorded in Aristotle’s lost Constitution of the Sicyonians (Poll. Onom. 9.77; cf. Arist.

Pol. 1315b10–21), though there were other likely sources for Sicyon’s po liti cal history by the later fourth century ( POxy. 1365, containing a work possibly by Ephorus of Cyme [ca. 400–330

BCE]). Should Sicyon not have had a tyrant during that time—if Aischines had been deposed in the mid- sixth century BCE, as some interpretations prefer—it still must have had rulers anyway, and they might still have been called “tyrants.” If they were not, then Leon must have been tyrant not of Sicyon but of Phlius.

54 Such conflation is found in, e.g., Burkert 1960 and Riedweg 2004; contrast Gottschalk

1980, 23–36.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 20

9/18/19 1:20 PM

I NTRODUCTION 21
surprising. The loss of almost all Heraclides’s works except some fantastical
excerpts establishes him as an impresario of myth.55 His Pythagorean partisan-
ship hardly helps, given the disfavor into which the man from Samos, demoted
to cult leader, at best a symbol of mystical magniloquence and ostentatious eru-
dition, has fallen, especially for phi los o phers proud of their discipline’s mod-
est rigor.56 The decisive moment in the rejection of Heraclides’s account of

Pythagoras came in 1960. Walter Burkert (1931–2015) was at that time writing
the century’s most impor tant book on Pythagoras, published as Weisheit und

Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaos und Platon in 1962, and in a
revised translation as Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism in 1972.

Burkert took as his task the reassessment of all ancient testimony for Pythago-
ras’s philosophical acumen, attitudes, and endeavors— especially his purported
mathematical, cosmological, and psychological discoveries— from the classi-
cal and Hellenistic periods through the Neopythagoreanism of Nicomachus of

Gerasa (ca. 60–120 CE) and Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca. 245–325 CE). Burkert
debunked practically all of it as mere retrojecting and idealizing fictions by
later Pythagoreans. Among the lore he sought to reassess was Heraclides’s Py-
thagoras story. Was it true, he asked, or pure hagiographical invention?

As a kind of advanced guard for his book, Burkert published, in 1960, an
article titled “Platon oder Pythagoras? Zum Ursprung des Wortes ‘Philoso-
phie,’ ” arguing unqualifiedly for invention.57 In this masterpiece of breadth,
concision, and acuity, Burkert vindicates suspicions about the story that had
occupied phi los o phers and philologists since Eduard Zeller’s monumental

Philosophy of the Greeks in Its Historical Development (1844–52), and had
come to a head in Werner Jaeger’s Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of
his Development.58 Having assumed that the version discussed above, found
in Diogenes Laertius’s Preface (DL 1.12), also comes from Heraclides but
in a part of his work not quoted in Sosicrates or Cicero, Burkert makes two
interlocking claims: we have a strong reason against believing that Py-
thagoras could or would ever have defined philosophos as either “one spec-

55 Ancient negative evaluations are found in the hypercritical Timaeus, who accuses Hera-
clides of “always being such a paradoxologist” (DL 8.72), though Polybius states that Timaeus was overly critical (Polyb. 12.4a6, 12.14, 25c2); in Plutarch ( Cam. 22.2–4); and in Cicero ( Nat.

D. 1.13.34), though not in his own voice: in the voice, rather, of an Epicurean given to reviling Academics. Guthrie 1978, 484, redeems Heraclides’s supposed “weakness for fantasy and superstition” by noting that Plato, too, tells far- fetched tales though always in appropriate contexts.

56 Burnyeat 2007 captures the present- day tone.

57 “Plato or Pythagoras: On the Origin of the Word ‘Philosophy’ ”: this contribution was
never translated into En glish nor included in the book, though Burkert cites its results at 5n11, 8, 65, 74, 77, and 106 (in the 1972 edition).

58 Jaeger 1923, 2nd ed. 1948; Engl. in 1934, 2nd ed. 1962; see esp. 1962, 97–98, 432.

22 CH A PTER 1
tating the universe” (from the Cicero version) or “one lacking but striving
for sophia” (from the DL 1.12 version); and yet, by contrast, we have a strong
reason in favor of believing that Heraclides could or would have concocted
his story on inspiration from Plato’s Phaedrus (for example), which in effect
includes both definitions (at Phdr. 278d and 249b5– d3). I will address these
claims in turn.

According to Burkert, a range of reasons tell against Pythagoras’s defining
the philosophos in either way. First, the biographical reasons. Pythagoras, full of self- conceit, would never have called attention to an abyss between himself
and sophia or divinity— after all, as his successor Empedocles did, he vaunted
his own immortality— and yet this is what the “not- sophos” definition would
require.59 Nor would it have been relevant for him to treat himself as a lover of
observation or hunter after truth, for this would explain only his calling him-
self theôrêtikos or philotheamôn, not philosophos. Second, the evidentiary reasons. There is no in de pen dent evidence that Pythagoras in ven ted the word
philosophos, even if classical authors suggest that Pythagoreans used the term.

And what evidence may exist for the fifth- century BCE use of philosophos,
for example by Zeno and Heraclitus, has its own prob lems of authenticity and
proves neither gloss on philosophos (as striving for an as- yet- unpossessed sophia or spectating the universe). Third, the linguistic reasons. A survey of the
earliest phil- prefixed terms shows that phil- never meant “lacking and desiring x,” but rather its (almost) exact opposite, “close acquaintance and familiarity, or habitual dealings, with x.”60

In favor of a fourth- century BCE confabulation of Heraclides’s Pythagoras
story, Burkert has another set of assertions. Every version of the Pythagoras
story goes back to Heraclides, he claims; Aristotle cannot be a source. The

Acad emy and Lyceum actively debated Pythagoras’s commitment to the
practical or contemplative life, both as a historical/theoretical matter and in
the context of broader ethical/metaphysical debates, familiar to all readers,
from Plato’s Gorgias and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Heraclides’s story looks suspiciously like a tendentious contribution to that discussion. Indeed,

Burkert conjectures the coinage of the term philosophos, or at least its dis-
semination and popularization, in the (late) fifth century BCE, at a time when
phil- prefixed terms (as illustrated by Aristophanes’s Wasps, of 422 BCE, and Plato’s Lysis, of the early fourth century BCE, discussed below, in chap-
ters 3 and 8) proliferated to capture favorite pastimes, hobbies, and even 59 Others are doubtful that Pythagoras would ever have said that he lacked wisdom: Morrison 1956, 136–38; Chroust 1964a, 427n17, 432–33; Kahn 2001, 2, 5–6; Riedwig 2005.

60 Burkert 1960, 176–77, 161 (biographical reasons); 169–71 (evidentiary reasons); 172–73

(linguistic reasons).

I NTRODUCTION 23
life- determining passions. An expanding demo cratic middle class sought the
former trappings of the elites and formulated sophia for itself— hence the
idea of the philosophoi as amateur seekers of wisdom. Plato sharpened the idea
of this “striving while lacking” to contrast the philosophoi with conceited

“Sophists” and to describe Socrates’s incessant questioning as phenomeno-
logically akin to love.61

Burkert rejected Heraclides’s account decisively,62 and appeared to have put
to rest a deep puzzle— what sense to make of an instance of philosophy’s dis-
cussing its own essence at its very foundation— that engaged not only Zeller
and Jaeger but also many other prominent scholars of philosophy’s founding,
including Erwin Rohde, Ulrich von Wilamowitz- Moellendorf, Isidore Lévy,

Robert Joly, Augusto Rostagni, Fritz Wehrli, John Burnet, and J. S. Morrison.

To a large extent his argument has been accepted, most notably in two of An-
drea Nightingale’s books, Genres in Dialogue (1995) and Spectacles of Truth

(2004), which have been cited more times than any other work that addresses
the early history of the word philosophos.63 In her 1995 book, for example,

Nightingale argues that “Plato appropriated the term ‘philosophy’ for a new
and specialized discipline,” which before him “did not have a technical sense
that indicated a specific group of thinkers practicing a distinct discipline or
profession,” but instead “was used to designate ‘intellectual cultivation’ in a
broad and unspecified sense.” Nightingale allows that, even were Heraclides’s

“rather dubious claim” about Pythagoras true, it would not show that Pythago-
ras used the term in a “technical” way. Nor, looking at the other fifth- century

BCE uses of philosophos and cognates, does Nightingale see any instance of
a “special subgroup of intellectuals that had appropriated the title of ‘ philoso-
phoi’ ” or a “specific group of professional thinkers.”64 I qualify Nightingale’s claim about Plato in chapter 8 and her claims about fifth- century BCE uses in chapter 5. What is particularly relevant here is her reaction to Heraclides’s story, as assessed by Burkert: she takes it to be useless for understanding
the early history of philosophia, and treats pre- fourth century BCE usage as
having neither complexity, traceable origin, nor semantic diffusion. Burkert’s
claim that Heraclides’s history of philosophia is a fourth- century BCE fantasy

61 Burkert 1960, 166n1 (Heraclides as sole source); 166–69 (Aristotle not a source); 159–60
with Burkert 1972, 106–9 (Heraclides’s tendentious contribution); 174–76 (Plato sharpened the sense).

62 Burkert 1960, 175.

63 See Burkert 1960 for older references and Riedweg 2004, 148nn6–8, for more recent ones.

Notable doubters include Havelock 1963, 306n8; Chroust 1964a, 427–28; Kahn 2001, 68; Hadot 2002, 14n1. Guthrie 1962, 164–66, 204–5, not having seen Burkert’s article, takes a mixed attitude; Lloyd 2009, 9n1, remains agnostic.

64 Nightingale 1995, 14–15.

24 CH A PTER 1
has had the effect of inaugurating the history of philosophia in the fourth
century BCE.

Before evaluating this claim, we must determine precisely what Burkert has
demonstrated. He says that Pythagoras would not have exposited philosophos
as the one “striving after wisdom,” whereas Heraclides, by contrast, could or
even would have. True enough. But we also have reason to doubt that Hera-
clides himself attributed the “not- sophos” definition to Pythagoras. It looks
rather as if Heraclides tells a version of a pre- existing story. Even if we grant

Burkert’s conflation of the two stories, contrary to evidence, we can see that

Burkert’s bolder move is to reject the whole of Heraclides’s Pythagoras story
because he can reject a part, the speech Pythagoras gives in response to Leon’s
question. Yet we can reject the part without rejecting the whole. The speech,
indeed, has the least cause for ac cep tance: speeches are notoriously difficult
to preserve or remember, and might provide the best occasion for invention,
as Thucydides famously implies (Thuc. 1.22).

Even with the rejection of Pythagoras’s speech of explanation, however,
much remains untouched from Heraclides’s account. I will mention three items.

First, the dramatic context: a meeting between Pythagoras and Leon the ty-
rant. Burkert never doubts the plausibility of such an interaction; and while
the tale may loosely fit the generic structure of the “sage advisor of tyrants”

trope, it is no less likely for that.65 Second, the historical claim: Pythagoras
was the first to call himself philosophos. Burkert never doubts the possibility
of the self- application, though he does think that Pythagoras is being said to

“invent” the word and that he does so by explaining what it means. But the
story need not imply invention of the adjective/noun, only its self- application

(and, in some versions, invention of the abstract noun); the historical implica-
tion could be that the term was already used for other people, and that Py-
thagoras innovated with his self- application. Nothing holds him to applying
it to himself to “mean” either of the things Burkert believes Heraclides put
into his mouth. What remains after abandoning Pythagoras’s speech, third,
is a more general historical implication: fifth- century BCE Pythagoreans had
good reason to allow themselves to be called philosophoi. They could, with
truth or fiction, retroject this appellation onto their only slightly earlier rep-
resentative, Pythagoras.66 In sum, then, much of Heraclides’s story of Pythago-
rean (redemptive) self- ascription might still be taken seriously.

65 On the story’s structure and on the wise advisor trope, see Hdt. 1.30, with Bischoff 1932; Lattimore 1939; Joly 1956; Gottschalk 1980, 23–27; Martin 1993; Sharp 2004; Riedweg 2005, 94; YC 1.113–18. Nevertheless, our fragments do not indicate that Pythagoras advises Leon.

66 On such retrojection, see Burkert 1972, 91. I assume nothing in par tic u lar about the delineation of “Pythagorean,” following the caution of Zhmud 2013.

I NTRODUCTION 25

The Structure of This Book

Why did Heraclides propound the Pythagoras story in par tic u lar, and why did
so many ancient historians of philosophy find him believable? My answer is
that the general historical implications that accompany the story may well be
true. I thus break with Burkert and the past sixty- some years of scholarship
on the origins of philosophia.67 The two main implications of my answer are
the following:

1. The word philosophos existed early in the Pythagorean movement;

2. That the Pythagoreans had reason to call themselves philosophoi and pre-
sented an explanation of their doing so suggests they were already being
called it and that the name was neither obvious in meaning nor lauda-
tory in application.

There are, then, secondary implications that one might expect. If these are
sound, they would support the main implications.

3. The earliest non- Pythagorean uses of philosophos would develop from
this original Pythagorean- derived meaning;

4. The uses of philosophos would show negative valence in the earliest
cases, and then instances of neutral and redemptive valence later;

5. Plato’s works themselves can be treated as instances of saving the ap-
pearances and redeeming the practices theretofore called philosophia.

These fifth- and early fourth- century BCE phenomena provide a context for
the mid- fourth century BCE trends:

6. Heraclides’s story contributes to ongoing protreptic efforts to redeem
philosophoi by explaining their positive value, and does so, in part, in
a way familiar from Aristotle, by displaying a historical disciplinary
consciousness.

67 The most thorough response to Burkert heretofore is, as I mentioned above, Riedweg

2004, an article that argues persuasively for the fifth- century BCE existence of all of Heraclides’s story ele ments (meaning that the story could predate Heraclides’s version), but who does not treat closely of the etymology, coinage, or fifth- century BCE uses of philosoph- words, etc.

Mallan 2005 also argues for the Pythagorean heritage of the ideas found in Heraclides’s version.

I note that Aristophanes, by 423/17 BCE, could speak of “desiring wisdom” (ὦ τῆς μεγάλης
ἐπιθυμήσας ἄνθρωπε, Nub. 412).

26 CH A PTER 1

By this book’s end, my hope is that the reader may see what allowed Hera-
clides to write the Pythagoras story in a way that convinced his readers. The
result will be a clearer understanding of the origin of the word philosophos

(and philosophia) and of the discipline called philosophia. The structure of the narrative falls into three parts.

Part One: Origins

The first part of the book, chapters 2–4, focuses on the origins of the term philosophos. In chapter 2, I argue for what we might call the “lexical precondition” for Heraclides’s story: the existence of the word philosophos at the time
of Pythagoras or at least in the period of the early Pythagorean generations.

The evidence is a fragment from Heraclitus, quoted by Clement: “philosophi-
cal men really quite ought to be researchers into much” (B35/D40). Burkert
accepted the familiar and casual skepticism about Heraclitus’s authorship of
this— after all, it predates the next earliest attestation of the word by at least
several de cades, and seems in conflict with Heraclitean fragments that decry
polymathy (e.g., B40/D20, B129/D26)— and claimed that, even were it au-
then tic, it would not support either definition of philosophia found in the Pythagoras stories.68 I argue, first, that we have no reason to doubt Clement’s
accuracy of quotation for either source- critical or epistemological reasons. I
show, second, that while Heraclitus’s use does not support the “explanations”

of philosophos found in the Pythagoras stories, it in fact supports the view
that I have said the stories imply: that the term was applied, and perhaps with
pejorative implication, to the Pythagoreans. Both positions have had their pro-
ponents in earlier scholarship, but with a full defense of those positions we can
better see their centrality not just for Heraclitean epistemology but for the his-
tory of philosophia.

In chapter 3, I show what the term philosophos could have meant at the time for which it is attested, and thus what meaning Pythagoras or his followers would have sought to spin in accepting the term for themselves, had they
done so. Burkert rejected the analy sis of phil- prefixed terms as “striving for x which one lacks,” suggesting instead “familiar with x.”69 For his purposes, that
analy sis sufficed, but it does not suffice for us. He did not pay close enough
attention to the peculiar archaic use of phil- prefixed names, their normative
valence, their application, or the contribution of their second ele ment to the
overall meaning. Nor did he pay close enough attention to the meaning of that

68 Burkert 1960, 171; Burkert 1972, 131, 209–10.

69 Burkert 1960, 172–74; confirming his negative argument, see Landfester 1966 and Cipri-
ano 1991.

I NTRODUCTION 27
par tic u lar second ele ment, soph- , at the end of the sixth century BCE. This chapter begins by turning again to Cicero’s version of the Pythagoras story,
and in more detail to a non- Heraclidean but prob ably still fourth- century BCE
version, found in Diodorus Siculus, which in effect dramatizes the thesis of
this book: that the word philosophos was formed in reference to sophoi considered as “sages.” Impor tant support for this ancient perspective comes from

Aristotle’s analy sis, written in Heraclides’s prime, of phil- prefixed names as
usually having a negative valence; from the phil- prefixed names that surely
predate the coinage of the term philosophos; from the precursors of those names
in Pi- ro- prefixed Mycenaean (Linear B) names; and from, quite importantly,
the sense of the term sophos in sixth- century BCE Greek.

In chapter 4, I pick up a claim made in the previous chapter, that a term like philosophos would have been coined in response to certain sorts of unusual
activity. I accumulate the earliest evidence that the Pythagoreans would have
been excellent targets of this term. This is because their public face was po-
liti cally notorious and influential, with their cohesion and even efficacy seem-
ing to depend on their pedagogical and research exercises. I thereby develop

Burkert’s acknowl edgment of the or ga nized po liti cal side of their existence.70

Additional evidence comes from what looks to be Aristotle’s support of Hera-
clides’s account, if we can reconstruct Iamblichus’s late citations of Aristotle
correctly. Burkert asserts that Pythagoras was not really a phi los o pher; what
concerns me is only the beliefs that observers had about him and the names
that they had reason to call him— since, for his contemporaries, philosophos
hardly meant what academic phi los o phers now mean by “phi los o pher.”

Part Two: Development

The next part of the book, chapters 5–7, focuses on the development of uses of the word philosophos before and outside of Plato’s Acad emy. In chap-
ter 5, I draw on the fifth- century BCE uses of philosophos and cognates for two purposes: as corroboration for the coinage meaning set out in chapter 3
and the connection to Pythagoreans set out in chapter 4, and as description of the drift in meaning the term underwent across several generations of
use. I focus on six authors, each of whom use the term once: Herodotus,

Thucydides, the Hippocratic author of On Ancient Medicine, Gorgias, Aris-
tophanes, and Lysias. (An appendix to the chapter assesses some less reli-
able but still pos si ble evidence for early usage.) Burkert already referred to
these authors in his observation that philosophos did not first mean “lacking

70 Burkert 1972, 113–19, 132.

28 CH A PTER 1
wisdom” or “spectating the universe.”71 Treated, however, in their respective
literary and rhetorical contexts, they provide significant information about
the fifth- century BCE career of the idea of being philosophos. It appears that
at the end of that century, we see the term sometimes losing its wry implica-
tion and naming a quite specific mode of dialectic exchange about matters of
abstract or broad significance.

In chapter 6, I turn to a fifth- century BCE figure as yet unmentioned, but whose importance to the later understanding of philosophia cannot be un-derestimated: Socrates. Many scholars, including Burkert and Nightingale,
believe that Socrates’s students inaugurated new thinking about philoso-
phia; presumably Socrates’s life, or at least his death, galvanized them to do
so. This would be a central ingredient in the recipe for the redemptive story
told by Heraclides, a grand- student of Socrates’s. In fact, at least Xenophon
and Plato, for whom we have the most evidence, never or only rarely call

Socrates philosophos, even if we now think that, for both, Socrates modeled
the philosophical life. This chapter makes this observation in part by focus-
ing on both authors’ attitude toward Socrates’s connection to Anaxagoras,
considered by later historicans to be the first to philosophize in Athens,
and by focusing on Xenophon’s hesitation to use the word philosophos with
re spect to Socrates. This suggests again that the term philosophos had a
negative valence during Socrates’s life and even, in some quarters, after
his death. Plato and other Socratics do use the term philosophia positively,
even putting it in Socrates’s mouth. Their doing so in the fourth century

BCE tracks the neutralizing trend we saw in chapter 5; it may also, however, reflect conscientious efforts to redeem a term that had been applied to

Socrates. Socrates’s discussion circles, which is what Plato most recurrently
calls philosophia, were prob ably formalized in the “schools” of the so- called

Minor Socratics and as the Acad emy, where Heraclides matured in his un-
derstanding of philosophia.

In chapter 7, I address non- Academic uses of philosophia in the fourth century BCE, which provides the background against which we can understand

Heraclides’s use of the term. We can see how philosophia became a discipline in
the Acad emy only by understanding how the term philosophia was being used
elsewhere. The key context comes from the educators Alcidamas, Isocrates,
and the author of the Dissoi Logoi. I show that we have less reason to say that
these educators competed over “owner ship” of the term philosophos (even

71 Burkert 1960, 173. Nightingale 1995, 14–15, treats the uses only as evidence that the authors did not know of philosophia as a professional discipline.

I NTRODUCTION 29
if at times they may have) or its true and universal meaning than that they
gave varying retrospective reconstructions of the term’s usage, differing, for
example, in the relative emphases they give to practical teaching over the de-
fensibility of research outcomes. To the extent that the Academic view of phi-
losophia “won,” this is not because that view was truer or more convincing,
but because the Acad emy instigated a continued discipline that called itself
philosophia more than Alcidamas or Isocrates did, neither of whom appear to
have had success or interest in developing the sort of well- populated discipline
crucial for maintaining a name.

Part Three: Acad emy

The final part of the book, chapters 8–10, focuses on the disciplinary development of the word philosophos in Plato’s Acad emy. In chapter 8, I confront the use of philosophia by Heraclides’s teacher, Plato. Burkert— and many
others— views Plato’s appropriation of philosophia as part of his effort to con-
trast Socrates’s and his own practice with that of Sophists, rhetoricians, and
other claimants to wisdom; he describes the etymological play, defining phi-
losophia as “love of wisdom,” as Plato’s attempt to fit Socrates’s interrogative
approach. This may be so. Nightingale and, for example, John Cooper argue
in par tic u lar that Plato creates a technical and professional formulation of phi-
losophoi and philosophia, as though ex nihilo. This is less certain. I show that across his dialogues, Plato treats philosophia as a term in common parlance,
and thus that he is, in effect, saving the appearances (of Thucydides and Gor-
gias, among others) when he pre sents it as conversations that conduce to virtue
and flourishing. The dialogues dramatize or narrate just those conversations.

Plato’s reconstruction of past usages differs from Isocrates’s, for example, in
emphasizing the conversationality and the tendency to self- consciousness of
its logic and argumentative rigor; but this is not expressly new—it is just a plau-
sible interpretation of the past. Plato does provide something new, but it is not a
new “meaning” of philosophia. It is, rather, a new explanation for the possibility that philosophia- style conversations could actually conduce to their end, human happiness. The epistemological and metaphysical considerations mooted in the
dialogues concerning knowledge and universals do not determine what phi-
losophia is (namely, conversations) but how philosophia could actually work (namely, by getting clearer about what is really true). Given how unappealing
philosophia has been made out to be, a proponent needs to vindicate this ap-
parently lazy pursuit. The Acad emy, an institution devoted to this pursuit,
needed a defense. Yet, in most of Plato’s dialogues— from the Charmides to

30 CH A PTER 1

Protagoras, Phaedrus to Republic, Lysis to Symposium, and even from the Parmenides to the Philebus— philosophia still refers to person- to- person interactions, not to anything beyond those conversations; philosophia is not yet
a discipline, a historically extended, increasingly distributed, and imper-
sonal, concerted enterprise.

In chapter 9, proceeding from the belief that Heraclides’s Pythagoras story implies a historical account of the development of the discipline of
philosophia, I describe the rise of this historiography of philosophy, one that
materializes only in the Acad emy. Aristotle’s writings provide the clearest
evidence. When in the intellectual- historical mode, Aristotle circumscribes
philosophia as an engagement with the ideas of others, living or dead, whom
one takes also to be or have been engaged in philosophia. This includes

Thales’s views, for example, since Aristotle can reconstruct them as address-
ing certain questions and open to critique by successors, including himself
in par tic u lar, but not those of Hesiod, Orpheus, or other admittedly wise au-
thors, who are not as amenable to this kind of virtual conversation. Aristotle
does not explain his departure from Plato’s interpersonal picture of philoso-
phia to a disciplinary one, but the density of conversations, memories, texts,
and positions found in the Acad emy prob ably prompted his new view. Since
pro gress in philosophy matters, and is pos si ble, one should bring to bear
every thing of relevance to any pos si ble question, not just the ideas of one’s
immediate interlocutors.

In chapter 10, I focus on a set of fourth- century BCE cultural attitudes about philosophia dif fer ent and on average later than those on which chapter 7 focused, a set that serves expressly as context and occasion for the versions of
the protreptic story about Pythagoras told by Heraclides and by other fourth-
century BCE writers. Positive and negative perceptions of philosophia coex-
isted. The positive feelings are most strikingly manifest in the Dephic maxim
philosophos ginou (“be philosophical”), the existence for which comes from a

1966 discovery in Af ghan i stan. The negative feelings are best appreciated from
fragments of the comic dramatist Alexis, from an anti- philosophical “apotrep-
tic” found in a recently published Oxyrhynchus papyrus, and from apotreptics
found in familiar philosophical texts. What becomes clear is that two ideas
about philosophia operate si mul ta neously, one quasi- or fully disciplinary, the other mundanely ethical. Equivocation between these two ideas is prominent
in certain parts of Aristotle’s Protrepticus and in the Platonic Rival Lovers.

In an epilogue, this book concludes with a brief discussion of the relevance
of this study to the way we might now think about philosophia and the history
of philosophy in con temporary discussions of philosophy.

I NTRODUCTION 31

Conclusion: Three Observations about This Study

A feature of scholarship of ancient philosophy is its unremitting interroga-
tion of the same old texts. What might seem boring or witless to outsiders
in fact gives scholars both a deep and vivid sensitivity born of disciplin-
ary familiarity and a confidence that they are laboring rightly, given that
so many wise forebears have already tested the life lived reconstructing,
analyzing, and evaluating these texts. There is also the competitive zest
in seeking something as yet overlooked by past generations, and the pride
of minute discovery, a feeling of distinction in a crowded field of great-
ness. Such desires and sentiments have driven the writing of this book,
as it returns to canonical texts in Greek intellectual history: Heraclitus’s
fragments, Herodotus’s and Thucydides’s histories, the oeuvres of Plato,

Xenophon, and Aristotle, and the great biographical efforts of Diogenes

Laertius and Iamblichus of Chalcis, to name a few. I have drawn, even if
inadequately, silently, and often unknowingly, from the accumulated cen-
turies of study of these texts. But a real plea sure in writing this book about
ancient beginnings has been the use of materials that are neither old nor well
known. Some even postdate Walter Burkert’s 1960 article. Of course, schol-
arship itself over the past six de cades has often been groundbreaking, and

I cite, if selectively, most often from it. But new archaeological finds and
papyrological discoveries— primary rather than secondary sources— have
come into play. Michael Ventris decoded Linear B in 1952, with gradual
translations of Cretan tablets coming only in the ensuing de cades, which
have allowed me to write the section on Mycenaean onomastics. The Egyp-
tian Exploration Fund published a satire on philosophoi, prob ably from the
fourth century BCE, from an Oxyrhynchus (Egyptian) papyrus, in 1984.

An ostracon also found in Oxyrhynchus, concerning Antisthenes’s attitude
toward philosophia, was first published in 1966 and 1967. The Derveni pa-
pyrus, which does not mention philosophoi but reveals a sympathy between
theological and physical modes of philosophy in the fifth century BCE,
came to light in Macedonia in 1962 and received its full official publication
only in 2006. I hardly need mention the Strasbourg papyrus, published in

1999, allowing new joins of Empedocles’s poem. A papyrus about Sicyon,
from the Rylands collection, although published in 1911, did not get read
properly until Mary White’s reexamination in 1958; similarly, a papyrus in

Erlangen, first published in 1942, may have gotten its correct attribution to

Antisthenes only in 2014. Perhaps most remarkably, while not a papyrologi-

32 CH A PTER 1
cal discovery, Aristotle’s Protrepticus (late 350s BCE) has been the subject
of a major ongoing reconstruction by Doug Hutchinson and Monte Johnson;
the editors have recovered both matters of form and of content from previ-
ously unsuspected direct quotations from Iamblichus; key parts of my work
depend on their efforts.

As this sample of relevant new sources shows, a requirement for studying
the origin of a word and a discipline is interdisciplinary methods. Thus, study-
ing the origin of philosophia, and by extension philosophy, involves rather
more than philosophein, and by extension, philosophizing. It takes philology:

the full range of techniques appropriate for interpreting ancient texts with the
goal of understanding the cultural formations that influenced them and that they
influenced. This does not mean, however, that the book does not address phi-
los o phers or that it does not contribute to philosophy. It does so in at least four
ways. It allows clearer formulations of an abiding question, “What is philoso-
phy?,” provides some historicized answers, and suggests ave nues for answer-
ing the question at later periods. It allows better analy sis of philosophical ar-
guments that include the philosophos- word group in a premise or conclusion.

It allows richer context for interpreting the methods and goals of classical- era
phi los o phers, including Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. And it al-
lows for philosophical prac ti tion ers’ improved self- understanding, through
improved appreciation of their discipline’s earliest norms, ideals, and compro-
mises, however much those delimiting features of the discipline have changed
through the millennia.

As should by now be clear, this book has as its goal neither an ahistorical
definition nor a universal praise of philosophy. It seeks instead its disciplin-
ary origin. The Greeks loved studying such origins, apotheosizing or heroizing
the inventors of the arts and sciences. We love it, too. Sometimes our love
is defensive, underlining the nobility of science, the value of lit er a ture, or the
urgency of scholarship, teaching, and theory. But sometimes our love has
more than instrumental value, by contributing to self- understanding— about the
norms to which we commit ourselves as members of a discipline, whether that
discussion be medicine or social theory or ethics. Disciplinary origins, like
po liti cal constitutions, proj ect power ful limits or ideals onto our present- day
practice, even if the means and extent of this projection occasion intra- and
extra- disciplinary debate and disagreement. Philosophy provides a special
case for the histories of disciplines. Its spokespeople may rightly claim that
it birthed or sloughed off many of those disciplines themselves, such as psy-
chol ogy and physics. To be sure, it was no ur- discipline; it arose in a milieu
spawning a range of disciplines, including linguistics, poetics, po liti cal science,

I NTRODUCTION 33
and historiography, with the bound aries clear only in time. But unlike other
disciplines, which at least seem to have relatively stable and uncontroversial
objects of study— stars and orbits in astronomy, points and lines in geometry,
melodies and instruments in music— the objects of philosophy have never been
secure or subject to enduring consensus; and the twenty- first century promises
no resolution. A discipline called philosophy nevertheless came to be, and, in
time, quite self- consciously so.

O R I G I N S

2

Heraclitus against the Philosophoi

The Earliest Attestation of the Word Philosophos: Heraclitus B35

According to Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 CE), a Christian apologist
and our most copious source for Heraclitean fragments,1 Heraclitus gave a con-
dition for being “philosophical men” ( Strom. 5.140.6):

B35/D40: For philosophical men really quite ought to be researchers into much,
according to Heraclitus (χρὴ γὰρ εὖ μάλα πολλῶν ἵστορας φιλοσόφους ἄνδρας
εἶναι καθ᾽ Ἡράκλειτον).2

Generally thought to have lived about 535–475 BCE, Heraclitus would have
written this by the early fifth century BCE,3 contemporaneous with Pythago-
ras’s life or just after his death, which most historians place around 480 BCE.4

The authenticity of this fragment would prove the existence of the word phi-
losophos during Pythagoras’s life. It would thus provide the lexical precon-
dition for the truth of Heraclides’s story, either in its literal version, taking

Pythagoras to have actually used the word philosophos, or in a figurative
sense, taking early Pythagoreans to have actually used the word philosophos.

It would also help to date the coinage of the term, impor tant for inferring its
pos si ble original meaning, on the basis of late sixth- century BCE use of the
phil- prefix and the soph- second ele ment.

Yet many scholars doubt the authenticity of the fragment, or believe that

Clement paraphrased most of it, including the part with the word philosophos,
which could not then be traced to Heraclitus’s stylus. The first goal of this

1 DK provide Clement as the source for 24 fragments; only Hippolytus comes close, with 18.

2 Against LM, which prints ἴστορας, with a smooth breathing, I follow DK’s rough breath-
ing; nothing rests on it.

3 DL 9.1 and Suda η 472 set his floruit at 503–500 BCE, the latter synchronizing his life with the reign of Darius, 521–487 BCE; Kahn 1979, 303n2, suggests Heraclitus wrote ca. 505–490

BCE.

4 For Pythagoras’s death at 480 BCE, see BNP s.v.; TCT s.v. gives 475 BCE; Guthrie 1962, 174, gives 495–90 BCE. Earlier authors claimed he died in 505 BCE, counting forward 75 years from 580 BCE.

38 CH A PTER 2
chapter is to dispute this and defend Heraclitus’s authorship of the entire frag-
ment. The second goal is to suggest pos si ble senses and referents of the phrase
philosophoi andres at the beginning of the fifth century BCE, in the Greek that

Heraclitus uses. Most who deny Heraclitean authorship of the word philoso-
phos in B35 do so because they believe that it recommends a kind of polymathy
that Heraclitus elsewhere rejects; they explain the word’s existence in the frag-
ment as Clement’s paraphrastic contribution by pointing to the frequency with
which Clement uses the word philosophos and even the phrase philosophos
anêr in his writings. Yet B35 recommends polymathy only if it recommends
being philosophos, and nothing supports this assumption. Heraclitus avows a
normative relation between two kinds of people, not between his readers and
the predicate. Indeed, the weight of evidence suggests that Heraclitus discour-
ages being philosophos. This reading would allow consistency between B35
and other Heraclitean fragments.5 Since neither textual nor source- critical dif-
ficulties impugn the fragment, we would have no reason to doubt its authen-
ticity. Further, ac cep tance of authenticity would suggest that, at Heraclitus’s
time, philosophos lacked, or could lack, a positive connotation; it would not
be a state worthy of universal emulation. Fi nally, since Heraclitus repeatedly
impugns Pythagoras for his devious polymathy, B35 may refer specifically to

Pythagoreans. Something like this idea— that here Heraclitus is reporting a
popu lar view of phi los o phers, or speaks ironically, or refers to Pythagoras—
has already been suggested by Francis Cornford, Walther Kranz, William

Guthrie, and Gregory Kirk. This chapter puts these oft- forgotten suggestions
by eminent scholars of early Greek philosophy on a stronger footing.

A Challenge to Interpreting the Fragment:

Ambivalence about Polymathy

The main difficulty with B35 is that it appears to represent a laudatory attitude
toward extensive inquiry that stands in tension with the Heraclitean statements
that charge other thinkers with too much inquiry.

B40/D20: Polymathy does not teach intelligence (πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει):

for it would have taught it to Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again to Xenophanes
and Hecataeus.

5 Admittedly, we know very little about the structure or purpose of Heraclitus’s writing, and thus about the relationship, if any, between fragments (see Granger 2004); but we prob ably can expect consistency.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 39

B57/D25a: Teacher of most is Hesiod: they know him to know most

(ἐπίστανται πλεῖστα εἰδέναι), he who did not recognize (ἐγίνωσκεν) day and
night: for they are one.

B129/D26: Pythagoras of Mnesarchus practiced historia most of all men and,
selecting out these writings, made his own wisdom, polymathy, fraudulence

(ἱστορίην ἤσκησεν ἀνθρώπων μάλιστα πάντων, καὶ ἐκλεξάμενος ταύτας τὰς
συγγραφὰς ἐποιήσατο ἑαυτοῦ σοφίην, πολυμαθίην, κακοτεχνίην).

B81/D27: [Pythagoras] leader of imposters (κοπίδων ἐστὶν ἀρχη|[γός]).

We need to get clear about the target of Heraclitus’s criticism. B40 states cat-
egorically that polumathia does not teach nous (“intelligence,” “insight”), which the structure of the statement suggests is more valuable. Because it had to be at
least prima facie plausible that it did teach nous, polumathia cannot simply mean the bare accumulation of facts or data, which people might find impressive and
useful but not a source of special mental competence. Polumathia must instead
mean extensive learning, study, and the consequent integration or deployment
of that experience to make one seem an authority. The lexical evidence, meager
as it is, supports this.6 So, too, does the biography of the four men Heraclitus de-
rides in B40.7 Among other taxonomic proj ects, the seventh- century poet Hes-
iod wove diverse threads of Panhellenic my thol ogy into a consistent narrative
in Theogony, and in Works and Days he assembled sage wisdom, calendarized auspicious days, explicated the laws of justice, and taught the myriad techniques
of farming. From the earliest reception, he acquired an impressive authority on
account of his far- reaching knowledge.8 This is reflected in B57, which says that
people believe, with great certitude, that Hesiod knows many things (πλεῖστα)—

6 In Aristophanes’s Wasps (422 BCE), it is “learned (πολυμαθῶν) and clever (δεξιῶν) men pre sent” (Ar. Vesp. 1175) who will provide the audience for a defiantly unlearned father; that they expect “impressive” (σεμνούς, 1174; μεγαλοπρεπεῖς, 1187) and non- mythological (1179) stories implies their high level of worldliness and culture. In Plato’s Laws, polumatheis are those who memorize wide swathes of poetry and gain much experience intending to become sophos (Pl. Leg. 810e6–811a5), but with “bad training” (κακῆς ἀγωγῆς) are at risk of becoming quite bad (ζημία) (819a1–6). Anaxarchus (mid- to late fourth century BCE) recognizes the equivocal value of polymathy (πολυμάθειαν κάρτα μὲν ὠφελεῖν, κάρτα δὲ βλαπτειν, Stob. 2.31.116).

Stobaeus seems to attribute two instances of the polumath- word- group to Democritus: “many polymaths do not have intelligence” (πολλοὶ πολυμαθέες νοῦν οὐκ ἔχουσιν, B64/[27]D307) and

“one ought to practice thoughtfulness, not polymathy” (πολυνοΐην, οὐ πολυμαθίην ἀσκέειν χρή, B65/[9]R104); but these seem mostly to recapitulate Heraclitus.

7 Much scholarship reflects on the ordering of these names but none suggests its making
a difference here. Some quotations of this fragment exclude the names (Ath. 13.610b; Clem.

Strom. 1.93.1; Procl. In Tim. 102,22 Diehl; Stob. 2.31.116), but DL 9.1 includes all four, and Σ Pl.

Tht. 179e includes Hesiod and Pythagoras.

8 See Koning 2010 for evidence.

40 CH A PTER 2
this vague object is related to πολλῶν from Β35— but that this knowledge has
so little point that he fails to “recognize” (ἐγίνωσκεν) a fundamental, familiar,
and indeed omnipresent truth.9 Hecataeus of Miletus (ca. 560–480 BCE) was
considered the first substantial prose author, writing a systematic and rationaliz-
ing history of legendary personages, called either Histories or Genealogies, and a complete geo graph i cal and ethnographic account called Around the World.

Like Hesiod before him, he collated and rationalized huge quantities of myth,
natu ral history, and anthropology. This achievement could have contributed to
his authority as po liti cal advisor to the Ionians concerning the Persian danger.10

Hecataeus’s con temporary Xenophanes of Colophon (ca. 570–470) wrote po-
etry similarly influenced by Milesian naturalizing, addressing the foundations
of the cities of Elea and Colophon, proposing new views of cosmology and me-
teorology, and taking on the entire enterprise of Greek polytheism.11 This vast
learning could have contributed to his fame and success as a traveling poet. As
we will see in chapter 3, Pythagoras won a remarkable public estimation from what ever investigative or analytic proj ects he engaged in, and we have no evidence that he was a mere accumulator of facts or figures. As we see from B129,
his historia eventuates in polumathia, which amounts to his own idiosyncratic (and merely apparent) sophia, pointless in itself (cf. Heraclitus’s B2/D2, B89/

R56, B108/D43), and presumably the grounds for his devious and fictious self-
presentation (κακοτεχνίη, B129; cf. κοπίδων ἀρχη|[γός], B81).12

Heraclitus thus appears to treat polumathia as the collation and reinterpre-
tation of extensive research and learning, specifically what would generate
social, cultural, or po liti cal authority, albeit of the misplaced sort. That being
a pollôn histôr basically means being polumathês is clear from B57, where polymathic Hesiod is believed to know the most things (πλεῖστα εἰδέναι) and

B129, where polymathic Pythagoras has practiced the most historia— and, of
course, from the fifth- and fourth- century BCE lexical evidence. Thus the
paradox: whereas in B129, etc., Heraclitus abjures polumathia, in B35 he says
that philosophoi must basically be polumatheis. On the assumption that Hera-9 Cf. Lesher 2016.

10 Writings: Suda ε 738 with BNJ 1 ad T2; travel to Egypt and presenting lineage sixteen generations back: Hdt. 2.143 with Kosmin 2018, 1; advice to Aristagoras: Hdt. 5.36, 5.125–126; pace West 1991. See generally EGM 2.658–69, 677–80; on the connection between literacy, editorial collation, and historiography in Hecataeus and his contemporaries, see Thomas 1989, 155–95; Hawes 2014, 6–17.

11 For the conflict between Heraclitus and Xenophanes, see Lesher 1994, 20–23. Xenophanes’s city- founding poetry constituted 2000 lines (DL 9.20; see BNJ 450). Colophon had a complicated and legendary past; see BNJ 448. Elea, founded by settlers from Ionian Phocis around 540 BCE, was the hometown of Parmenides and Zeno.

12 Sider and Obbink 2013 studies parallels between Pythagoras and Heraclitus without, however, attending to the latter’s response to the former.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 41
clitus thinks his readers should be philosophoi, resolution of the paradox re-
quires either that we reject one or more of the fragments, or that we understand
the relevant fragments anew. Most interpreters have taken the first route, and
finding the evidence for Heraclitus’s distaste of polumathia stronger than the
evidence against it, they reject the authenticity of B35 either in full or in part.

Of course, the assumption that Heraclitus enjoins us to be philosophoi may
well be dubious—in which case the apparent contradiction has no bite.

Suspicions of Clementine Meddling

The most recent instance of doubt about the authenticity of B35 comes in a
momentous publication: André Laks and Glenn Most’s nine- volume collec-
tion of the early Greek philosophical fragments for the Loeb Classical Library

(2016)— a collection already supplanting Diels and Kranz’s Die Fragmente der

Vorsokratiker for many readers. Their doubt appears to depend on two spe-
cific instances of misplaced skepticism about Clement’s reliability, both of
which we can resolve.

In their collection of Heraclitean fragments, Laks and Most include twenty-
three quotations from Clement, regarding twenty- two of which they express
no substantive doubt.13 For B35/D40, however, they print the following, put-
ting in bold font all that they think comes reliably from the source text:

B35/D40 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata

For according to Heraclitus, men who love wisdom must be investigators
into very many things.1

1 It is uncertain whether the whole sentence is to be attributed to Heraclitus or only
some parts of it, and whether in par tic u lar the term philosophoi (“men who love wisdom”) belongs to him and what exactly it means here.

Thus they accept only one word, “investigators” (ἵστορας), as reliable; despite
the equanimity of the footnote, they side with skepticism, by contrast to their
approach elsewhere. They cite no reasons, textual or source- critical, for their
uncertainty, nor any scholarship demonstrating the unique unreliability of this

Clementine quotation. A reader may get the impression, from this authorita-
tive source, that every one knows that we cannot base arguments on this frag-
ment; and indeed, with attestations of philosophos from only 430 BCE or later,
that one would be hard- pressed to defend the pre sent history of philosophia.

13 They query the μᾶλλον δὲ ἀναπαύεσθαι in B20/D118, the ἀποθανών in B26/D71, and the
φυλάσσει in B28/D19; except perhaps the last, none count as significant exclusions.

42 CH A PTER 2

Laks and Most’s potentially decisive view has its pre ce dents, even if read-
ers of their text are not in the position to discern them. The editors do not cite

Heraclitus scholarship here, but throughout the nine volumes of the Loeb col-
lection, they acknowledge six works on Heraclitus: Hermann Diels’s 1901 edi-
tion of Heraclitus; Walther Kranz’s 1951 revision of Diels’s Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker; Miroslav Marcovich’s 1967 critical edition of Heraclitus;

Charles Kahn’s 1979 translation and commentary, the best known full- scale
analy sis of Heraclitus’s work in En glish; Thomas Robinson’s 1987 con ve nient
translation and commentary for the University of Toronto Press; and Serge

Mouraviev’s 1999 twenty- volume study of the reception of Heraclitus. Four
of these six texts actually accept the entirety of the fragment. Only Marco-
vich and Robinson do not; and since Robinson depends on Marcovich, only

Marcovich matters.

In fact, Marcovich accepts more of Clement’s quotation- paraphrase than

Laks and Most did: “Men (?) must be acquainted with many things (πολλῶν
ἴστορας χρὴ [? ἀνθρώπους] εἶναι).”14 Yet the upshot remains the same: he athe-
tizes the intensifiers and the accusative subject of the assertion, philosophous
andras. He cuts philosophos not because it would commit Heraclitus to a contradiction in promoting broad research, since even the overhauled version
promotes research. It is rather because of “Clement’s predilection for [ philoso-
phos] used as adjective” and his use of the phrase “tribe of philosophical men”

(γένη φιλοσόφων ἀνδρῶν); the latter two words are the ones that we find in
the Heraclitus quotation, earlier in the Stromata (1.68.4).15 These, however,
are specious reasons.16

Clement uses the term philosophos 133 times in his extant work. Hardly
anything follows from this, since those appear in four works, largely about
philosophy, comprising nearly 248,000 words; by comparison, Eusebius of

Caesarea (ca. 260–340 CE) uses the term 208 times in his Praeparatio Evan-
gelica, which is 12,000 words shorter. Nor have scholars suspected Clement
of inserting his favorite words into his other quotations from Heraclitus. Nor

14 Marcovich 1967, 25–29. See below, pp. 46–47, for Reinhardt’s severer reduction.

15 Marcovich admits that several facts tell in favor, if not strongly enough, of the Heraclitean provenance of philosophos: Herodotus’s use of the verb in his Histories (discussed in chapter 5);

Heraclides’s story itself (discussed in chapter 1); and Heraclitus’s affinity for compound words, including κακοτεχνίη (B129), πολυμαθίη (B40), and ἀγχιβασίη (B122/D61) (Finkelberg 2017,

88n16, adds ἀρηιφάτους (B24/D122a), ἀείζωον (B30/D85), and παλίντροπος (B51/D49)).

16 For Clement’s working method related to this fragment, see Wiese 1963, 255–61; Dinan

2005, 54–57; Osborn 2005, 16–18, 144–46, 184–86.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 43
does Marcovich explain why Clement would paraphrase what ever Heraclitus
originally had— “men”?— with the much more limiting “philosophical men.”17

It is true that Clement uses “philosophical men” on another instance (1.68.3),
which proves the accessibility to him of that formulation— and thus for many
nineteenth- and twentieth- century scholars, the smoking gun against Clem-
ent’s reliability. Yet Clement’s having used that locution only once suggests
that he has no predilection for that formulation. In fact, in this other instance,
he hardly does so from his own creative impulse or linguistic habit: he is es-
sentially quoting from Plato’s Phaedo.18 That Clement’s one (non- Heraclitean)

use of philosophos anêr comes in discussing a text with a peculiar density of
that formulation means that we cannot on that basis assume that he would
attribute it to other authors.19 One might even suppose that the fact that
an early fourth- century BCE author, Plato, uses the formulation philosophos
anêr eight times speaks in favor of its use by a pre de ces sor only a hundred
years earlier.20 Even stronger evidence is the frequency with which sixth- and
fifth- century BCE authors use the parallel formulation, anêr sophos,21 which
locution Heraclitus might have in mind, and other x anêr formulations for
intellectuals, including periphradês anêr (Soph. Ant. 347, <441 BCE: a very thoughtful man)22 and anêr meteôrophanax (Ar. Nub. 333, 423/17 BCE: a

17 One may find similarly inadequate reflection on the word/phrase being paraphrased in

Schuster 1872, 63–64; Robinson 1987, 104.

18 Clement has just quoted Phd. 78a3–4, where Socrates says: “Greece is large, where there are, I’d suppose, good men (ἀγαθοὶ ἄνδρες), and the races of foreigners are many, too (πολλὰ
δὲ καὶ τὰ τῶν βαρβάρων γένη).” Clement explains: “By the ‘races of foreigners’ (διὰ τοῦτο
καὶ γένη βαρβάρων), [Plato] means ‘the races of foreign philosophical men’ (γένη φιλοσόφων
ἀνδρῶν βαρβάρων), recognizing, in the Phaedrus, [Theuth, etc.], and in the Charmides, [Zalmoxis, etc.].” Marcovich is suspicious of this philosophôn andrôn as a Clementine invention.

But in the first place, Plato writes philosophos anêr on three occasions in the Phaedo (64d2, 84a2–3, 95c1), the very dialogue that Clement has in front of him, and so he prob ably has that language in mind from that source (it also shows up at Phdr. 248d2–3, which dialogue he has just cited, and in four other Platonic dialogues: Soph. 216a4; RL 135e1, 136b10; Euthyd.

305c7; Tim. 19e5). In the second place, the construction of Socrates’s sentence at Phd. 78a suggests that “men” (ἀνδρῶν) is the assumed noun in the second clause, carry ing over from the first; Socrates can be heard to say πολλα . . . τὰ τῶν [ἀνδρῶν] βαρβάρων γένη (the formulation βαρβάρων ἀνδρῶν or ἀνδρῶν βαρβάρων is found at Pl. Criti. 113a2, and also Ar. Ach. 168; Vesp. 439; Hdt. 1.214.3, 6.106, 8.87; Eur. Hel. 1604). The collocation of genos and philosophos appears in Plato at R. 501e3, 581c4.

19 YC 1.345 believes that Clement shows himself capable of introducing the term where it
does not belong; but Clement does not pre sent himself here as quoting, only explaining, and thus he cannot be charged with misquoting.

20 In the fourth century BCE, it also shows up in Aeschin. 1.141.7, 3.257.6.

21 Thgn. 120; Pind. Ol. 11.10; Isthm. 1.45; Nem. 8.41; Pae. 13 fr. 52s.3; Bacchyl. 13.164; Hdt.

2.49, 3.25, 3.85, 5.23, 7.130; and, e.g., Critias[?] “Sisyphus” 43F19.12 TrGF (= B25/[43]T63); Eur.

Autolycus fr. 282.23.

22 Eust. 135.25 reads ἀριφραδὴς ἀνήρ, “a clear- minded man,” which makes the same point.

44 CH A PTER 2
man with “high- flown pretension,” in Henderson’s translation). So, we have
evidence that Heraclitus could use philosophos anêr, and no evidence that

Clement would independently.

Though Marcovich does not mention it, one might won der about the accu-
racy of Clement’s adjacent quotations, to Empedocles (from a generation after

Heraclitus) and Phocylides (a contemporaneous Milesian poet); Clement cites
this triad in support of the view that one must wade through much Greek phi-
losophy to come upon anything valuable. But nothing tells against their basic
accuracy.23 We therefore have no reason to believe that Clement is unreliable in
this paragraph. Combined with the view that Clement introduces no impor-
tant inaccuracies into his other Heraclitus quotations, and in par tic u lar that no
recent editor has doubted the authenticity of the four other kath’ Herakleiton

(“according to Heraclitus”) constructions, of which this is the fifth, I see no
reason to doubt the existence of philosophos in Heraclitus’s fragment B35.24

The same goes for denying the Heraclitean provenance of the intensifying εὖ
μάλα (“ really quite”).25

I have spent this time on Marcovich’s skepticism because it remains author-
itative for many readers, including Laks and Most, and because it consolidates
a century of skepticism.26 Of course, other careful readers of Heraclitus have
accepted the whole fragment. I have already cited four, and there are many

23 Laks and Most accept the accuracy of the Empedocles quotation: ὄλβιος, ὃς θείων
πραπίδων ἐκτήσατο πλοῦτον, | δειλὸς δ’ ᾧ σκοτόεσσα θεῶν πέρι δόξα μέμηλεν (“Happy, he
who possesses the wealth of divine organs of thought; | Wretched, he who cares for an obscure doctrine about the gods”) (B132/D8). Though Clement’s formulation of Phocylides differs from the two other extant (and late) versions, his agrees with them in subject clause, and so apparently gets it right; this tells in favor of his quotation of philosophous andras, the subject clause of B35. Clement writes: “and it is truly necessary to have wandered much for the one seeking to be excellent” (καὶ τῷ ὄντι ἀνάγκη πολλὰ πλανηθῆναι διζήμενον ἔμμεναι ἐσθλόν). Plutarch has “much deceived (πόλλ᾽ ἀπατηθῆναι) is the one seeking to be excellent” ( De auditu 47e); an anonymous manuscript has “suffering much that is unintended (παθεῖν, πόλλ᾽ ἀέκοντα) is the one seeking to be excellent” (Anon. An. Par. 1.166.18 Cramer).

24 Other καθ᾽ Ἡράκλειτον constructions: B40/D20 (though Clement abbreviates), B17/D3,

B25/D122b, B86/D38.

25 It may be impor tant to the fragment’s tone (as ironical, sarcastic, etc.). εὖ μάλα is available to Heraclitus (see Hom. Il. 23.761; Od. 4.96, 24.123; Hymn. Hom. Ap. 171; Hes. [ Sc. ] 355), and appears more than twenty times in Plato; and Clement’s argumentative goals do not require that he introduce an intensifier into a fragment that did not have one. A more in ter est ing question concerns what it intensifies, either the χρή or the πολλῶν (or, with Pradeau 2002, 272, a little implausibly, the ἵστορας); maybe it intensifies both.

26 Those skeptical that Heraclitus used the term philosophous include Wilamowitz-Moellendorf 1880, 124–25; Gigon 1935, 140; Deichgräber 1935, 110n4; Wiese 1963, 260n3, 318; Dumont 1988, 780; Hadot 2002, 285n2; Pradeau 2002, 272–73; YC 1.328–48 (with refs.); Fronterotta 2013; Hülsz Piccone 2013, 281–82; and Hülsz Piccone 2014.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 45
more.27 From my perspective, the case for B35 goes beyond a preponderance
of the evidence; I see nothing to provoke a reasonable doubt.

Recent Scholarship’s Two- Step Model of Heraclitean

Epistemology

If we want to accept the fragment as reported, we must resolve the obvious
tension between it and Heraclitus’s anti- polymathy fragments. My ultimate
resolution involves rejecting the assumption that Heraclitus recommends
being an “investigator into much” and seeing him as simply describing the
necessary conditions for being such a person. A rejection of that assump-
tion is equivalent to finding that, for readers of Heraclitus’s Greek of the
sixth and fifth centuries BCE, philosophos is not a term of aspiration, ac-
claim, or self- identification. In chapter 3, I will argue that we have good reason to believe that it was not a term of this sort, and thus that we have
reason to accept the historical conditions for Heraclides’s Pythagoras story.

In this chapter I reject the assumption that in B35 Heraclitus is recommend-
ing polymathy, and I do this by pointing to four pieces of evidence. First, by
speaking of histores pollôn, Heraclitus says that philosophical men ought to
be polymathic. Second, Heraclitus directly rejects polymathy as his ideal.

Third, in other fragments, Heraclitus advances a contrary ideal: undergoing
a qualitative rather than a quantitative shift in insight, a shift that he treats
in analogy to waking up, recognizing how things really are, and appreciat-
ing that to sophon (“what’s wise,” “wisdom”) is “one” and distinct from all
else. Fourth, Heraclitus says nothing to suggest that this qualitative shift
is acquired through polymathy; in par tic u lar, Heraclitus’s appreciation of
sense perception does not entail advocacy of extensive empirical learning.

I have already shown the first two parts of the argument, in the analy sis of
polumathia and of fragments such as B40 and B129. What I develop here is
the third and fourth ele ments, arguing against the common view that Hera-
clitus can recommend polumathia in B35 by treating it as the first step in a
two- step pro cess of acquiring wisdom.

The view of a two- step pro cess is found most clearly in the work of Marco-
vich, to whom we will return, and in Patricia Curd, in a sophisticated account

27 E.g., Lassalle 1858; Bywater 1877; Diels 1901, 10; Walzer 1939, 74–75; Chroust 1947, 22, 25–26; Joly 1956, 30–31; Ramnoux 1959, 122; Malingrey 1961, 38; Bollack and Wismann 1972; Conche 1987; Sweet 1995; Mouraviev 1999, III.3.B/iii, 44–45; Pradeau 2002; Finkelberg 2017, 200n39.

46 CH A PTER 2
from 1991, but also in some other scholars.28 An impulse toward such a view
is found in some interpretations that identify Heraclitus as an empiricist. In

1942, Karl Reinhardt, quite like Laks and Most, suspected that Clement para-
phrases every thing except ἵστορας; he thinks the original statement must have
encouraged the reader to be a histôr. He infers this from one of Heraclitus’s
remarks that apparently deals with perception:

B101a/D32: For eyes are more precise witnesses (μάρτυρες) than ears.

Reinhardt takes histores to be those who seek direct experience of the world,
eyes to be win dows onto that direct experience, and ears to be mere entry
points for second hand testimony. B35 thus says that the wise must investigate
with their own eyes. Reinhardt reasons that this is not simply because false
tales are told, but that even when true tales are told, they are not believed (as

Heraclitus claims in B1, discussed below). Only direct experience vindicates
paradoxical reports, reports that would other wise be dismissed. This skepti-
cal Pyrrhonism is an in ter est ing view, to be sure.29 It is not clear, however,
that Heraclitus excludes the possibility that some appearances, whether vi-
sual or other wise, might be imprecise or deceptive. Nor is it clear how this

28 E.g., von Fritz 1945, 230–36; Wheelwright 1959, 19, 23–24, 26–27; Lallot 1971; Bollack and Wismann 1973, 134; Cook 1975, 433–35; Hussey 1982, 37; Havelock 1983, 56–57; Finkelberg 2017, 200n40, 206, 219.

29 W. J. Verdenius (1947, 280–84), a few years later, takes a similar route (as do Barnes 1982, 116, and Sweet 1995, 64: “The wise person is not one who has learned many dif fer ent things (fr. 40), but rather one who has inquired into many things (frs. 35, 55) and has come to know the order which is common to all of them (frs. 2, 30)”). Verdenius says that ἱστορεῖν means “inquiring in de pen dently,” in contrast to μανθάνειν, which means “borrowing other people’s wisdom,” the verb implied in πολυμαθίη (B40, B129). Thus Heraclitus praises self- reliant search,

“persuad[ing] oneself by objective argument,” and elsewhere denigrates “rely[ing] on personal authority.” Verdenius acknowledges that in B129 Heraclitus says that Pythagoras engages in ἱστορίη, but he assumes that in saying this, Heraclitus is simply parroting the common but mistaken praise of Pythagoras as “inquirer”— a praise the Pythagoreans maintained— and then denouncing that praise. (For the claim that the Pythagoreans said their master practiced ἱστορίη

Verdenius cites Burnet (1930, 97n1), who in turn cites Iambl. DCMS 25.78,5 (prob ably paraphrasing Aristotle’s Protrepticus): ἐκαλεῖτο δὴ ἡ γεωμετρία πρὸς Πυθαγόρου ἱστορία [“geometry was called by Pythagoras ‘ historia’ ”]; yet this is not compelling evidence for an “ironic”

interpretation of “inquirer.”) But, as we will see below, there is no evidence from archaic or classical Greece that historia or being histôr involves objective argument or in de pen dent inquiry.

Nor is there evidence for or coherence in the presumed contrast between in de pen dent inquiry and reliance on others’ wisdom; a person may inquire on his own among many people and take up their ideas (cf. Curd 1991, 544n2). Even if Heraclitus does denounce Pythagoras, B129 does not imply that Pythagoras’s followers wrongly ascribed to him the practice of historia; it only suggests that his historia went to a bad end.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 47
strict empiricism fits with the more generous empiricism in the following
fragment:

B55/D31: What ever sight, hearing, learning are of (ὅσων ὄψις ἀκοὴ μάθησις),
that I prefer.

Thus while Heraclitus may esteem a sort of self- reliance or active self-
application to prob lems, the nature of the reliable input remains uncertain.30

This may be moot, anyway, to the extent we cannot justify Reinhardt’s severe
treatment of the Heraclitean fragment and his assumption that Clement would
rely on Heraclitus’s praise of historia by rewording nearly the entirety of Her-
aclitus’s sentence.

As we saw above, Marcovich attributes four words to Heraclitus: χρὴ . . .

πολλῶν ἵστορας . . . εἶναι. He interprets this skeletal fragment against the back-
ground of B101a and B55. Sense perception and experience, the two modes of
inquiry that B55 appears to recommend, are essential for knowing the log os,
the universal and unified object of knowledge. But B40, B57, and B129 show
that these modes of inquiry alone get you only to the stage of polymathy,
which is epistemically inadequate. So to polymathy one must add intelligence
or interpretative ability.31 B35 (on philosophoi andres), Marcovich concludes,

“stress[es] the need of gathering many sense data as the first condition for the
recognition of the Log os.” The weaknesses of this view are readily apparent.

B35 makes no reference to sense data, or to being only the first stage in any-
thing, or to recognizing the log os.32

Thomas Robinson tries to broaden the evidence base for Marcovich’s
claims.33 “Of course,” Robinson says, wisdom is not achieved “from a mere
mindless accumulation of facts.” But in support of the view that Heraclitus be-
lieves accumulation to be impor tant nevertheless, Robinson cites the follow-
ing three fragments:

30 The syntax and meaning of mathêsis is disputed; I follow Marcovich 1967, 21. Barnes 1982, 115, translating instead “The things we learn of by sight and hearing . . .” (similarly LM

3.155), takes the fragment as evidence for Heraclitus’s empiricism and sensationalism: “knowledge must be built on . . . sense- experience.” This is consistent with an anti- polymathism.

31 The former Marcovich defines negatively with language from Β107/D33: having [οὐ]

βάρβαρος ψυχή, “a [non-] barbaric soul.” (Pressure on this interpretation comes from Nussbaum 1972, 9–13; Wilcox 1991; Robb 1991.) The latter he defines as the skill inferred from Β93/D41, what ever one deploys to understand Delphic oracles.

32 For a persuasive view about Heraclitean log os, see Johnstone 2014 against West 1971, 115–16, 124–29; see also Hoffman 2006, 1–18; Hülsz Piccone 2013, 283–96.

33 Robinson 1987, 104.

48 CH A PTER 2

B18/D37: If he does not expect the unexpected he will not find it out (ἐξευρήσει),
it being unsearchable (ἀνεξερεύνητον) and impassable.

B22/D39: Those seeking out (διζήμενοι) gold dig up much (πολλήν) earth and
find little.

B123/D35: Nature tends to conceal itself.

These three fragments, Robinson says, “suggest the difficulties involved in
exploring the real, which reveals its secrets (Β123) only to the persevering

(Β22) and open- minded (Β18) enquirer.” Robinson assumes that only a suf-
ficient quantity of inquiry unlocks the world’s mysteries.34 This does seem
to be something like Clement’s view; the genuine love of wisdom demands,
and indeed cannot avoid, much trial and error.35 Yet B22 appears to dissuade
one from digging around too much rather than to encourage it.36 And neither

34 Cf. Kahn 1979, 105: “Even if the log os is common to all, so that the structure of real ity is

‘given’ in everyday experience, recognition comes hard. It requires the right kind of openness on the part of the percipient . . . [a]nd it requires inquiry and reflection— digging up a lot of earth and judging it with discretion. The ‘gnosis’ which Heraclitus has in mind is rational knowledge, and it has to be gained by hard work; it is not the miraculous revelation of a moment of grace.”

35 Clement takes the claim that philosophical men “ ought” (χρή) to be “researchers into much”

to mean mean that one can hardly avoid the dead- ends and vain wandering on the way to wisdom.

Yet the modal claim, on this reading, is ambiguous. It may mean that it is inevitable that seekers, presumably of wisdom, will have many false starts, follow mistaken clues, or other wise abide lots of confusion, ignorance, and reversal. They “ ought to” confront these challenges; if they do not, they are doing something wrong. The “much” that one ends up researching is not instrumentally or constitutively valuable to attaining wisdom; it is merely an incidental though unavoidable byproduct of the path to the attainment of wisdom. The matter of epistemic value is not the vain wandering, or even something learned because of the vain wandering; the vain wandering simply slows down the acquisition of the object(s) of epistemic value. Cognizance of the vain wandering at best allows one to brace oneself for the long and often disappointing slog; or, to put a positive spin on it, it reaffirms that one might be going in the right direction (“you ought to pass eight traffic lights before seeing my street”). The other pos si ble interpretation of the χρή is that the seemingly vain wandering is valuable in itself, instrumentally or constitutively. Heraclitus might be saying that one has to do a lot of research, to be sure, but the research itself brings one to wisdom. The research bridges rather than blocks. This may feel like vain wandering and as instrumentally or constitutively useless; yet it is exactly the naïve dismissal of investigative work on the basis of feelings of toil that Heraclitus warns his reader against. The discrimination necessary for knowledge may require lots of experience. We can even specify three ways in which extensive experience could be necessary: as the connoisseur’s accumulated experience of distinctions and quality, as the experimental or empirical scientist’s systematic experience of variety and norms, or as the Socratic inquirer’s introspective experience of repeated failure and aporia (where wisdom just is the true appreciation of one’s ignorance, etc.).

36 Finding even a little gold would require, on one reading, the unfortunate digging of much dirt besides. On another reading, the experience with geology or mineralogy acquired through much digging would be necessary even to recognize gold as gold rather than, say, iron pyrite. The second possibility might seem less likely. Recognition of gold (in contrast with less shiny and popu lar minerals) may not seem, to Heraclitus’s mind, to require the accumulation of knowledge

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 49
of the other fragments encourage polymathy. B18 seems to advise a certain
mental state during exploration; B123 seems to speak to the manner of the
world’s intelligibility.

The most promising argument for Heraclitus’s exhorting his readers to do
something in addition to knowledge- accumulation comes from Patricia Curd

(1991). She attributes to Heraclitus the belief that one should start with a “col-
lection of material” or an “accumulation of true beliefs,” and then “link them
together into a network in which the beliefs are mutually supporting and ex-
planatory.” Knowledge, Curd says, is “the comprehension of the system as
a whole.” On this reading, in his advocacy of knowing the log os, Heraclitus
means knowing the deep relations among all the things there are. Heraclitus
intervenes in pre- Socratic philosophy by moving away from the early Greek

“naïve metaphysics,” whereby we know discrete and unconnected things, and
by moving toward a search “for justification . . . seeing that and how [each]

single belief is part of a system that is a unified whole.”37 In support of her
view, Curd references B17, B35, B40, B41, B54, B107, B108, B112, and B114.

We have already looked at B35 (on philosophoi andres) and B40 (on the failure
of polymathy to teach intelligence). These are the other relevant fragments:

B17/D3: For most people do not understand such things as they encounter, nor
having learned do they recognize, but they seem to themselves [to have done so].

B41/D44: The wise is one: to know a judgment that steers all through all.

B54/D50: Unapparent harmony is better than apparent.

B107/D33: Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for men, should they have barbarian
souls.

of what is not gold. This is in large part because whereas Heraclitus surely thinks that people do not readily recognize wisdom, he would likely think that people do immediately recognize gold. Thus B22 does not support the view that wisdom requires polymathy only accidentally or non- constitutively. Indeed, in some sense, B22 seems ultimately not to be about the requirements for finding gold (contra Burnet 1930, 132, who paraphrases: “If men cared to dig for the gold they might find it”). Heraclitus seems to be saying instead that “ those who seek silly things [e.g., gold] hardly even find them; and they put an awful lot of effort into it.” To this extent the case of gold does not provide an analogy to that of wisdom (with Fränkel 1938, 322, citing B9/D79

[“Asses would choose sweepings rather than gold,” ὄνους σύρματ᾽ ἂν ἑλέσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ χρυσόν, trans. LM 3.177], and contra Mourelatos 1965, 352). The story would be dif fer ent, to be sure, if Heraclitus meant by “gold” anything objectively valuable and thus wrote B22 to claim that even eking out a little something valuable takes much effort and dealing with much that is not objectively valuable; but we do not have evidence that “gold” does mean that for Heraclitus (see B9), or that he believes that it takes effort— rather than, say, a change in perspective—to get at what is objectively valuable. (Marcovich 1967, 38, strikes me as naïve here.)

37 Curd 1991, 531, 535–36.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 49

9/18/19 1:20 PM

50 CH A PTER 2

B108/D43: Of those whose logoi I have heard not one arrives at recognizing
what wisdom is, separated from all.

B112/D114a + b: To exercise discipline is greatest virtue and wisdom, to speak
and act truly, perceiving in accordance with nature.

B114/D105: For, those speaking with intelligence must rely on the common
among all, just as a city on its law and even more reliably: for all human laws
are nourished by the one divine law: for it is as strong as it is willing to be and
is sufficient for all and exceeds all.

These fragments support the view that Heraclitus thinks that wisdom is a unity
or a concord (B41, B54, perhaps B108), that wisdom and understanding should
be our goal (B108, B112, B114), and that this wisdom is not mere familiarity
with the surface of things (B17, B54, B107). Yet of all these fragments, only

B35 could plausibly be taken to support Curd’s contention that polymathy
is necessary for wisdom. For, without that fragment, nothing Heraclitus says
in B40 or the seven fragments above suggests any value in accumulating in-
formation, multiple true beliefs about the world, or familiarity with diverse
phenomena that may later be susceptible to systematization. In fact, then, for

Curd, B35, which she understands as recommending diverse inquiry, provides
the sole grounds for her view that Heraclitus accepts Milesian or Pythagorean
research when accompanied by systematization and the appreciation of the
stable log os. Given the vehemence with which Heraclitus seems to dismiss the
methodology of the polymaths and the fact that his fragments arguably do
not themselves show the results of any “diverse inquiry” of his own, we should
check the interpretation of B35 rather than reinterpret many other fragments.38

This review of the impor tant recent scholarship on B35 reveals a tendency
to suppose that Heraclitus advocates the historia and even polumathia associated with Pythagoras, Hesiod, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus, but qualifies his
advocacy by treating historia and polumathia as starting points rather than as goals. This tendency places Heraclitus squarely in the shared Ionian- Italic
research tradition.39 Heraclitus would thus contribute to this tradition an ap-
preciation for an under lying unity, or harmony, or explanatory schema, in ad-
dition to a reliance on direct verification and experience of challenging ma-
terial. As we have seen, however, this popu lar view depends exclusively on

B35. This is a problematic dependence, both because it is just one fragment

38 Indeed, debates about the superiority of having a single big idea over having many little ideas (“the hedgehog and the fox”) were contemporaneous with Heraclitus: see Węcowski 2004; Stokes 1971, 86–89, argues for Heraclitus’s firm preference for the one big idea.

39 On the hazards of doing so, see Graham 1997.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 51
against a range of apparently contradictory fragments and because it is a frag-
ment characterized by the pragmatic ambiguity of not explic itly recommend-
ing to its readers that they become histores pollôn, besides the fact that the
concept of polumathia prob ably already includes some degree of synthesis of
that which has been learned. In fact, Heraclitus prob ably favors an alternative
view, and this can be shown by reconstructing his epistemology.

A Reconstruction of Heraclitus’s Epistemology

In our attempt to understand B35, we can hypothesize a contrasting pair of recon-
structions for Heraclitus’s epistemological thought. We have just seen the two-
stage model. The necessary first stage is research into much; by contrast, the nec-
essary second stage is somehow adding to, abstracting from, or linking together
the results of the first stage, with the goal of attaining unified understanding. The
reason for the first stage, and the operations to be done in the second stage, may be
accounted for in vari ous ways; all fall into the category of “research.” An alterna-
tive reconstruction of Heraclitus’s epistemology is a one- stage model, in which
it is unnecessary and may even be useless to research or inquire into much.

Heraclitus treats as the primary desideratum of thought the comprehension
of the “log os,” the unifying structure of the world at all levels of analy sis. Such comprehension constitutes wisdom. The nature of this log os seems related to
the harmony of opposites and the continuity of change.40 The question of Her-
aclitean epistemology concerns the way one comes to know the log os. We have
already seen the absence of compelling evidence for the view that one must
journey far, do a lot of research, or undergo manifold trials and tribulations. It
seems rather that one must recognize what is really in front of oneself— and
this requires a change in oneself. After all, Heraclitus’s fragments regularly
provide mundane examples: rivers, the sun, roads, beverages, games, bows,
lyres, combs.41 Their wide range has pedagogical but not epistemic purpose.

Any single one would suffice for his argument about the nature of the log os;
the multiplicity of instances helps the reader catch that argument. It would ap-
pear that Heraclitus wants to show that our naïve notion of things need not
therefore be the correct notion of them. In this re spect, Heraclitus’s episte-
mology shares something with Parmenides’s, the premises of whose “Way of

Truth” tell against research (even if his “Way of Opinion” does not), or Zeno’s,
whose paradoxes hardly require diverse inquiry to generate or explain them.

40 Guthrie 1962, 415–54, remains an eloquent argument for and exposition of this basic view.

41 River: B12/D65a, B49a/R9, A6/D65; sun: B3/D89b; road: B60/D51; beverage: B125/D59;
game: B52/D76; bow and lyre: B48/D53 and B51/D49; carding- comb: B59/D52.

52 CH A PTER 2

Heraclitus’s dismissal of inferential or systematized knowledge does not
thereby make his epistemology easy to understand. If the prized epistemic
state— comprehension, understanding, knowledge— does not depend on the
systematic integration of diverse beliefs and perceptions, it must come from
somewhere else.42 One might won der whether it comes from a special feature
of knowable objects themselves.43 Yet Heraclitus lacks the stark distinction,
familiar from Plato’s dialogues, between unchanging knowables and chang-
ing believables. If the criterion of knowledge comes not (primarily) from the
objects of belief or the relation between the beliefs, what remains is the subject
of the beliefs, the person and her mind. This seems in fact Heraclitus’s choice.

He exhorts his readers to wake up and have a kind of self- knowledge they do
not yet have. A sequence of fragments treats human ignorance as the effect
not of inadequate research or wrong focus, but of living as though one were
asleep. Seeing how they do so will help us, ultimately, to understand Heracli-
tus’s vision and critique of “philosophical men.”

B1/D1: The log os being always men are not understanding, both before hear-
ing and having heard it already: for all things coming to be in accordance with
this log os, they are like the inexperienced when they have experienced words
and deeds of the sort I go through distinguishing each by its nature and saying
how they are; and men take no notice of what they do when awake just as those
asleep do not take cognizance.44

In the opening statement of his work,45 Heraclitus pre sents the human igno-
rance of the log os in three ways, three ave nues through which to make sense
of his epistemology and thus his attitude toward pollôn histores.

People do not understand (ἀξύνετοι) despite having heard (ἀκούσαντες), as
though they were deaf, distracted, or spoke only a foreign language.46 The log os

42 Drozdek 2011, 102, claims that noos, what we need for wisdom, is not “reasoning” but instead “intuition, insight, seeing the essence of things”; unfortunately, it is quite unclear what these amount to.

43 On the view that knowledge comes about with re spect to its proper objects, see Gerson 2009, which however does not address Heraclitus’s epistemology.

44 τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι, καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι, καὶ
ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον· γινομένων γὰρ πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε ἀπείροισιν ἐοίκασι, πειρώμενοι καὶ ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων τοιούτων, ὁκοίων ἐγὼ διηγεῦμαι κατὰ φύσιν διαιρέων ἕκαστον
καὶ φράζων ὅκως ἔχει. τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν
ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται.

45 Arist. Rh. 1407b16–17 and Sext. Emp. Math. 7.132 confirm its initial position in his book or collection.

46 Hussey 1982, 37, hints at the importance of knowing the right language: “the step from the obvious to the latent truth is like the translation of utterances in a language which is foreign

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 53
is being presented to them directly, without any requirement that they travel,
gather up information, assem ble fragments, or run the gauntlet of puzzlement.

The prob lem is internal to the potential knowers. Either they lack some basic
capacity for understanding, or ignore what they should not, or despite paying
attention fail to deal correctly with the object of their attention. The first possi-
bility is unlikely. Heraclitus’s pessimism bottoms out at epistemic disappoint-
ment, not fatalism; he thinks people can understand the log os, but can do so
only if they follow his critical lead. The second possibility fits his texts better.

Distractions abound— tradition, convention, authority, private imagination,
wish- fulfillment— and they obscure what must be appreciated in par tic u lar.

Coming to know might require not the acquisition of more facts, but exactly
the reverse, the purging or cabining of every thing else. We ought to have
fewer assumptions, not more.47 This brings with it another epistemological
task, determining the nature of that post- purge remainder. We can barter that
task for another with the third possibility, which fits the texts just as well. It is
wrong to deem people distracted; rather, they simply fail to interpret or rec-
ognize correctly. What they hear or see or other wise experience lacks sense
or relevance or clarity. Only having acquired the skills of or commitment to
interpretation or recognition does the noise of the log os become a voice. The
extra task now is determining the nature of that interpretative or recognitional
capacity and what gets interpreted or recognized. Even without taking up this
task now, we can see that it does not obviously require copious research.

In the next part of B1, Heraclitus says that people are like the inexperienced

(ἀπείροισιν) even when they experience (πειρώμενοι). This pre sents, on the
practical dimension, the prob lem that the first part of the fragment pre sents on
the linguistic or auditory dimension. Presented with the relevant material, the
inexperienced do not know what to do with it. Novices lack the right habits, or
judgments of salience, or sense of form.

In the last part of B1, Heraclitus says that the failure to take notice when
awake parallels a similar failure when asleep. Sleepers dream, and in those
dreams they feel awake and aware and active. Yet that feeling misleads them;
they do not really take cognizance. Heraclitus’s fragment does not specify the
object of that cognizance. One might provide: of their dream world, on its
own terms. They may have at best a superficial appreciation of it, overlook-
ing its inconsistencies, lapses, and implausibilities. They fail to integrate or
to most men”; “To reach the truth from the appearances, it is necessary to interpret, to guess the riddle, or divine the meaning of the oracle.” See also Clements 2014, in the section “Senses as

‘Bad Witnesses.’ ”

47 This view is argued persuasively by Dilcher 2013, and diverges from, e.g., West 1971,

114–17.

54 CH A PTER 2
systematize all their true dream beliefs. We have no reason to think that Hera-
clitus valorizes integrated or systematic beliefs by identifying such beliefs
with knowledge. Nor would Heraclitus find it bad that dreamers overlook their
dreamworld’s erratic rendering. More prob ably, he notes that dreamers fail to
realize that their world is a dreamworld, that it is illusory. The prob lem is that one’s dreamworld, populated by the appearance of objects from the real world,
looks quite like the real world, and one’s orientation in it, structured by one’s
own personality, feels like one’s real orientation. “Looking like” and “feeling
like” do not, however, entail “actually being like”; asleep, we forget or do not
take cognizance of this. Yet remembering and recognizing our sleeping does
not require extensive research or system- building. It simply takes waking up.48

Barring that, it takes peeling one’s consciousness away from the dreamworld
and realizing that “it is only a dream” and fighting the temptation to rejoin that
sleep- bamboozled perspective. In either case, being awake is enough, either to
see the world or to know that the world you thought you saw was not the world.

You need go no further than acknowledging or refraining from acknowledg-
ing what you see. The analogy, then, is that people awake fail to acknowledge
what they ought in the way that asleep they fail to acknowledge what they
ought. (Marcel Proust, in Le Temps Retrouvé, says that recognizing the utter
subjectivity of our dreamworld helps us see the pervasive subjectivity of our
waking life and perhaps adjust for it.)49 Heraclitus speaks of this elsewhere in
terms of private rather than public understanding. Our idiosyncratic obses-
sions must have that quilted, cogent aspect of a dream, reasonable to the per-
son passively undergoing its narrative thrust and variety. Relieving ourselves
of that muffled phenomenology does not involve picking at the logical failures
or deficiencies alone but an utter change in consciousness. What this change
in consciousness amounts to, I can only guess. It might have something to do
with answering a riddle, which requires seeking similarities where other wise
there seem to be only differences, a simultaneous abstraction and attention
to concrete detail; or it might require a second- order perspective on one’s
own repre sen ta tions, accommodating the subjectivity of our perspective by
juxtaposing it with an ideal of objectivity; who knows. But that Heraclitus has
something in mind here seems plain.

What we see in B1 is that Heraclitus convicts people of failing to use their
linguistic competence, practical abilities, and consciousness. These are three
versions of the same failure. In each case, what is impor tant is already pre sent:

the words in some language, the objects of some discipline, and the surround-

48 On the challenges in distinguishing sleeping and waking, see Pl. Tht. 157e2–58d6. For alternative views of Heraclitus’s remarks on sleep, see West 1971, 147–49; Dilcher 1995, 18–19.

49 Proust 1927, 2.63.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 55
ings in which one sleeps. Understanding the log os and so coming to wisdom is
a matter of something clicking into place, a shift. Perhaps that shift is mostly
passive; usually we just wake up, or fi nally realize what language the speaker
is speaking, or recognize the tools in front of us. But perhaps we might adopt
an active stance toward this. As long as it does not require research, however,
the nature of the procedure does not matter.

Heraclitus returns to these three dimensions of critique in other fragments:

B34/D4: Not understanding though having heard, they resemble the deaf: the
saying testifies to them: being pre sent they are absent.

B19/D5: Knowing how neither to listen nor to speak.

B56/D22: Men are deceived in the recognition of what is obvious.

B17/D3: Most people do not understand such things as they encounter, nor hav-
ing learned do they recognize, but they seem to themselves [to do so].

B2/D2: The log os being common the many live as though having private reason.

B89/R56: The awake have a common kosmos but each of the sleeping turns to
his own.

B34 begins as B1 did, with the observation that hearing need not bring under-
standing. The fragment goes on to identify the prob lem. It is not that people
research too little. What they need to know may be right before them, in their im-
mediate presence, and yet they do not acknowledge it for what it is. They may as
well have already left, or have never arrived in the first place, so little do they re-
spond to what is given to them. B19 clarifies that what ever human characteristic

“deafness” stands in for, we are not to take it as a congenital defect of the auditory
function. Heraclitus says that it is not that people cannot hear, but that they do not know how to listen. They lack some competence to deal with what is pre sent.

Their ignorance about speaking is presumably an immediate correlate; just as
they do not hear the intelligible articulation of the log os, they cannot reproduce that intelligible articulation as a response. On this line of interpretation, B56 says
that what would seem totally apparent, “what is obvious” (τῶν φανερῶν), is still
misunderstood. Again, people fail to deal with what is right in front of them.

B17 says the same thing at greater length: people may take in aspects of the
world without understanding, recognizing, or knowing. Fi nally, B2 and B89 pre-
sent people as overly interior or subjective, caught up in their own imagination,
thoughts, or dreams, and therefore blinded to the real ity about them.50

50 Cf. B71–75/D54–55, all of which are recorded in M. Aur. Med. 4.46 and 4.42.

56 CH A PTER 2

Heraclitus repeatedly claims that the world is available for us if only we
were to acknowledge it. Our understanding of it is not automatic; we must
first push beyond what ever quotidian modes of perception and reflection we
dwell in. But understanding is not impossible; Heraclitus does not express the
epistemic qualifications that Xenophanes does. His attitude seems to be sum-
marized in the following fragment:

B93/D41: The lord whose shrine is in Delphi neither tells nor conceals but
indicates.

The world does not speak our humdrum language; but neither does it obscure
its message entirely.

For all this, Heraclitus does not say what would bring us to this heightened
consciousness, this language of the log os. Prob ably it involves recognizing
the formal structure or necessary nature of the kosmos, the conflict- in- unity
adumbrated—in what ever form—in his most famous fragments. What this
recognition requires or amounts to, or how it comes about, he does not really
say. But his everyday examples, of roads and tops and drinks, suggest that
recognition requires only a fresh vision of our world, a vision cleansed both
of theoretical bias and of personal inclination or habit.51

A variant of looking right in front of ourselves is looking “within”

ourselves— “I searched out (ἐδιζησάμην) myself” (B101/D36)— though with
vigilance against taking the sense of interiority too seriously.52 It is a variant,
and not something completely dif fer ent, because while self- knowledge may
take a certain skill of attention or interpretation, it does not seem to take lots of
introspection. W.K.C. Guthrie and Charles Kahn think that for Heraclitus, the
inside recapitulates the outside, since both partake of the log os, and they infer from this premise that knowing oneself just is knowing every thing else— hen
kai pan.53 Perhaps so, but the more plausible significance of this fragment is
that understanding oneself has no less value than understanding the world, and
that neither proves a shortcut to the other. Another fragment concerning self-
knowledge, “it belongs to all people to know themselves and exercise disci-
pline” (B116/D30), may pre sent a self- constitutional view of self- knowledge.

51 Other scholars have advanced “understanding” or relatedly non- research views, e.g.,

Fränkel 1938, 313–27; Kirk 1961, 108–10; Lesher 1983 (grasping connections, paying atten-
tion) and 1994, 3–5, 8–10, 12–23 (deep and puzzle- induced reflection); Pritzl 1985 (relating the stability of a name to the unfolding of an activity); Mackenzie 1988 (meditation on paradoxes); Schofield 1991, 18–19, 33 (redescribing what is pre sent to all); Hölscher 1993, 233 (grasping through intuition).

52 Cf. Moore 2015b, 16–17; Moore 2018a.

53 Guthrie 1962, 416–19; Kahn 1979, 105.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 57

We come to know ourselves as epistemic agents, which means acknowledging
for the first time our epistemic responsibility (and thus epistemic hazards, that
is, the possibility that we have false beliefs). We presumably become “awake”

or “experienced” or “fluent” toward the world and the log os through the de-
velopment of our self- knowledge— not through the piecemeal acquisition of
knowledge wrought from an expanded inquiry into nature.

The Non- Exhortative Reading of B35

I have just argued that Heraclitus does not recommend polumathia. That means
he cannot be recommending being philosophos.54 Walther Kranz thought that

Heraclitus might have coined the term, and in the fragment represents the opin-
ion of the “many.”55 A good sentiment, but the idea in this form is hardly
promising: we have no evidence for other Heraclitean neologisms, and no
reason to think the “many” would have a view about a group labeled with
a neologism. Wilhelm Nestle expressed a related sentiment through a one-
letter emendation: he changed the εὖ to οὐ, such that we have “men who are
phi los o phers must not be inquirers into many things indeed.”56 Philosophical men have apparently been trying to inquire into much, wasting their time or
deluding themselves. But εὖ μάλα is only a little less common in the sixth and
fifth centuries BCE than οὐ μάλα,57 and the mistake would be inexcusable

54 Thus the translation of Barnes 1982, 147, cannot be borne out: “We must be knowers of
very many things” (he adds: “it only remains to transmute that mass of dross into the gold of knowledge”). The fact that there is a χρή does not matter, despite the claim of Verdenius 1947, 280–84, that Heraclitus always uses χρή with “admonitory force,” that is, to direct a command to his readers. None of the four fragments Verdenius cites in support match B35’s syntactic structure (χρή + emphatic + predicate noun + subject noun + copula). All are infinitive + χρή
without emphasis: B43/D112 (ὕβριν χρὴ σβεννύναι), B44/D106 (μάχεσθαι χρὴ τὸν δῆμον ὑπὲρ
τοῦ νόμου), B80/D63 (εἰδέναι χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν), and B114/D105 (ξὺν νόῳ λέγοντας
ἰσχυρίζεσθαι χρὴ τῷ ξυνῷ πάντων). B44 specifies the dêmos as subject to the relevant norms.

Further, χρή is the word in Clement’s quotation most open to doubt (see YC 1.340–41), and thus the one that can bear the least interpretative weight. It is worth noting that the precise meaning of χρή (moral, social, subjective, or cosmic) does not determine its pragmatic force; the question here is the audience for the articulation of that force and the way they are supposed to understand it. For debate on the force, see Goodell 1914, 93, 97 (“the whole field of must, ought, should, is necessary, it behoves, is fitting, is the divine will,” in contrast to “ there is a lack, a need”); Redard 1953, 47–56 (used for gnomic phrases and norms of conduct, especially those ordained by god); Benardete 1965 (subjective, where morality is objective); Wiltshire 2007, 10–11; Mourelatos 2008, 277–78.

55 DK ad loc.

56 Nestle 1942, 16 and 249n3.

57 See n. 25 above for evidence.

58 CH A PTER 2
and implausible for Clement or his sources; no other Heraclitean fragment
has been thought to be lacking a negative particle.58 Francis Cornford, long
before Kranz and Nestle, and, after them, William Guthrie and Gregory Kirk
among others, interpret B35, in its Clementine form, as consistent with the
rest of Heraclitus, by understanding it as directed negatively at Pythagoras or

Pythagorean types.59 Cornford gives the fullest formulation:

I understand . . . “Lovers of Wisdom must know a great many things indeed,”

as an ironical sneer at ‘polymaths,’ perhaps especially directed at Pythagoras,
whose humility led him to call himself not “wise,” but a “lover of wisdom.”

To Heracleitus, convinced that “wisdom is one,” and that he possessed it, such
humility seemed mawkish and hypocritical. πολλῶν ἵστορες in his language is
a term of contempt.

Cornford must implicitly assume that this claim is ironical or sarcastic, set off
by the εὖ μάλα, rather than simply an analytic or descriptive claim; Pythagoras
would be known to Heraclitus’s readers as “philosophical”; Pythagoras would
be known to Heraclitus’s readers as polymathic, that is, as a pollôn histôr; Her-
aclitus would not have also called himself “philosophical” or assumed his
readers would call themselves “philosophical”; and Heraclitus would think
that calling Pythagoras polymathic would take him down a notch. As I have
argued in this chapter, every one of Cornford’s implicit assumptions is borne
out. In brief, Heraclitus would be saying what so- called philosophoi andres,
exemplified in the Pythagoreans, are committed to.60

Who the Pollôn Histores Might Be

Heraclitus has described philosophical men as pollôn histores. Though I have
been translating histôr as “researcher,” the sense might be broader than that;

58 The closest possibility of such error is found in B29/D13, where Clement provides in one place a disanalogy (οὐχ ὥσπερ, Strom. 4.50.2) which elsewhere he pre sents as an analogy (ὅπως, Strom. 5.59.5); Bernays has conjectured ὅκωσπερ, which is accepted by DK and LM. The central claim of that fragment is supported either way.

59 Cornford 1912, 186n3; Guthrie 1962, 204, 417; Kirk 1962, 395 with 238; similarly, Delatte 1922, 166; Lallot 1971; Gottshalk 1980, 30; Lloyd 2002, 41; Riedweg 2004, 179–82, and 2005, 96–97; Lloyd 2009, 9; Peterson 2011, 202n7; Smith 2016, 21–22, Finkelberg 2017, 34n66 (but seemingly rejecting this reading later in his book).

60 The view that Heraclitus focuses on the Pythagoreans would be corroborated were the intuitions presented in Marcovich 1967, 73, 76–77, 80, that B28a/D19, B28b/D28, and B81 allude to Pythagoras, also borne out.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 59
and insofar as it is the first characterization of philosophoi men in Greek lit er-a ture, we would like to know what it means. Its meaning turns out to be rather
ambiguous; in the end, that very ambiguity may serve Heraclitus’s purposes.

The standard Greek- English lexicon (LSJ) claims that the histôr is “one who
knows law and right” or “judge.” “Judge” does suit Agamemnon’s role as histôr
in the funeral games at Iliad 23.486, though at Iliad 18.511, the histôr depicted on Achilles’s shield seems rather to be a third party officiating a dispute, with
the council of elders given the real decision- making power. On average, as it
were, these two uses describe a sort of neutral magistrate providing the delib-
erative structure for decision- making; whether he appoints himself to make
that final decision seems optional. On this construal of the noun, the pollôn
histôr would be a person who must find a structure to deal continually with a
range of contentions and contradictions.

Yet the language of the Iliad predates Heraclitus by more than a century,
and we see in all other uses, even those prob ably con temporary with the Iliad, something less obviously a “judge.” For example, at Odyssey 21.26, Heracles
is called “epi- histôr (ἐπιίστορα) of great deeds” just before being said to slay Iphitus. With the prefix, histôr becomes connected to competent or bold action; what that action “rests on” ( epi-) would seem not to be judgment but skill
or knowledge or insight; after all, Heracles is not said to exercise careful judg-
ment in doing great deeds, but to be able to do them. The genitive object of epi-
histôr is the deeds themselves. Perhaps similarly, at Works and Days 792–93, Hesiod speaks of the birth of an histôr man, whose “mind (νόον) is really quite
sound (πεπυκασμένος).” This looks like a synonym for the sôphrôn (“disci-
plined”) person unaffected by extraneous or heedless desires or accidents. No
object is specified.

In both the Homeric Hymn to Selene 2 and Bacchylides 9.44, histores are
skillful women, the first “of song (ᾠδῆς),” and thus able to sing of the moon,
the second “in spear- work (κοῦραι).” The genitive of the first identifies their
par tic u lar competence or excellence; the second uses a dative. But in the later
fifth century BCE, the term seems to mean simply “knowledgeable about” or

“aware of.”61 By the beginning of the fifth century BCE, then, being histôr
means being good at some ability, and later in the century, it means being aware

61 Having just moaned “I know, I know” (οἶδ᾽ οἶδ᾽, Soph. El. 846), acknowledging the un-happy fate confronting her time and again, Sophocles’s Electra thinks she has learned of her brother’s death and thus of her irredeemable position, and reiterates: “I am istôr, huper- istôr”

(ἴστωρ, ὑπερίστωρ, El. 850). This seems to be: “I recognize [it], I more than recognize [it]!” The same meaning is found in Euripides’s Iphigenia among the Taurians, when Thoas says that the women were “histores about the plots (βουλευμάτων)” ( IT 1431), that is, secretly in the know.

The genitive in these two examples identifies the content of that knowledge or awareness.

60 CH A PTER 2
of something significant. On these definitions, Heraclitus’s pollôn histôr would either have lots of skills or lots of awareness.

In the centuries on either side of Heraclitus, the meanings of histôr range
from judge or mediator, to having the mental grounds for action and an imper-
turbable mind, to having skills and factual awareness. With the genitive object
pollôn, we have “judge of much,” “mediator of much,” “capable of much,”

“impervious to much,” “skilled in much,” and “aware of much.” Scholarship
on this confusing range of meanings has generally subordinated the Hera-
clitean prob lem to a Herodotean prob lem,62 but some have taken the archaic
uses seriously.63 The most promising recent effort has been by Carl Huffman,
who offers a two- part definition of histôr: an “arbitrator” and a “person hav-
ing knowledge or skill.”64 He does not speculate on the relationship between
these two parts; we might guess that the skillfulness of the arbitrator came to
stand in for skillfulness in general, since, as we will see in chapter 3, the term sophos undergoes such a despecialization. But his key insight comes from discussing Heraclitus’s critique of Pythagoras’s historia in B129. He argues that
it refers to his compiling, digesting, surveying, and borrowing of other lit er-
a ture—in short, his use of “hearsay evidence.”65 If the meaning of historia
redounds to that of histôr, being an histôr amounts to extensive surveying and potentially unprincipled sorting through gathered information. The stories
of Pythagoras’s wide- ranging education, travel, and advice- giving (surveyed
in chapter 4) fit Heraclitus’s charge. This would mean that the pollôn histôr would do a lot of assembling, collating, organ izing, and presenting of material. This is, after a fashion, the work of a researcher or inquirer into much.

Granted, we have no extant use of histôr that confirms this usage, one that is
considerably more cognitively and practically complex than coordinating a

62 See, e.g., Sigurdarson 2003, 20–24 (recognizing two uses of the term) and 25–27 (recognizing the ambiguity for Heraclitus); Schepens 2007, 40–43 (emphasizing the judicial sense, with Herodotus as an innovator); Darbo- Peschanski 2007a, 29–35.

63 Floyd 1990 judges ἵστωρ to share a root with ἵζειν (“to seat”), not ἴδειν (“seeing,” most recently Watkins 2000 s.v. “weid-” II.6: “histôr: wise, learned, learned man”), and to refer to someone who relies on others’ views and therefore convenes and sits the real judges down; he explains away the post- Homeric meanings connected to witnessing or knowledge as dependent on retrojective folk- etymology from ἴδειν. The abstract ἱστορίη, referring to the historian’s or ethnographer’s activity, involves the judge- like task of “rigorous questioning” and

“adjudicat[ing] among conflicting versions and differing assessments of blame”; this view he shares with Connor 1993; Pradeau 2002, 272–73. Granger 2004, 238 (cf. Conche 1987, 99),
thinks ἵστωρ can refer also to first- hand observation, and properly names the activities of Heraclitus’s systematizing and rationalizing contemporaries (on which practices see Moore 2013b and 2014b), but seems not to provide evidence for this. See, generally, Darbo- Peschanski 2007b.

64 Huffman 2008, 32n32.

65 Also on B129 see Mansfeld 1989 and Zhmud 2017’s corrective to Huffman’s claims.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 60

9/18/19 1:20 PM

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 61
meeting for an impor tant decision, being skilled at singing or spear- throwing,
recognizing one’s fate, or knowing a secret plan. But as a development or de-
rivative of these, it sounds plausible, and it certainly does have corroboration
in historia.

Some questions remain. What is Heraclitus doing using a term that, for us
at least, seems quite ambiguous between the contentless but form- rich (and
publicly recognized) ability characteristic of the resolution expert and the
formless but content- rich (and publicly recognized) ability of the expert in
song or spear? What is he doing using an empty plural object when we never
see such an object as an argument in the other instances of histôr? What ever
histôr means, Heraclitus is linking being philosophos with dealing somehow with plurality or diversity in a way that has a knowing appearance, yet nowhere
else does Heraclitus praise a connection to plurality or diversity, and he always
expresses skepticism about appearances of knowledge. This would suggest
that, what ever he means, he expresses doubt about the promise of being phi-
losophos. There is even a chance that his contemporaries experienced much
of the uncertainty about the meaning of histôr that we do, such that they were
supposed to conclude that what ever the cognitive or practical effort to the

“much stuff” the philosophos must apply, it cannot be good; in this way, the
vagueness or indeterminacy provides a more strongly derisive claim. And
even if the term histôr did not baffle early fifth- century BCE readers, they
may have bounced between an increasingly ambiguous emphasis on either
the contentlessness or the formlessness of its skill of judgment and acknowl-
edgment— that is, on the histôr’s admitted lack of any real field of wisdom
except a competence at judging the wisdom of others, or on the histôr’s pre-
sumed competence in some branch of wisdom. This would, with surprising
neatness, track the two connotations of being philosophos that the Pythagoras
stories seen in chapter 1 attribute to Pythagoras, the self- conscious lack of wisdom with concomitant pursuit of wisdom, and the self- conscious orientation toward wisdom in contrast to the banausic orientation toward money or
honor.

Conclusion: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Philosophos

Heraclitus castigates Pythagoras at least three times in his extant fragments
for his conniving imposture, a stance that is dependent on apparently broad
research. He does not other wise praise the accumulation of diverse ideas, opin-
ions, and pieces of knowledge. In B35, Heraclitus observes that, what ever
might seem definitive of being philosophos— for example, po liti cal power or

62 CH A PTER 2
cultural esteem—it is really defined by apparent expansive research. I say

“apparent” because the term I have translated as “researcher,” histôr, is a
person seen by the public to be an inquirer, judge, or expert. So Heraclitus
here says that the real way to be philosophos is to investigate much. We also
know, however, that Heraclitus does not recommend investigating much, and
indeed attributes such extensive investigation (with a negative inflection) to

Pythagoras. Thus Heraclitus means in this fragment that his readers should
not aim to be philosophical men. For if they did, they would get their sought-
after insight, power, and esteem only with (ostentatious) research; and yet such
research would not confer to them the insight ( nous) or wisdom ( to sophon) that they ought really to seek.

This chapter has argued for the authenticity of this fragment. Further, its
best interpretation confirms a Pythagorean- era origin of the word philosophos,
and its early denotation and connotation as applied wryly to those groups of
people who strove to become (seen as) sophoi by means of study. (Charles

Kahn even saw that philosophoi andres could be read as “men who want to
become sages.”)66 Heraclitus’s fragment does not expressly say that Pythago-
ras was called a philosophos. But in the context of Heraclitus’s oeuvre, it would seem to imply that Pythagoras was one. Even if it did not, it pre sents a view
and evaluation of the term philosophos consistent with the basic account sug-
gested in the previous chapter and defended in the next. That account argues
that the word philosophos did not begin with the meaning “intellectual cultiva-
tor” or “lover of wisdom.” Neither meaning is plausibly glossed as “researcher
into much,” since intellectual cultivation seems not to require “research,” and
love of wisdom seems not to require “much” or “many” as its object(s).

This claim does not represent the standard view. Most commentators have
simply doubted that Clement correctly quotes Heraclitus here. Many suspect
that nearly every word in the fragment is paraphrase or retrojection. Even those
who have found a residue of Heraclitean language excise the term philosophos.

Their doubt has arisen from two distinct sources. First, some commentators
have noted that after this supposed use in Heraclitus, philosophos- group
words show up again only in the last de cades of the fifth century BCE. This
half- century gap weakens the credibility of the earlier instance. Of course this
reasoning is itself only weakly credible. We might suppose that the word sim-
ply had little value to or metrical compatibility in tragic or epinician verse, and

66 Kahn 1979, 105. But he continues in what I believe to be a mistaken way: “It would be in character for him to introduce the theme of wisdom in the compound form philo- sophos, as the object of ardent desire.” Heraclitus uses only the verb ( philein), not the adjective or noun philos/
philia, and when he does, it only ever governs infinitive verbs, meaning “tends to” (B87/D8, B123/D35). For Heraclitus, the phil- prefix or root might not mean “ardent desire.”

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 63
no argumentative purpose in the longest extant pieces of intellectual verse be-
tween Heraclitus and Herodotus, namely, the fragments of Parmenides’s poem
on Being. (Prose works during the period are entirely lost.) The second source
of doubt is more in ter est ing and is not so readily dismissed. On a traditional or
unexamined construal, B35 appears to conflict with the fragments denounc-
ing Pythagorean research ( historia, B129), expressing skepticism about pre-

Socratic breadth of learning ( polumathia, B40), and adumbrating Heraclitus’s
vision of wisdom’s unity (B41). That apparent conflict arises because, on this
traditional construal, this fragment approves of broad research. Since Hera-
clitus more frequently scorns broad research, however, something has to go.

What goes is the fragment supporting the (apparently) minority view.

Yet some commentators have given Clement the benefit of the doubt, and
have suspected not his correctness but the popu lar interpretation of Heracli-
tus’s thinking about wisdom. They have argued that the apparent incompat-
ibility between B35 and B40, B41, and B129 is merely apparent. A coherent
epistemology, as they propose it, accepts that diverse research is insufficient
for understanding and wisdom; but while insufficient it remains necessary.

On this proposal, the men whom Heraclitus scorns stopped short in their quest
for knowledge or wisdom, namely, at the mere accumulation of information.

These men should have proceeded on to reflection and unification.

The doubters and the accepters of Clement’s text, despite their differences
in methodology and the boldness of their epistemological theorizing, share a
core and determinative assumption. They believe the same thing about Hera-
clitus’s use of the word philosophos. They think that Heraclitus uses it as a
term of praise or self- identification. Taken as positively inflected, this fragment
tells us what we readers, as aspiring or actual phi los o phers, should do. Hera-
clitus is saying: be pollôn histores, “researchers into much!” It is this assump-
tion about the meaning and use of the term philosophos that makes the pas-
sage seem on the one hand not Heraclitus’s, thereby requiring that we modify
or reject an other wise impor tant fragment, or on the other an advocate of a
specific two- step method of inquiry, thereby requiring that we hypothesize
an unsupported epistemology. But none of these commentators has defended
his or her assumption that Heraclitus must be using the word philosophos as
a term of praise or self- identification, and that he thereby exhorts his readers
to be pollôn histores.

This chapter has shown that we should not assume that Heraclitus urges his
readers to become philosophoi andres. We should thus withhold the inference
that he exhorts his readers to be pollôn histores, researchers or inquirers into
much. This argument will receive corroboration later in the book. We will
see in chapter 3 the philological claim that philosophos need not originally

64 CH A PTER 2
have been a term of praise or self- identification. Thus Heraclitus need not be
taken as saying that sophia, which is eminently desirable in Heraclitus’s eyes,
comes through being a philosophos, and thus through being a researcher into
much. Further, this chapter adds the epistemological argument that it is simply
implausible to ascribe to Heraclitus a view that to sophon (“wisdom”) comes
through the systematization of broad and diverse pieces of information. The
extant fragments do not support the claim that he advocates a two- step model
for the acquisition of wisdom, where expansive perceptual discovery precedes
or underwrites some second- order treatment of those discoveries. In the back-
ground is a hermeneutic assumption that, in any event, a simplistic reading of
this passage does not fit with the polyvalent, ambiguous, and riddling nature
of the other fragments of Heraclitus, as the past de cades of scholarship have
acknowledged.67 It is irresponsible to reduce the words of B35 to the straight-
forward exhortation be researchers into much, without at least showing it to
be the only pos si ble reading.

I have taken B35 to identify the costs of being a (Pythagorean) philosophi-
cal man. You have your work cut out for you. You have to take up the yoke of
extensive research, inquiry, expert arbitration, or what ever it is that the Pythag-
oreans (and histores) do. This burden may be necessary for becoming philoso-
phos. But it is not for that reason necessary for becoming sophos. The irony, as Heraclitus might see it, is that those people whose name seemingly encodes
the very commitment to being sophos are committed to it in the wrong way.

This is not to say that Heraclitus uses the term philosophos ironically or sar-
castically. To say so would be to take philosophos as having a positive surface
meaning, and we have no reason to believe it does. It is rather to say that an ap-
parently neutral definition has at the same time implications that philosophoi
are doing the wrong thing, or that despite the second ele ment, - sophoi, the
philosophoi remain far from being sophoi. Whether these philosophoi need to learn a lot because that is what wisdom requires or because that is what their

(Pythagorean- sourced) norms require—or even because that is what their self-
delusion requires!—is the real question for Heraclitus’s reader.68

Scholars have been right to see B35 as a lynchpin for their interpretations
of Heraclitean epistemology. But they have been wrong to pre sent Heraclitus
as thinking that philosophoi, in being “investigators into much,” are on track
to becoming sophoi. The philosophoi are going the wrong way. What exactly constitutes a reversal of course remains an open question. This chapter has suggested some directions an answer might take. It has also shown the impor-

67 E.g., Kahn 1979; Mackenzie 1988; Most 1999, 357–59.

68 Cf. Lesher 1994, 19n38.

H ER ACLIT US AGA I NST TH E PHILOSOPHOI 65
tance a history of the term philosophos has in the histories of philosophy and
of epistemology.

In many aspects of his thought, Heraclitus had few immediate followers.

Among them we might include Socrates and Plato. As we will see in later chap-
ters, both hear their compatriots’ use of philosophos with a connotation of “re-
searcher into much,” and both dislike that connotation. The Socrates- inflected
disagreement is with research as such, in light of our ignorance about matters
much closer at hand. The Plato- inflected disagreement (if such a distinction
lends any conceptual clarity) is with the curiosity about multitude, in light of
the epistemic priority of unity or unification. Thus a Heraclitean reactivity to
the term philosophos recurs a century later. That is not to say that they acquired that reactivity from their reading of Heraclitus or his followers, but that Heraclitus had already flagged some perennial concerns.

3

What Philosophos Could Have Meant:

A Lexical Account

A New Route to an Etymology

The term philosophos entered early into the Ancient Greek practice of coining
phil- prefixed names, among the first several dozen of an eventual nine hun-
dred. This chapter seeks to understand its original sense by reconstructing
the original sense of contemporaneous phil- prefixed names. This requires an
inquiry both into coinage patterns and into the term’s second ele ment, soph- ,
at the time of coinage, which the Heraclitean evidence discussed in chapter 2
puts at about 500 BCE. The two parts of this chapter describe the two parts
of the word.

Philosophy teachers often proclaim, on the first day of the semester, that
philosophos means “lover of wisdom,” glossing this as “one lacking- but-
striving- for- wisdom.” Walter Burkert argued for the implausibility of the
gloss (as we saw in chapter 1); the earliest phil- prefixed names admit no such lack, actually implying the opposite: the regular presence of the second
ele ment’s referent. True enough, but not the whole story— Burkert’s crucial
discovery provides only the foundation for our closer scrutiny of early phil-
prefixed names.

In the previous chapter, I argued that Heraclitus used the term philosophos
as something of a wry name, not as a one- word description for those who love
wisdom or seek mental culture. Yet the label had to come from somewhere,
and its incorporation of the root soph- gives us direction. It suggests that we
look for the ways the soph- root was used in that era that parallel the way other second- element roots were used in phil- prefixed names of that era. It turns out that second- element roots in phil- prefixed names were used synecdochally to
refer to some social practice. As cattle ranchers speak of “heads” of beef while
caring mainly for the “sides,” the second ele ment need refer only to a salient

(as easily countable) but not critical item. The soph- in philosophos seems to refer to sophoi, sage advisors, with the relevant social practice prob ably being something like “acting or preparing to act as a sophos.”

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 67

This chapter begins with a look at the way some ancient authors understood
the origins of the term philosophos, with reference to two versions of the Py-
thagoras story. First is Cicero’s context for Heraclides’s account. Second is

Diodorus Siculus’s account, one relatively unstudied in scholarship about the
origins of philosophia, but perhaps of all versions the most plausible. The core
of the chapter then vindicates Diodorus’s version, arguing first for the sixth-
century BCE patterns of formation of phil- prefixed terms, and second for the
use of the soph- ele ment at that time.

From Sophoi to Philosophoi in Cicero and Diodorus Siculus

We saw in chapter 1 Cicero’s reproduction of Heraclides’s Pythagoras story of self- naming philosophoi (Lat. sapientiae studiosos), which continues the story he has told about the sophoi (Lat. sapientes): “this name for them spread all the way to the time of Pythagoras” ( Tusc. 5.3.8). Earlier in the preamble to Book 5 of the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero has been praising the value of philosophy: it
has brought about personal, social, and civic security (5.1.1–2.6). But he also rec-
ognizes that its illustrious history has been obscured by the relative novelty of
the name: not all its successes have redounded to “philosophy” so called. People
used to speak only of “wise men” ( sapientes) and their “wisdom” ( sapientia), which amounts to “the knowledge of the origin and causes of all things divine
and human” and “the contemplation of nature.” Among those deemed “wise”

he includes historical, legendary, and mythical examplars: the “Seven Sophoi”;

Lycurgus, Odysseus, and Nestor; and Atlas, Prometheus, and Cepheus, whose
mythic apotheoses as constellations testify to their more- than- human knowl-
edge of the heavenly bodies (5.3.7–8). The name sapientes was used down to
the time of Pythagoras, at which point philosophos became the relevant name,
applying to Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Socrates, and Plato (5.4.10).1

1 This preface is rather jumbled (cf. Nutting 1909, 233–34; Dougan and Henry 1934, 201;

Douglas 1990, 144): philosophy, while still called wisdom, brought about the origins of cities, but Socrates brings “philosophy,” once called philosophy, into the cities. The earliest phi loso phers, while still called wise men, sought the best life and to make themselves virtuous, but Atlas, Prometheus, and Cepheus represent a wisdom concerned instead with the contemplation of nature, as astronomy. This confounded chronology tells against assuming Cicero has a single source. HJ suggest that sections 5–6 may rely on Posidonius (whose work is epitomized in, and known from, Sen. Ep. 90.5–25), and that Heraclides provides, in addition to 8–9, also 7, on the legendary and historical sophoi, and 10, including the passage on Socrates. This latter view is difficult to accept, given Cicero’s citation of Heraclides in the midst only of an anecdote rather than a historical lineage, the difficulty of imagining On Diseases claiming that Socrates made philosophy relevant to human life (rather than Pythagoras or Empedocles!), and Cicero’s similar claim about Socrates’s innovation at Brut. 8.30–31 but with a dif fer ent account (Socrates refuted

68 CH A PTER 3

For Cicero and his Greek sources, sophos gave way to philosophos. This
implies some essential connection between the words. What the connection is,
however, Cicero does not explain: he does not say why the term sophos went out
of fashion or was not used by Pythagoras. Some readers of Cicero conjecture
that, at the point in the (lost) Greek source of Cicero’s text when Leon asks

Pythagoras, in Cicero’s translation, what ars he professes, he asks what so-
phia he professes.2 Pythagoras’s answer would be, in effect, that he practices
no specific sophia, but rather something that transcends all sophiai (“technical expertises”), perhaps something architectonic, a master knowledge; the
implication is that philosophia replaces sophia as the best intellectual practice.3 This conjecture is hardly assured.4 Cicero has already been translat-
ing sophia as sapientia, not as ars. As we will see below, by the end of the sixth century BCE, and certainly in the fourth century BCE, trades or skills
were not generally referred to as vari ous sophiai. Most detrimentally to the conjecture, the sophoi, especially the “Seven Sophoi,” who had “wisdom,” are treated as having the same transcendent breadth as that of Pythagoras. Indeed,

Cicero’s discussion rather obscures what novelty the term philosophos brings
to a language that already includes the term sophos.

The connection between sophoi and philosophoi is drawn more clearly in
an author contemporaneous with Cicero, who likely draws from some fourth-
century BCE source contemporaneous with Heraclides. This is Diodorus of

Sicily, whose forty- volume Library of History (60–30 BCE), an account of the
world from mythological to Roman times, draws on a range of fourth- century

BCE Greek writers; perhaps, in the pre sent case, he draws from Aristoxenus
the Peripatetic.5 We will recognize the general form from the version of the

Pythagoras story presented in Diogenes Laertius’s preamble (chapter 1): the views of Gorgias, Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, and other unnamed men, thereby giving rise to ethical discussion and his popularity). On the prefaces in Tusculan Disputations in general, see Douglas 1995, esp. 203; Gildenhard 2007, esp. 203–6.

2 E.g., Gottschalk 1980, 23n30, 26–27; Riedweg 2005, 92.

3 Riedweg 2005, 97, thus suggests that the phil- prefix denotes “an intensification.”

4 YC 1.320 suggests τέχνη. Note that in Sosicrates, Leon simply asks “what he [Pythagoras]

is” (τίς εἴη, DL 8.8), allowing that no play on words is an essential part of the story.

5 Long treated as unreliable, recent scholarship has shown the accuracy of Diodorus (Sacks 1990; Rubincam 1998; Sulimani 2011, 1–162). For whatever reason, this passage is almost never dealt with in histories of philosophia or analyses of the Pythagoras stories; those who do mention it simply assimilate it to DL 1.12 (Burkert 1960, 161n5; Malingrey 1961, 29n1; Chroust 1964a, 427n17; Gottschalk 1980, 31–32; YC 1.323n29, 1.325n42). Among Diodorus’s evident
early sources are Hecataeus of Abdera, Ephorus, Theopompus, and Timaeus of Tauromenium.

Attribution of Diodorus’s Pythagoras story to Aristoxenus comes from Lévy 1926, 87, followed by Thesleff 1961, 109; for Aristoxenus’s methods, see, recently, Stavru 2018. Alternatively, Gottschalk 1980, 32n63, follows Corssen 1912, 35, in suggesting attribution to an earlier fourth-century BCE text, Andron’s Tripod.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 68

9/18/19 1:20 PM

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 69

Pythagoras called (ἐκάλει) his par tic u lar choice of life (αἵρεσιν) philosophia but not sophia. For, finding fault with the ones before him, the so- called Seven Sophoi, he said that though no human is sophos— usually, natu ral weaknesses leave one without the strength to succeed in every thing (πάντα κατορθοῦν)—
the one emulating (ζηλῶν) the character and life of the sophos may suitably be
called philosophos.6 (DS 10 fr. 24)

According to Diodorus, Pythagoras explains the name philosophos by refer-
ence to and contrast with the name and description sophos. As in Cicero’s ver-
sion, there were sophoi and then with Pythagoras there were philosophoi. In this version, Pythagoras claims that the name sophos, the designation for the

Seven Sages, does not in fact suit humans, but since the people to whom the
name refers provide suitable models for living, the name he accepts for himself
is built from the name sophos.

This story assumes that the legendary Seven Sophoi (“Seven Sages”) were
popularly thought to have a more- than- human success in every thing (πάντα
κατορθοῦν).7 Diodorus’s pages immediately before these ones show that they
were. Solon caused the de cadent Athenians to simplify and become virtuous,
and to revolt against the tyrannical Peisistratids. Pittacus, a wonderfully wise
and a great legislator, freed his land from tyranny, strife, and war. Bias, an
excellent speaker, used his gifts to help the wronged.8

To explain the shift from sophos to philosophos, Diodorus says that Py-
thagoras found fault (καταμεμφόμενος) with his pre de ces sors the sophoi, although their name denotes a status beyond what is accessible to humans.

A strange though not unique charge, Pythagoras apparently means to criti-
cize the fact that sophoi are being called sophos, not the men themselves.9

After all, Pythagoras mentions nothing they have done, and does not say that

6 For the Greek of this passage, see Appendix, p. 321.

7 It is uncertain whether this means “straighten out, fix” (Eur. Hipp. 1445; Andr. 1080; Hippoc. Fract. 16 [of bones]), used literally or figuratively for something bent or broken, or “accomplish successfully” (Eur. Hel. 1067; Hipp. 680; Hdt. 1.120; Lys. 18.13; Pl. Meno 99c9; Tht. 203b9; Xen. Mem. 3.1.3; Isoc. 7.11; D. 2.20, 21.106, 24.7), or something in between (Soph. El. 416; OC

1487). Parallels from Aristotle ( Eth. Nic. 1106b28–31: one can fail in many ways, but succeed

[κατορθοῦν] only in one) and De mos the nes ( Or. 18.289–90, citing a poem that says only gods can succeed at all) suggest the non- reparative version.

8 Solon: DS 9 frr. 1–5, 31–32; Pittacus: 9 frr. 16–20; Bias: 9 frr. 21–23. Tell 2015 describes the Sages’ legendary dispute- resolution.

9 Damon of Cyrene, a Platonist of the second century BCE, similarly “chastises” (ἐγκαλεῖ) all the Sophoi, especially the Seven (DL 1.40). Ammonius, who wrote at the end of the fifth century CE, evidently following Nicomachus of Gerasa’s (60–120 CE) Introduction to Arithmetic 1.1, said that Pythagoras “was the first to assail the error found among the ancients,” who called just any random expert sophos ( In Isag. proem 9.7).

70 CH A PTER 3
they erroneously or pridefully called themselves sophos. In fact, according to

Diodorus, they do quite the opposite. Diodorus has just worked through the
stories, which we know to go back to the fifth century BCE, that the Seven

Sophoi disavowed the description sophos, repeatedly and famously, and that, indeed, they claimed that only god, Apollo, deserves the title.10 Pythagoras
thus continues a Sage tradition in criticizing the name and in querying its ap-
propriateness for mere mortals. The existence of that critical tradition and
efforts to slough off a name suggests that people were called and considered
sophoi or sophos; we will see the evidence for this below. Perhaps some even accepted the name, or were thought to accept it; but this critical tradition also
hints that the truly sophos, the true sophoi, acknowledge the inaccessibility of sophia. Socrates was apparently not the first to discover epistemic modesty
or the moral power that such modesty confers. Pythagoras joins the sophoi in
vindicating the intimations of one’s mental excellence by rejecting them.

Pythagoras disparages public claims to the attainment of the ideal of wis-
dom, but not the ideal itself. Modesty is not epistemic skepticism or pessimism.

As a philosophos, Pythagoras wishes to avoid the charges of hubris he would
deserve should he own to a more- than- human state, a quasi- divine superior-
ity over his neighbors. But as a philosophos, he also wishes to orient his life
toward being sophos, since that provides the right pattern to which to fit him-
self. Pythagoras wants to have it both ways: to reveal his knowingness about
human limitations, and to push against those human limitations. The sophoi
set po liti cal things aright: they advised the most headstrong of kings, under-
stood the fragility of human life, and found civic benefit in thoughtfulness and
virtue rather than in athletic prowess. They crystallized a life of experience
and reflection in lapidary precepts, expressed in a riddling or riddlingly blunt
way that has bite against the naïve, the self- deluding, and the simply mistaken
people in the world.11 The sophoi’s powers therefore are pragmatic, advisory,
and analytic; they set institutions, individuals, and conceptions aright. It is this
ideal theory- praxis combination at which Pythagoras takes aim.

On Diodorus’s account, then, Pythagoras took up the name philosophos in-
sofar as it meant a choice of life (αἵρεσιν) to emulate (ζηλῶν) the sophos.12

Diodorus’s account implies that this conscious choosing and emulating is a

10 DS 9 frr. 6–7; cf. DL 1.27–33. For the pre- Academic sophoi stories from Miletus, Priene, and Athens that assume that only god is sophos, see Wiersma 1933.

11 DS 9 frr 7, 9–15, 24–25, 31–32, 38–39, and fragments cited earlier.

12 The noun αἵρεσις, “choice,” could even refer to a “group” or “intentional community,”

since that is what, non- metaphorically, would have been chosen. “Emulation” can imply “being a disciple,” as in Plut. Them. 2.4, in which Themistocles is the disciple (ζηλωτής) of Mnesiphi-lus, who chose a life (αἵρεσις) concerned with sophia in a pedagogical lineage coming down (ἐκ
διαδοχῆς) from Solon.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 71
surprising thing to do. His earlier chapters show why. For almost none of the
sophoi— Anacharsis, Myson, Periander, Chilon, or Bias— does Diodorus de-
scribe or even mention a route to achieving status as sophos; Solon is the
exception that proves the rule.13 Other authors similarly have nothing to say
about any education, study, tutelage, or concentrated effort that the sophoi may
have taken on themselves to attain their status. This silence suggests that the
ascension to sophos status comes simply through hard and long experience, or
perhaps by a special dispensation, or that, in a sense, the route does not matter.

The reflective intention to achieve that status through disciplined means, fo-
cusing on the route, would therefore be remarkable. This seeking of a pre-
viously unsought status would deserve a special name. This special name,
philosophos here, could be accepted by Pythagoras in explaining himself to
others.

As Diodorus tells it, Pythagoras would be the sort to call by a special name.

In adjacent paragraphs he writes that Pythagoras studied with Pherecydes and
learned geometry from the Egyptians. With his students he exercised mem-
ory and self- control; they aimed to increase their knowledge and capacity for
judgment. This work had a vis i ble result. Pythagoras spoke with such charm
and effectiveness that every one wanted to listen. He presented in himself a
highly appealing mode of life, disciplined and devoid of the de cadence that
charismatic people risk falling into, and he argued for this mode of life as well.

His society and its views drew considerable attention. Its members manifested
inexplicably power ful bonds of friendship and loyalty, and they had unusual
views about the soul, expressed in terms of metempsychosis, the recollection
of past lives, vegetarianism, and other theories of diet and health. Their influ-
ence grew so great as to advance Greece and to earn them disastrous envy. So
the Pythagoreans appear to have tried to become like sophoi, and the direc-
tion of their self- education, and the success they attained through that self-
education, supports that appearance.14

Indeed, we find what Diodorus writes in Book 10 of the Library in compact
form in Valerius Maximus’s version of the story, in his Memorable Deeds and

Sayings (ca. 14–37 CE), one that appears to rely on a source shared at some
remove by Diodorus but not by Cicero:15

13 Solon is presented as a late addition to the ranks of the sophoi. Diodorus says that Solon was by nature excellent, but that he also applied himself to all learning, and got the best teachers, and (anachronistically) spent time with the men greatest “in philosophy” (ἐπὶ φιλοσοφίᾳ) (DS 9
fr. 1). See also Hdt. 1.30 (discussed in chapter 5, pp. 128–31).

14 DS 10 frr. 4 (Pherecydes), 11 (geometry), 7–8 (memory and self- control), 3.2, 23 (appealing mode of life), 4–6, 14–15 (friendship), 9–13 (views of soul), 24.2, 25 (envy).

15 Bloomer 1992, 62–64, 78–108, discusses the difficulties in identifying Valerius’s sources, and concludes that Valerius evidently never relied on Diodorus, which he obviously does not here.

72 CH A PTER 3

To pass to a more ancient per for mance of diligence: Pythagoras, who from his
youth embarked upon the work of most perfect wisdom ( sapientiae) with the
desire of acquiring knowledge and all that is good (for every thing destined
to arrive at its ultimate goal also begins early and rapidly), repaired to Egypt.

There familiarizing himself with the writings of that people and scrutinizing
the memoranda left by priests of ages gone by, he learned the observations of
countless cycles. From Egypt he went to Persia and gave himself over to the
finished wisdom of the magi for them to mold. His docile mind absorbed what
they ungrudgingly displayed to him: the motions of the stars, the courses of
the planets, the force, individuality, and effect of each one. Then he sailed to

Crete and Lacedaemon, and after inspecting their laws and manners came to
the Olympic competition. There he displayed a specimen of his multifarious
knowledge amid the enthusiastic admiration of all Greece. Asked under what
title he was registered ( cognomine censeretur), he professed himself ( edidit), not a wise man ( sapientem)— for that had been preempted ( occupaverant) by the surpassing Seven— but a lover of wisdom ( amatorem sapientiae), that is, in

Greek, a philosophos. He also proceeded to that part of Italy which was then
called Greater Greece, in which he commended the results of his studies to
many flourishing cities.16 (8.7 ext. 2, trans. Shackleton Bailey)

The key difference from Diodorus’s version is clear: rather than criticizing the

Seven Sophoi for their name, Pythagoras simply allows that the name already
belongs to them.17 But the story’s moral remains the same: the name philoso-
phos must be understood in relation to that of the Sophoi. And one detail remains the same: Pythagoras, so often called an inventor of words and practices, is not said to have in ven ted the word philosophos, only to have called
himself it.18

Should Pythagoras have been called philosophos, it need not have been
any great compliment. The naming could have been a wry observation that
he strove ludicrously for a status for which people normally do not strive.

It could have expressed a bemused qualification: “Who knows whether he
counts as a sophos, but he sure wants to be a sophos!” It might have registered his thirst for limitless self- improvement and influence, a harmless if
nevertheless nakedly egoistic ambition, what the Greeks might call philau-
tia (“egoism”; see below) crossed with philotimia (“ambition”; again, see 16 For the Latin of this passage, see the Appendix, p. 322.

17 Valerius’s version also emphasizes that Pythagoras studied concertedly with teachers, in Egypt and Persia, and studied po liti cal institutions, in Crete and Sparta, and then displayed this novel knowledge; the number of stages suggests exercise and association.

18 De Vogel 1966, 218–20, identifies more than a dozen inventions attributed to Pythagoras.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 73
below). Yet while the name philosophos need not have had a laudatory tone,
it could easily have later been spun to have a positive or at least conciliatory
sound, and our passages from Diodorus and Valerius appear to rec ord that
spinning.

Pythagoras as spin doctor has left its trace in the care Diodorus and Vale-
rius take with the etymological situation. They do not claim that Pythagoras
coined either philosophos or philosophia. They pre sent him as simply having used those terms in self- reference. If there is an implied dramatic situation,
in which someone asks what kind of person he is, Pythagoras is havingto ex-
plain the self- application. This would imply either that the self- application of
philosophos is counterintuitive or that the term is unfamiliar to his audience.

In the first case, it would be because the name is hardly self- recommending.

In the second, the meaning of the term would not shine through transparently,
as it would if it actually and obviously meant “lover of wisdom” or “acknowl-
edger of the impossibility of sophia and yet the goodness of striving for it nev-
ertheless.” In either case, the term philosophos would not sound like some-
thing a person would self- interestedly apply to himself.

The First Ele ment, Phil- : Aristotle’s Theory

Diodorus’s story prompts us to think of the phil- prefix as an instrument for
coining names that would only awkwardly be applied to oneself. Aristotle
provides the earliest sustained analy sis of phil- prefixed names and vindi-
cates this view, even if earlier authors (e.g., Hesiod, Aristophanes, Plato) had
acknowledged the peculiarity of these names. Aristotle’s view— not hereto-
fore studied by scholars—is that such names generally have or start with a
negative connotation. As a native Greek speaker with a high- grade sensitiv-
ity to morally inflected language, his insight is worth taking very seriously.

It provides the earliest theoretical evidence in support of this book’s negative
thesis, that the term philosophos prob ably did not begin as one of praise of
the sort that is expressed in phrases like “lover of wisdom” or “intellectual
cultivator.”

Aristotle apparently coins the term philotoioutoi, “phil- whatevers,” and uses this metalinguistic term in the Nicomachean Ethics (Books 1, 2, and 4) to discuss the use of vari ous (first- order) phil- prefixed names.19 Aristotle treats 19 For analy sis of ethical issues in these passages, see Lefebvre 2011. Aristotle’s neologism finds uptake only in late antique and medieval commentaries on these very passages. It is always associated with a form of legetai, “being called” or “being said to be” (implied: phil- something); it does not mean “amateurs” or “aficionados.”

74 CH A PTER 3
phil- prefixed names as names, as one- word adjectival or nominal appella-
tions. He recognizes that people start out using them to label others by treating
one feature as representative or indexical for their whole public persona. He
never decomposes a phil- prefixed name into a noun- object phrase ([ toioutou]

philos) as though it were a description.20 Doing so would wrongly presume
that the combination of two morphological ele ments into a single word has no
effect on the ultimate meaning of that word. He assumes that all phil- prefixed
terms work in about the same way.

Aristotle introduces the term philotoioutoi in Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1.

He has just observed—in a modified version of the “three lives at a festival”

comparison— that at the Olympic games the wreath goes not to the most at-
tractive or strongest in the stadium but to the one who competes (1099a3–5).

His point is about activity; he goes on to assert that the life of excellent activ-
ity is universally pleasant.21 There are, by contrast, the sorts of objects that
please only idiosyncratically:

to each person that item is pleas ur able in re spect to which he is called (ἡδὺ πρὸς
ὃ λέγεται) a philotoioutos, for instance a horse (ἵππος) to the philippos, sights (θέαμα) to the philotheoros;22 and in the same way, justice (τὰ δίκαια) to the
philodikaios and, generally, things in accordance with virtue (τὰ κατ᾽ ἀρετήν)

to the philaretos.23 Now the pleasures with re spect to most people conflict, since such things are not pleas ur able by nature, but with re spect to the philokaloi,24
pleasures are pleas ur able by nature. ( Eth. Nic. 1099a7–13)

20 This fact is often hidden in translation, as, e.g., in Broadie and Rowe 2002.

21 For further context, see Gauthier and Jolif 1959, 2.1.67–68.

22 Aristotle’s word for the phil- sights or - spectacles person differs from Plato’s, philotheamôn (see chapter 8, pp. 251–55), which contains the root noun, theama, cited by Aristotle here. The difference is between a phil- name built from an action, theorein, and from the object of that action. There are no extant comparisons of the two forms of this word, and both are extremely rare in the classical period. The arbitrary creation of the name shows that the object need not be expressly stated by the phil- name; this finding will be consistent with what we show below.

23 Philaretos is found only once in classical Greek; perhaps its rarity suggests a coinage as

“scrupulous,” “sedulous.”

24 Before Aristotle, philokalos emphasized a concern for appearances (into which “nobility”

readily fits); even for him, the peacock is philokalos ( Hist. an. 488b24), dubiously so: linked here with phthoneros, the Revised Oxford Translation renders the pair “jealous and self- conceited.”

Gorgias’s Funeral Oration refers to the “philokalos peace” (B6/D28; cf. Thuc. 2.40.1 and chapters 5, p. 133, and 8, pp. 234–36, below), presumably the lovely pleasant time outside of war.

In Xenophon, being philokalos involves being concerned with one’s physical appearance ( Cyr.

1.3.3, 2.1.22), one’s social appearance ( Symp. 4.15.5), the appearances of events one arranges ( Cyr. 8.3.5), and the looks of women ( Mem. 3.11.9). In Isocrates, philokaloi have the right concern for dress, being elegant (μεγαλοπρεπές) rather than excessive (περίεργος) in the fashion of the dandy (καλλωπιστής) (Isoc. 1.27; cf. 1.10); those who are philokaloi and philoponoi are

“subservient (λατρεύτοντας) to beauty” (10.57). I suspect this term was coined snidely, pointing

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 75

Aristotle schematizes: people who are called a par tic u lar philotoioutos find their par tic u lar toioutos pleas ur able. He does not say whether the compound name encodes the goodness, normality, or intensity of the plea sure taken in the object indicated by the word’s second ele ment. While some of the exemplary ob-
jects of plea sure (justice, virtue) seem to us evidently good, Aristotle does
not say whether the phil- prefixed names encode a laudatory attitude, either in the fourth century BCE or at the time of coinage. Nor does Aristotle say what
relation the subject has to that pleasing object, whether it be possession, lack,
availability to reflection, or something else. Nor does he even suggest that the
philotoioutos experiences love or friendship ( philein, philia, philos). The phil-
prefixed word points only to a simple psychological state, a life- organizing
plea sure that is oriented toward the thing named by the word associated with
the second ele ment. Of course, Aristotle realizes that this is not just any plea-
sure whatsoever, but rather a plea sure distinct and notable enough to be worth
naming. But he does not specify the criteria of distinctiveness or notability; he
addresses the plea sure in no way other than as a pleas ur able state.25

Aristotle returns once to this austere analy sis of the philotoioutos, in a some-
what richer but less textually certain parallel account found in the Rhe toric.

There, Aristotle says that when people desire something (ὥν ἐπιθυμοῦντες
τυγχάνουσιν) that befits the sort of people they are (πρὸς ἃ τοίουτοι or
φιλοτοιoύτοι),26 not only does that thing please them, but it also appears good

(οὐ . . . μόνον ἡδὺ ἀλλὰ καὶ βέλτιον φαίνεται).27 Such it is with “victory in
the case of philonikoi, honor in the case of philotimoi, money in the case of philochrêmatoi, and the others likewise” ( Rh. 1363a37– b3). The key point is that the appearance- as- good does not mean that onlookers judge the desire as
good.

out a zeal for aesthetic self- presentation, and like philotimos (discussed below) only later and sometimes taking on broader, more neutral, and even positive inflections.

25 As recent translations go, the rendering by Crisp 2014, 14, “each person finds plea sure in that of which he is said to be fond,” while it decomposes the term, at least maintains the non- obtrusive psychological language; Broadie and Rowe 2002, 104, by contrast, writing “in relation to which he is called ‘lover of’ that sort of thing,” import the concept of “love,” which is indefensible unless we accept a strong version of the single quotation marks, where by “lover of” we mean not someone who loves something but the first half of a compound name in which

“lover” does not really mean “one who loves.”

26 The manuscripts print πρὸς ἃ τοίουτοι. An anonymous commentary on the Rhe toric (Rabe 1896, 27) seems to have read or inferred φιλοτοιoύτοι. Both Ross 1959 and Kassel 1976
follow Vahlen 1903 in emending the text.

27 Cipriano 1990, 42, claims that Aristotle distinguishes between being inclined toward
something, loving something, and feeling plea sure in the attainment of that toward which one is inclined; she also notes that Aristotle’s attention to these experiences has dialectical and not purely linguistic motivation. I leave aside whether such differentiation is pos si ble; for the sake of the argument here we can call all of them descriptive psychological states.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 75

9/18/19 1:20 PM

76 CH A PTER 3

Two books later in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle gives a new analy sis,
this time with normative judgments. He has just been discussing a deficiency
in discipline (σωφροσύνη), exemplifying it with the so- called belly- crazy

(γαστρίμαργοι), who eat too much. He generalizes:

Regarding idiosyncratic (ἰδίας) pleasures many people make errors in many
ways. For as the philotoioutoi are so- called (λεγομένων) for enjoying (τῷ χαίρειν) what they ought not, or more than the many do, or not as they ought, the intemperate for their part go too far (δ᾽ οἱ ἀκόλαστοι ὑπερβάλλουσιν) in all these re-
spects. For they enjoy some things that they ought not— given that those things
are hateful— and if they ought to enjoy some of them, they enjoy them rather
more than they ought or than most people do. ( Eth. Nic. 1118b21–27)

Aristotle now asserts that the label denotes the breaking of a norm. It not only
identifies an intentional psychological state, “enjoying”; it also censures the
person to whom the name has been applied. It conveys to the listener of the
speech containing the phil- prefixed term a negative judgment as well as a
claim about the ground of that judgment. Since calling someone akolastos

(“intemperate,” “undisciplined”) obviously imputes blame and charges him
with a wholesale excess in his tastes, calling someone a phil- prefixed name
also imputes blame, but somewhat less, charging him with tastes that are ex-
cessive in at least certain re spects. Someone might very much enjoy gambling
on horses, and indeed get so much enjoyment from doing so as to forget about
life’s other pleasures and obligations; his character is not altogether damned,
as the akolastos’s character might be, but still he is a little, so to say, philippos.

A qualified deprecation remains something of a deprecation. And Aristotle
says that the name is used for (τῷ) excessive or incorrect attitudes. The label
is in itself always pejorative, not merely a neutral name to be used with an
excoriating speaker’s intention.28 In the Eudemian Ethics Aristotle gives the
concrete example of Philoxenus, whom he censures for being a gourmand

(ὀψοφάγος, 1231a5–17), a term that, according to Athenaeus, he elsewhere
glosses with a phil- prefixed name, dinner- lover (φιλόδειπνος), and that others gloss as fish- lover (φίλιχθυς).29 Thus philodeipnos and philichthus fit Aristotle’s analy sis, in that they are words si mul ta neously referring to a plea sure and

28 For discussion of other aspects of this passage, see Steward 1892, 314–15; Gauthier and Jolif 1959, 2.1.245; Taylor 2006, 200. Aspasius In Eth. Nic. 91,10 seems to have a corrupt text of Aristotle, leading him to read Aristotle as distinguishing two kinds of pleasures: those toward bad objects, and those toward appropriate objects and felt with greater poignancy than the majority does (see Konstan 2006, 93, with 195nn187–88).

29 Ath. 1.6d; see Davidson 1997, ch. 1, for fish mania.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 77
denoting something inappropriate. Similarly, in the Rhe toric, Aristotle diagno-
ses youthful immaturity as excessively and problematically philophiloi and
philetairoi, “friend/companion crazy” (1389a35– b2).30

Aristotle’s third remark about the philotoioutos goes beyond the simple

“plea sure” analy sis of Book 1 and the simple “excessive plea sure” analy sis
of Book 3. It comes in Aristotle’s account of the nameless virtue concerned
with honor (τιμή). According to Aristotle, three kinds of people have a drive

(ὄρεξις) toward honor: those with a drive greater than one ought to have; those
with a drive less than one ought to have; and those with a drive for honor that
comes from an appropriate source, in an appropriate way, and to an appropriate
degree. The first two, manifesting the extremes of those drives, get labeled.

We censure as ambitious (φιλότιμον ψέγομεν) those who pursue (ἐφιέμενον)

honor to an inappropriately great extent, or from an inappropriate source.31

We censure as unambitious (ἀφιλότιμον) those who avoid honor even for ad-
mirable things. But the case of philotimia is more complicated than that, because sometimes we praise (ὅτε . . . ἐπαινοῦμεν) an ambitious person as being manly
and noble (φιλόκαλον), and sometimes we praise the unambitious person as
being mea sured and disciplined (σώφρων). Aristotle generalizes:

Clearly, deploying the [terms] philotoioutos in multiple ways (πλεοναχῶς τοῦ
φιλοτοιούτου λεγομένου), we do not use the [term] philotimos for the same thing
every time (οὐκ επὶ τὸ αὐτὸ φέρομεν ἀεὶ τὸ φιλότιμον), but, when praising, for
pursuing honor more than most people, and when censuring, for pursuing honor
more than one ought. The moderate position being nameless, apparently the
extremes competed for the unclaimed borderland. ( Eth. Nic. 1125b14–18)

Aristotle goes on to reiterate that a praiseworthy moderate position does exist,
but because it lacks its own name, it borrows the name of one of the extremes,
which deceives people into thinking that there are only two exhaustive cate-
gories, ambition and unambition ( Eth. Nic. 1125b18–25; cf. 1108b29–1109a5).

30 Philetairos seems to mean something like “loyal,” “driven by peer esteem,” maybe

“hungry for social acknowl edgment” (Thuc. 3.82.4; Xen. Cyr. 8.3.49), though later, positively,

“companionable” (Theophr. Char. 29.4). Philophilos is also “loyal” and “concerned for friends”

(Arist. Rh. 1381b27; Eth. Nic. 1155a29, 1159a34).

31 Greek lit er a ture supports Aristotle’s point about the badness of philotimia: Hdt. 3.54.4; Eur. Phoen. 531–6; IA 337–42, 527; Thuc. 3.82.8 (paired with pleonexia); Ar. Thesm. 383–84; Ran. 280–82, 678–79. Some cases are ambiguous: Thuc . 2.65.7 and 8.89.3 say that acting on

“private (ἴδιος) philotimia” seems obviously bad, but context does not clarify whether idios modifies or emphasizes; similarly Pind. fr. 210, which speaks of evident pain in “excessive (ἄγαν) philotimia.”

78 CH A PTER 3

This analy sis finds normative variety— ambivalence— where the earlier
analyses did not.32 The ambivalence could take two forms. It could be that
every phil- prefixed term can be used in multiple ways, or that some phil-
prefixed terms can be used in one way, some in another, and some in mul-
tiple ways.33 In the first (strong) case, you can never tell, just by looking
at it, whether a par tic u lar phil- prefixed term counts as censure or praise or neither. In the second (weak) case, you can never tell by knowing that
a word has a phil- prefix whether it counts as censure or praise or neither.

The warning has a remediating effect on those who assume they know what
words mean by looking at their parts and ignoring the kind of word in which
they find those parts.

Related to that ambiguity, there is further difficulty concerning what we
might call Aristotle’s speech act theory. In the Book 3 analy sis, Aristotle
claims that phil- prefixed words are intrinsically evaluative; describing some-
body as phil- such- and- such carries one’s disapprobation. It is their applica-
tion and not the manner of their use that registers the judgment. In Book 4,

Aristotle seems to maintain this view. You can call someone philotimos, and
simply by doing so you censure him. It is like a slur, expressively rather than
neutrally descriptive. But we soon run into a prob lem: Aristotle says that the
word philotimos can be used both for praise and for blame. This Janus- faced
usage seems to displace any evaluation from the word itself to its use.

Another alternative is the one Aristotle argues for in the case of philotimos.

The term was first coined to indicate an excess. Something untoward had to
be noted, and this compound adjective did the job. A mild adjective, to be
sure. But the mere fact that a name came to be created shows that something
other than mere observation or description— “Oh, he cares about honor!”—
motivates the name- calling. A sentence or a phrase suffices for description.

At some point, a class of distinctly problematic people were identified, those
who so lacked ambition as to warrant grave concern. They came to be called

32 Dover 1974 gives a similar analy sis of philotimos, which while in a positive light is reputation bought at a cost to oneself, patriotism rather than shameful living, through its competitive realization it may shade into “aggression, pride, and boastfulness” (230–34, 236); philonikia, which while sometimes thought a virtue early in the fourth century BCE, was also a deroga-tory name for being “quarrelsome, factious, contentious” (233–34); philanthrôpia, which though happily linked with compassion is, at least in De mos the nes, seen as servile (201–2); philodikos, philoloidoros, and philopragmôn, all of which may be used as terms of reproach for being litigious and quarrelsome (187–89). See also Whitehead 1983, 56–62 (who provides copious evi-
dence for the negative use of philotimos early on, in contradiction to his unsupported claim [56]

that the term “began as an uncomplicatedly favorable one, lacking any suggestion that τιμή was not a proper object of ‘love’ ”), and Christ 1998.

33 Aspasius In Nic. Eth. 116,27–117,18, and Steward 1892, 348–49, suppose the latter.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 79
aphilotimos. The alpha- privative feature of this word proves its posteriority to philotimos; its morphosemantic parallel proves its censoriousness.34

The binary form of the names suggests that they exhaust the possibilities,
but they do not. They may point to a single norm that may be disobeyed in two
opposite ways and obeyed in one. Obedience is the mea sured, decorous, and
well- aimed pursuit of honor. While this intermediate kind of pursuit can read-
ily be described, it has no specially tailored name. Presumably there was little
reason to draw attention to this standard way of being, and certainly not with
a flashy word. Thus the ethical state of affairs is this: three ways to be (exces-
sive, deficient, and on point) and two names for them. Eventually, the middle
position did need a name. It took its name from the position of excess, pre-
sumably because the middle position, in most contexts, means pursuing honor
quite often, rather than a mere lack of an excessive commitment to honor. Now
philotimos referred both to the excess and to the mean; for the one, it served
as censure, and for the other, as praise. ( Philokalos would have been a good
candidate for the mean state; see note 24 above.)

This turn of events could mean one of two things. One might suppose the
excoriative content of philotimos was wholly blanched out, such that moral out-
rage or appreciation would have to be colored in on subsequent uses. But this
blanching is implausible, since Aristotle thought that philotimos retained the
power of censure. So it must mean instead that there are two names, which are
spelled the same but with dif fer ent meanings: philotimos
and philotim-
excess
os

. When the first is addressed at someone, it censures. When the second
mean
is addressed to someone, it praises.

So Aristotle thinks that the phil- prefix creates names for labeling norm-
breaking be hav ior. Often this is the only thing to label. Following the norm
may then go nameless. When it needs a name, it may take it from one of the ex-
tremes. This development makes the word equivocal. The result of this Book 4
analy sis means that the Book 3 analy sis is basically true: phil- prefixed terms censure or start as censures. But it also means that the Book 1 analy sis is sometimes safer: because phil- prefixed terms, as we now use them, sometimes
do not censure, what is common to both the censorious and the encouraging
terms is that they denote some distinctive (and posited) desire. So the three
analyses develop dialectically.

Several results follow from Aristotle’s series of analyses. Phil- prefixed terms are used first for other people. The phil- prefix does not itself create a word

34 The En glish word “ambition” has under gone a related change; see the OED s.v. 1: “The ardent ( in early usage, inordinate) desire to rish to high position, or to attain rank, influence, distinction or other preferment” (my italics).

80 CH A PTER 3
with laudatory sense. Indeed, we may suspect that such words generally begin
with a censuring tone, even if they later acquire an approbative one.35 Thus,
too, philosophos: applied to others and (plausibly) not positive at coinage.36

Corroboration comes from a parallel analy sis found in Nicomachean Ethics,
to which we will now turn.37

While treating of friendship, Aristotle comes to meditate on what is usu-
ally translated the “self- lover,” but could be construed as the “egoist”: the phil-
autos ( Eth. Nic. 9.8). Aristotle notes that there is a puzzle whether one should love (φιλεῖν) oneself the most. On the one hand, many people think that like
goes best with like, and nobody is more like you than you yourself. On the
other hand, those who care (ἀγαπῶσι) most of all for themselves, or at any
rate more than they do for other people, are criticized (ἐπιτιμῶσι), being de-
nounced (ἀποκαλοῦσι) as so- called philautoi. This name, Aristotle reiterates,
is used in reproach (ὡς ἐν αἰσχρῷ).38 It is an other- applied, pejorative label
for selfish people.

35 See already Dover 1974, 10–11.

36 In fact, Aristotle may provide an ex post facto etymology of philosophos in his Protrepticus (as reconstructed by HJ), one that mirrors those found in Plato’s works and studied in chapter 8

(pp. 242– 56). In a sinuous sentence, we read: “The philosophos seems—as with the other desires (ὀρέξεις) proper [to their bearer] that are named after their affection (φιλοστοργίᾳ) for one kind of object—if one ought fasten to him as well the proper name due to the passion (πάθους)—to have a drive (ἔφεσιν) for a certain knowledge honored for itself, and not for anything separate resulting from it” (Iambl. DCMS 23.70,26–71,4). In Aristotle’s words, the name of a kind of person comes from the name of that kind of person’s distinctive desire, and this desire specifies its par tic u lar object, and in the case of the philosophos the object is wisdom ( sophia). This does not confirm the view that phil- prefixed terms tend to start negatively. But it also does not overturn that view. In the first place, Aristotle sets this etymology not in a scientific lecture but the persuasive setting of a dramatized exhortation to philosophia. In the same dialogue, he gives a series of starkly dif fer ent definitions of philosophia (e.g., precise discussions of truth: Iambl. DCMS 26.83,7; possession and use of sophia: Iambl. Pro. 6.40,2–3; knowledge deployed with correct judgment, use of reason, and contemplation of the whole of the good: Iambl. Pro. 6.37,3–22). Second, treating sophia as an object of knowledge that people considered intrinsically valuable as early as the sixth century BCE
tends toward anachronism, as we will see below. Third, and crucially, Aristotle’s analy sis here undermines itself. Philostorgia, the term Aristotle uses to describe the character trait of desiring one kind of object named by phil- prefixed terms, is precisely a phil- prefixed term that fails this analy sis. After all, philostorgia does not mean a desire, passion, or affection for love or affection (στοργή), but a continual having of affection, that is, being characterized by or inclined to love or affection. (The term philostorgia may have itself been the subject of Sophistic interest; Antiphon of Rhamnous (fr. 73 Blass) is said to have deployed the terms astorgia, philostorgia, and storgê in his “rhetorical handbooks.” For a history of the word’s use see Roskam 2011, 178–81.) If Aristotle had taken philostorgia as his model, then philosophia would have to have meant a continual having of wisdom; this may not be inconsistent with a drive toward or an appetite for wisdom, but it is a misleading way of presenting it.

37 Yet another parallel would be found in the analy sis of φίλερις (“captious person”) at Arist.

Soph. el. 171b26.

38 These passages: Eth. Nic. 1168a28–30. The chapter goes through 1169b2.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 81

Philautos is a label in part because it is not merely a combination of the words for “self” and “lover,” as the standard En glish translation suggests. We can see
this for both parts of the compound. First, Aristotle says that the attitude the
self- lover has toward himself is agapê, not philia.39 Aristotle describes this person’s character with words other than the ones that appear to form the two
ele ments of the compound. When Plato, perhaps in the same period of time,
has occasion to talk about someone who loves himself, he does not use the
name, and thus the reproach; reproach is not appropriate to his context.40 Sec-
ond, the philautos does not especially love the self ( autos). In Aristotle’s first explanation, the philautos fails to act in accordance with what is excellent,
presumably preferring plea sure or ease or his current whim (1168a33). In his
second explanation of this reproach (ὄνειδος), Aristotle says the philautos as-
signs to himself the most goods, honors, and bodily pleasures (1168b15–18). If
names were transparent, philautos would be much less meaningful and useful
than philochrêmatos, philotimos, or philêdonês.

So how could this name have come to be? We want to pick on people for
their failures in communal activities—in par tic u lar their shortcomings in dis-
tributive justice— but we wish to avoid crassness. Autos does not alone pick
out or stand for anything bad, and thus being notably related to it is not bad as
such. But it would be meaningless to say that for someone their “self is dear”

(if people even think of themselves as selves, which is questionable), since this is the case for every one, trivially. To justify the name- calling, the name must
be understood to involve a second ele ment ( autos) that actually stands in for
the distribution of goods, and the compound must be understood to pick out
an improper distribution of goods. Phil- does not literally mean “mania for”

or “excessive desire for.” It is attached to nouns to create censorious names.41

Two parallels are the names philozôos (with the second ele ment “life”) and

39 That Aristotle elsewhere uses philein means only that the verbs of affection are inter-changeable; it does not change the fact that philautos does not entirely mean philôn heauton.

40 When Plato is describing the phenomenon of preference for oneself over others, he uses a descriptive phrase (ὃ λέγουσιν ὡς φίλος αὑτῷ, Leg. 731e1; τὴν σφόδρα ἑαυτοῦ φιλίαν, Leg.

731e4), not this name. Since the Laws would not have been written much earlier than the Ethics, since Aristotle does not speak of the name as an in- vogue slang, and since Plato does use many phil- prefixed names, I think Plato would have used it if it were anything other than a nickname.

41 After Aristotle and before Philo, there are at most two extant uses of philautos (Timaeus of Tauromenium in DL 8.66, if Diogenes is quoting rather than paraphrasing; Phld. On Anger in PHerc. 182, fr. 17, col. 28.33), and none of philautia. Perhaps it came to sound too strident or colloquial (as with “selfish” or “egomaniacal”). It does suggest that phil- prefixed names are not transparent; for obviously egoism has always been a perennial issue, especially in the context of eudaimonia, and were philautos transparent, it would be an eminently suitable name for it, and we would expect to see it more often.

82 CH A PTER 3
philopsuchos (“soul”).42 On the conventional translation they both mean “life-
loving”; but since most people love life itself (e.g., Eth. Nic. 1169b27–1170b4),

“life” stands in for protection of one’s own in battles, and the phil- prefix creates a name- calling name, and so the compounds mean “coward.”

Interestingly, Aristotle goes on to redeem the term philautos heard in an
artificially transparent way, saying that it is, in some re spects, admirable to
love oneself. Of course this redemption of the name for Aristotle’s philosophi-
cal purposes does not by itself change the public connotations of the word.43

We see something very similar in the contemporaneous dialogue Hipparchus,
possibly by Plato or his Academic students. There Socrates and his interlocu-
tor analyze philokerdês (“profit”). The “profiteer” is obviously a bad name, and

Socrates innovates when he argues that it means “lover of the good.” 44

For all the significance and credibility of Aristotle’s hypotheses about phil-
prefixed names, however, they remain incomplete. Aristotle makes two related
but unquestioned assumptions that limit his insight into the phenomenon of
phil- prefixed names. Both assumptions follow his psychological reading of
these terms. The psychological reading has two parts: the “attitudinal” con-
dition, where a philotoioutos is so named for desiring, getting plea sure, or
other wise having some positive feeling toward something; and the “object”

condition, where a philotoioutos is so named for that positive feeling about the
apparent referent of the second ele ment of a phil- prefixed name. For example,
the attitudinal condition for naming someone philotimos is that that person
has some positive feeling toward something. The object condition is that that
positive feeling is toward honor. So the fact that a phil- prefixed term is used brings with it the (often negative) evaluation discussed above; the first ele ment brings the psychological state; and the second ele ment brings the intentional
object of the state. As it turns out, neither condition looks promising in light of

42 Philozôos as coward(ly): Eur. fr. 816.6; Plato Com. 19 PCG; Arist. Rh. 1389b32; philopsuchos as coward(ly): Eur. Phoen. 597; Hec. 348; Anon. Iambl. 4.2. The fact that philozôos can also mean “fond of animals” (Xen. Mem. 1.4.7) supports the theory of coinage described below.

43 Elsewhere Aristotle uses the term negatively: Rh. 1389b35 (among the el der ly’s many bad qualities is their being philautoi, linked to their being philozôoi (“cowardly”) and embracing mikropsuchia (“small- heartedness”), living for the useful, rather than kalon, more than they ought); Pol. 1263b2 (“to philauton is rightly blamed; this is not ‘loving oneself’ (τὸ φιλεῖν
ἑαυτόν) but ‘loving more than one ought’ (τὸ μᾶλλον ἢ δεῖ φιλεῖν), as in to philochrêmaton, for every one at least loves (φιλοῦσί), so to speak, each of these things”; Mag. mor. 1212a28–33

(the philautos does every thing for his own advantage; the phaulos [bad person] is philautos; the opposite personage is the philagathos [b19]). At Rh. 1371b20–21, Aristotle instances a weak rehabilitation (or neutralization) of the term: every one is more or less philautos, in that all get plea sure from what is their own— their words, works, honor, or children.

44 Cf. Moore 2015b, 239–44. In favor of Platonic authorship: Calogero 1938; Friedländer

1964, 108–16.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 83
further evidence about Greek phil- prefixed terms. To that we now turn, focus-
ing on the earliest known phil- prefixed terms.

Testing Aristotle’s Theory on Pre- Classical Greek

Phil- Prefixed Names

Greek has upwards of 900 phil- prefixed names.45 By the period of Aris-
tophanes, many phil- prefixed names could be heard as though they were
built from a verbal first ele ment, philein, and an objective second ele ment,
the accusative argument of the verb. The verb philein would, by that time,
be understood attitudinally as “to desire,” “to like,” or “to love.” But what
late fifth- or early fourth- century BCE speakers could hear in a term need
not be what seventh- or sixth- century BCE speakers heard. It has long been
appreciated by scholars that in Greek phil- prefixed names up through the
middle of the fifth century BCE, the phil- first ele ment would not yet have
been understood verbally. It would have been understood instead as a bahu-
vrihi compound meaning “to whom x is philon (‘dear’ or ‘one’s own’).”46

In that pre- classical period, philon would not have the attitudinal inflection
of enduring desire that it later acquired. It meant, depending on grammati-
cal role and context, dear, united, friend, shared, con ve nient, trustworthy,
benign, welcome, par tic u lar, relevant, or inherent.47 This is the realization

Burkert had in his 1960 paper.48 Modern scholarship has sought the date by
which the first ele ment came to sound dif fer ent, and why.49 But parties to
this investigation agree that the shift begins only after Pythagoras and Hera-
clitus, and finishes later; so the coinage of philosophos predated the shift to
the classical paradigm.

We will test Aristotle’s hypothesis by looking at phil- prefixed terms attested by the beginning of the fifth century BCE. This means nine in Homer, a half-dozen in sixth- century BCE poetry, and some from Pindar.50 That they lack
an explicit attitudinal component (the “desire for”) has been observed in pre-
vious scholarship. It has not been appreciated, however, that we cannot take
the second ele ment transparently, as though it simply stood in for the similarly

45 Landfester 1966, 108; LSJ s.vv. φιλάβουλος– φιλωρείτας.

46 Cipriano 1990, 43, 97–100; Meissner 2006, 168–70; Tribulato 2015, 168, 334–35.

47 Landfester 1966, 95–107; Hooker 1987; Cipriano 1990, 14–24; Intrieri 2013, 213–25.

48 Burkert 1960, 172–73; see chapter 1, p. 22.

49 Especially Osthoff 1878, 145–60; Landfester 1966; Cipriano 1990, 25–38, 97–110.

50 Cunliffe 1963, 408–9; Cipriano 1990, 48–55.

84 CH A PTER 3
spelled noun.51 Indeed, the second ele ment points rather obliquely at what the
name is about. Nor has it been appreciated that most of these names are origi-
nally or generally other- applied epithets, not self- descriptions.52 Fi nally, and
most importantly, it has not been appreciated that many of these names are
not used in congratulation or approval; many include a bemused, skeptical, or
even censorious judgment. Thus in the following analy sis, I will discuss the
presence of these four features: (i) the lack of explicit attitudinal component;

(ii) the lack of concern for an object transparently referred to by the cognate
noun of the second ele ment; (iii) the status as an epithet, adjective, or name ap-
plied to other people; and (iv) a built-in evaluation of the person or state tagged
with the word.

I turn first to Homer. Parentheses surround the En glish translation of the
noun related to the word’s second ele ment.

Φιλήρετμος (“oar”). Homer used this epithet, which may look to us like

“oar- loving,” for the Phaeacians and the Taphians. The Phaeacians had won-
derful seafaring skills, as their other epithets, “famed for ships” (ναυσικλυτός),

“with long oars” (δολιχήρετμος), and “convoying safely” (πομπός ἀπήμων)

confirm.53 The Taphians were pirates (ληϊστῆρες) who raided and traded
in metals and slaves.54 Both would be seen as repeatedly rowing, although
the Taphians surely would row with a frequency that would make the coastal
peoples comfortable. The adjective, even in non- formulaic contexts, cannot se-
riously be taken to impute to these groups a feeling of plea sure, enjoyment,
or desire for oars, or indeed any attitude at all toward the oars. Oars are mere
instruments for traveling by ship—an impor tant instrument, to be sure, as the
point at which a human interacts, often with great toil, with a rowed vessel.

The sense of the name must be something like “using oars an awful lot,”

“engaging in the hard task of rowing more than one would think reasonable.”

“Oar” stands in for a social practice, naval rowing, and the name signifies a
way of life that accommodates that normally unpleasant or incidental institu-
tion. Philêretmos may even have something bemused about it, as coming first

51 While Cipriano 1990, 107, notes in passing that the dif fer ent semantic connotations the second member can assume does determine the pos si ble meanings of the compound, it does not play an impor tant part in the analy sis, despite the fact that in her book she is ultimately compar-ing philologos to logophilos (cf. 8).

52 This fact is made little of by Cipriano 1990, 97, even when she notes that phil- compounds tend to be ste reo typical epithets, poetic descriptions of abstract entities, and adjectives applicable to large sets of individuals.

53 φιλήρετμος: Od. 5.386, 8.96, 8.386, 8.535, 11.349, 13.36; excellence in seafaring: e.g., 7.34–36; their other epithets: 8.191, 8.369, 8.566, 13.166, 13.174; useful discussion: Louden 2011, 2.649–51.

54 Epithet: Od. 1.181, 1.419; piracy: 15.427, 16.426.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 85
from the mouth of a landlubber; it is hard to imagine why a Phaeacian would
deem himself philêretmos, or to whom he would express himself in this way.

Maybe the term was coined by some overland transportation guild, smirk-
ing at the Phaeacians’s reliance on the irregular seas. Or it was first used for

Taphian- like pirates, bemusedly marking their avarice by highlighting how
much harder they pull at the oars than at their own work.

Φιλομμειδής (“smiling”). This epithet applies almost exclusively to Aph-
rodite, the goddess of sexual love, and only in early epic.55 It never picks out
a psychological state.56 Nor does it suggest that Aphrodite has any attitude
toward smiles as such. It refers instead to the per for mance of seduction she
personifies, with its characteristically coy smiling.57 Akin to a great many
epithets applied to her that mean “scheming” (ποικιλόφρων, δολοφρονέουσα,
δολιόφρων, δόλιος, δολομήδες, δολόπλοκος), though in pos si ble contrast to a
pair connected to crowns (φιλοστεφάνος, εὐστέφανος), this one appears to have
a notably negative inflection in meaning as “deceptive” or “untrustworthy.”58

Hesiod pretends to hear this epithet as φιλο(μ)μηδέα, where the second ele-
ment comes from μήδεα (“genitals,” though also “ploys”); this would account
for the rest of his line, ὅτι μηδέων ἐξεφαάνθη (“ because she came forth from
genitals,” Theog. 200). This would imply not “lover of genitals” but “charac-
terized in an impor tant way with reference to the genitals”— and perhaps with
the double entendre on Aphrodite’s relevance for sexuality. (Even were the
second ele ment μῆδος, it would prob ably actually be the homonym “mind.”)

Hesiod’s etymological play suggests that Greeks recognized at an early date
the nontransparency of phil- prefixed terms, and thus that their meaning is not
to be found solely in a naïve decomposition of the compound.

Φιλοψευδής (“lies”). Zeus is called this a single time in the Homeric poems,
where he faces accusations of misrepresenting his allegiances ( Il. 12.164). But 55 Il. 3.424, 4.10, 5.375, 14.211, 20.40; Od. 8.362; Hom. Hymn Aphr. 5, 49, 56, 65, 155; Ηes. Theog.

200, 990; Hes. fr. 247.1; Cypr. 5.1 EGF. It is once used for Glauconome, an other wise unknown Nereid (Hes. Theog. 256; cf. Apollod. Bibl. 1.2.7).

56 Boedeker 1974, 20–36, contra Beekes 2010, s.v. φίλος, who defines philommeidês as “with a friendly smile.”

57 Faulkner 2008, 92.

58 Jackson 2010, 157: It is used “most often when Aphrodite is being shamed or subordi-
nated on account of her association with sexuality”; “Zeus, by belittling Aphrodite and encouraging Athena, seeks to replace Aphrodite’s model of excessively intimate interaction with Athena’s more appropriate model of friendship” (161). Cf. Boedeker 1974, 35; Friedrich 1982, 105; Bouchard 2015. Φιλοστεφάνος ( Hom. Hymn Dem. 102) is obviously not a matter of “loving crowns” per se; Boedeker 1974, 21, thinks that this word is originally a formulaic invention to deal with a metrical puzzle, drawing from φιλομμειδής and εὐστέφανος, not part of the overall epithet system, which would explain its oddly positive nature. Might it have originally meant

“hungry for victory,” “vainglorious,” or “vain”? Eustephanos: Οd. 8.267. The others are cited at Bouchard 2015, 13.

86 CH A PTER 3
he is not accused of enjoying such repre sen ta tions or of preferring lies in some
general way.59 The charge is that Zeus is characteristically deceptive about
his intentions. Thus “lies” themselves are not even at issue, but rather a very
specific thing about which one might not speak truly. Aristotle clarifies Hom-
er’s usage when he later uses the word to refer to people who are not sincere
about their capacities, who either boast about or underrepresent them ( Eth.

Eud. 1234a3). Thus the word is not used for those who get plea sure from lying, or even for those who simply lie often.

Φιλοκέρτομος (“jeering”). In the Odyssey, Ctessipus, son of Polytherses,
is characterized by jeering and disrespectful be hav iors associated with jeer-
ing (22.287). Odysseus gives no reason to believe that Ctessipus enjoys jeer-
ing. We learn too little about Ctessipus himself to know whether he actually
jeers frequently. We know only that this is a negative other- applied name.

Φιλοπτόλεμος (“war”). Vari ous peoples are said to be warlike: the Myr-
midons, Trojans, Greeks, and Leleges.60 Whether they like or desire war is
not at issue, nor even “war” as such. These groups are distinguished by iras-
cibility or a proclivity to fighting, and perhaps do not make the normal efforts
to ensure peace. None of Homer’s characters applies this term to himself. It is
used as an epithet here; later lit er a ture makes clear its negative connotation.

Φιλοκτέανος (“possession”). The Atrides are said to be “most covetous”

( Ιl. 1.122). While they may indeed enjoy their possessions more than most
do, presumably the point is neither to identify their enjoyment nor their pos-
sessions as such, but (outside Homer’s formulaic use) to censure a grasping
spirit, especially of money or land, but really of what ever can be competed for
or sought out.

Φιλόξενος (“stranger”). People referred to as “hospitable” may enjoy the
com pany of or the hosting of strangers or foreigners.61 This adjective does not
determine whether philoxenoi enjoy the com pany of strangers qua foreigners (as do “host families” for high school students from abroad), or are fastidious
about meeting the obligations of xenia, or are simply broadly accommodating.

It is prob ably safest to assume something like the second, that it has to do with
good participation in xenia, rather than some attitude toward xenoi per se.

Φιλοπαίγμων (“play”). In the first extant usage of this word, a dance tune
is called “sportive.”62 Presumably it is used meta phor ically, on the model of

59 Earlier in the Iliad Zeus was said not to help liars (οὐ γὰρ ἐπὶ ψευδέσσι πατὴρ Ζεὺς ἔσσετ᾽
ἀρωγός, Il. 4.235).

60 Myrmidons: Il. 16.65, 23.129; Trojans: 16.90, 16.835, 17.194; Greeks: 17.224, 19.269, 20.351; Leleges: 21.86.

61 Od. 6.121, 8.576, 9.176, 13.202.

62 Od. 23.134.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 87
people enjoying play. Humans who are philopaigmones could enjoy play and
childishness, but they might not.63

I will now cite a few non- Homeric phil- prefixed terms that are used
as mainly negative epithets that refer neither to a desire nor to the literal
object of some desire. Φιλαίματος (“blood”) describes Ares and Fear.64

These divinities surely do not enjoy blood itself; rather, they are distin-
guished by their connection to war, vio lence, and destruction. This epithet
seems negatively inflected in meaning. Φιλοδέσποτος (“master”) modifies
δῆμος (“ people”) in its first extant use.65 Here it is clearly pejorative; it is
as though the only way to describe the “subservience” of some people is
to imagine them, absurdly, as partial to their master. But the subservient
person doubtfully loves his master; he simply accommodates the wishes of
some authority. The man who is φιλοκερδής (“profit”) is similarly not to be
applauded.66 One would not want to be called φιλόμωμος (“blame”). In Si-
monides’s poem we find a disavowal of the name: “I am not censorious.”67

Thus this is a negative other- applied name, used defensively here. And once
again, there is little sense that the censorious person likes or desires to blame; the point is rather that he is characterized by be hav ior that can be
interpreted as blaming.

Fi nally, a few more poetic uses that (i) lack an attitudinal component, (ii)

lack a literal object, and (iii) are other- applied epithets: φιλάγλαος (“splen-
dor”), meaning “resplendent”/“vain,” said of Agrigento (Pind. Pyth. 12.1);
φιλόμαχος (“ battle”), meaning “pugnacious,” said of the race of Perses (Pind.

fr. 164); and φιλόνεικος (“victory”), meaning “contentious,” denied by a
speaker (Pind. Ol. 6.19).

The preceding analy sis shows that the phil- prefix generates fairly opaque
names. These names caricature some distinctive personal quality. Walter Burk-
ert glossed the phil- prefix as “close acquaintance and familiarity with.” We
see that this is much too concrete, narrow, and selective.68 A truer formula-

63 Φιλοφροσύνη ( Il. 1.256) appears not to be a phil- prefixed term (which would explain the difficulty faced by Cipriano 1990, 43n21); it seems to mean something like “disposed to treating others as philos.”

64 Anac. fr. 100D.3; Aesch. Sept. 45; cf. Eur . Phoen. 174; [ Rhes. ] 932.

65 Thgn. 849.

66 Thgn. 199; cf. Pind. Isthm. 2.6.

67 Simon. fr. 4.22.

68 Cf. Chroust 1964a, 427n16 and 432n28. Hadot 2002, 16, is too narrow in saying that the prefix “designate[s] the disposition of a person who found his interest, plea sure, or raison de vivre in devoting himself to a given activity,” and gives only the examples of philoposia (not extant from before Xenophon’s Memorabilia [1.2.22] and Plato’s Phaedo [87e10], where it has distinctly negative connotation) and philotimia (which LSJ s.v. says is “frequently in bad sense in early writers,” as we have already seen).

88 CH A PTER 3
tion, were a unified formulation required, would be “marked somehow by a
counter- normative relation to, perhaps especially one of repetition.” The above
analy sis also shows that the second ele ment usually stands in for something
less concrete or natu ral than if it were the cognate in de pen dent word. Many
of these names come from legal contexts; to the above we can add φιλαίτιος

(“cause”) = “litigious”69 and φιλόψογος (“censure”) = “censorious.”70 Also,
from the field of economic relations: φιλάργυρος (“silver”) and φιλόπλουτος

(“wealth”) = “avaricious.”71 Others come from norms of warfare, servitude,
and competition. We can infer that the second ele ment— often a concrete ob-
ject (oar, smile, silver, soul)— stands for some conventional practice or sys-
tem (navy, seduction, monetary accumulation, protecting external values). In
every conventional practice, a participant must modulate his participation. He
must be involved to some degree: defending his property, seeking romantic
partners, or promoting the welfare of his hometown. That involvement is, in an
impor tant re spect, set by the common good it facilitates. Be involved too much,
however, and the directing good can come to seem to be merely one’s own pri-
vate good. One explains a person’s overwhelming helpfulness by diagnosing
the self- directed benefit; the public good is being sacrificed for the private
good. Criticism is difficult because participation in the conventional practice
is nonetheless impor tant. But criticism is also necessary because such partici-
pation must be corrected. The name- calling allowed by phil- prefix names
allows sensitive policing of these conventional practices. A name- caller can
seem simply to draw attention to a person’s participation in a neutral activity:

for example, “that guy is always filing legal motions; he’s a real motions- filer”

(φιλαίτιος). Since legal motions themselves are appropriate for many situations,
the name- caller is not criticizing harshly, in the way that using an obscene name
is. But since one’s relation to legal motions usually is not a matter for discus-
sion, calling attention to it by creating a name for it implies that the relation
is not merely notable; it is worrisome. An impor tant aim of making a name
for someone is to regulate be hav ior; and most regulation- worthy be hav ior is
problematic be hav ior.

A Legacy of Mycenaean Onomastics

Phil- prefixed names begin as other- applied terms. Personal names are also, in
a sense, other- applied terms—by parents of their children. Already in Homer

69 Aesch. Supp. 803.

70 Eur. El. 904, cf. Phoen. 198.

71 Soph. Ant. 1055; fr. 528; Eur. IT 411.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 88

9/18/19 1:20 PM

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 89
there are five: the famous Philoctêtês; Philoitios, Odysseus’s faithful herdsman;
the father and son Philêtor and Philêtoridês; and Philomêleidês, king of Les-
bos. Such phil- prefixed personal names are multiplied to the hundreds in the
classical and Hellenistic periods; even in Rome we know of thirty- three such
names.72 This formula predates Homer, too; in the Mycenaean period, there
are more than two dozen names that start with pi- ro- (𐀠 𐀫; Greek phil-); at least seventeen of them have second ele ments, not simply dependent suffixes.73

These personal names— which have been known only since the 1950s—do
not, however, simply add to the supply of phil- prefixed names suitable for our
analy sis. They may seem to be counterexamples to the Aristotelian position
that phil- prefixed names serve to point out some problematic disposition. It
would be surprising (though not impossible) for a parent to give a child a name
that refers to some dubious trait.

In fact these names may provide positive evidence for the theory outlined
here. Of the 2000 known Mycenaean personal names, wholly thirty percent
are compounds.74 Many of these names must have been coined in an appella-
tive environment that provided a range of apparent patterns on which to build.

Building on apparent patterns allows for mutations in morphosemantic under-
standing, which thus opens up new possibilities. It is hard to know exactly the
early meaning of the pi- ro- first ele ment, but let us suppose it was something like belongingness, dearness, or love.75 Imagine then (though without real
evidence) that a name like Pi- ro- pa- ta- ra > Φιλοπάτρα (“ancestor”) was coined to mean “[has a] loving ancestor.”76 But then imagine it came later
to be understood as “cares for her ancestor.” This new analy sis, applied to

72 Pape and Benseler 1911, 2.1616–32; Solin 2003, 1.161–73. Among names attested by the
sixth century BCE are Φιλόδημος (“the people”), Φιλόκωμος (“merry- making”), Φιλόλαος

(“the people”), Φιλόμβροτος (“mankind”), Φιλόμηλος (“herd”), Φιλόξενος (“host/guest”). See Tribulato 2015, 421–22.

73 Pi- ro (Φίλων), Pi- ro- i- ta (Φιλοίτας), Pi- ro- ka- te (Φιλογάθης or Φιλοκαρτής?), Pi- ro- na (Φιλώνα?), Pi- ro- ne- ta (Φιλονέστας, Φιλονείτας [“save, rescue”] or Φιλωνήτας [“price paid”]), Pi- ro- pa- ta- ra (Φιλοπάτρα [“ancestor”]), Pi- ro- pe- se- wa, Pi- ro- qa- wo, [.]pi- ro- qe- mo, Pi-ro- qo-[, Pi- ro- ta- wo, Pi- ro- te- ko- to, Pi- ro- we- ko (Φιλοῦργος [“work”]), Pi- ra- jo (Φιλαῖος), Pi-ra- ka- ra (Φιλάγρα), Pi- ra- ka- wo (Φιλάχαιϝος), Pi- ra- ki, Pi- ra- ki- jo (Φιλάρχιος?), Pi- ra- me- no (Φιλαμενός?), Pi- ra- qo, Pi- re- ta, Pi- ri- no (Φιλῖνος), Pi- ri- sa- ta (Φιλίστης), Pi- ri- ta (Φιλίστα), Pi- ri- ta- wo, Pi- ri- to- jo (Φίλιστος). For the conjectured Greek translations, see Aura Jorro 1993, 2.121–29, as well as Landau 1958, 165; Bartonek 1999, 123, 128.

74 See Ilievski 1983 for discussion.

75 On the Proto-Indo-European root, see Buck 1949, 1110; Watkins 2000, 60 s.v. prî; Rendich 2010, 188 s.v. phi-. Boisacq 1938, 1027, s.v. φίλος surveys earlier scholarship and declares the origins to be obscure.

76 For this transformation and more on compound personal names, see Meissner and Tribu-
lato 2002, 311, and generally Morpurgo Davies 2000.

90 CH A PTER 3

Pi- ro- we- ko > Φιλοῦργος (“work”), makes “hardworker” pos si ble. The range
of names is limited only by the combinations that could sound auspicious.

Mycenaean has no examples of pi- ro- ( phil-) words that are not proper
names. The limits of our documentary evidence and the fact that much of our
lexicon comes from bureaucratic lists and other materials may explain this
exclusion. But I conjecture that the negatively inflected adjectives, and indeed
the phil- prefixed adjectives in general, are derivative of the personal names.

Phil- prefixing, let us say, first served as a proper name creator. These names
were transparent to their coiners and perhaps to some parents when choos-
ing a name. After that, they became identifiers, not descriptions. This would
make phil- prefixing now appropriate for name- calling labels. It would have
the advantage of sounding positive ( because people call their children similar names) while potentially meaning quite the opposite ( because the instance of
name- calling is not one of christening but of norm policing). In other words,
to make a wry or bemused name that lacks the harshness of an insult, a per-
son could borrow the name- creating technique of phil- prefixing. The name’s
creation for someone who already has a proper name tips the hearers off to
its special (bemused or censorious) meaning. Because it was coined in order
to make such a negatively inflected name, we do not have to posit an original

“descriptive” or “neutral” or “positive” meaning. This theory would rescue

Aristotle’s view. It would also allow some phil- prefixed terms always to have
had positive evaluations as adjectivizations of actual proper names (on the
model of Philopatra, and maybe Philoxenus).77

Classical Reflection on Phil- Prefixed Names: A Corroboration

Aristophanes’s play of 422 BCE, the Wasps, opens with a comic set piece about
the formation of phil- prefixed name- calling names; it provides further cor-
roboration for the pre sent argument. The play dramatizes the obsession of its
phil- prefixed protagonist, Philocleon, with exercising the power that jury duty affords. Philoclean cannot get enough of jury duty; the action of the play involves his non- phil- prefixed son Bdelycleon’s attempts to curb his mania. The

77 An added consideration: extant Greek includes two philêso- prefixed words, both hapax forms found in Pindar: φιλησίμολπος ( Οl. 14.14), glossed at line 16 with another epithet of the Graces, ἐρασίμολπος (also a hapax; the terms here are defined by a scholiast as φίλη τῶν
μολπῶν and τῶν μολπῶν ἐρῶσα); and φιλησιστέφανος ( Pae. 1 fr. 52a.8), modifying a celebra-tory feast. Both words exist in versions without - ês- , suggesting this short- lived (?) compositional form derives from the more compact form, perhaps trying to avoid the negative overtone.

For reflections on this form, see Bréal 1897, 181–82; Gildersleeve 1885, xli– xlii.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 91
house hold’s slaves ask the audience to guess what trait they should ascribe to
the father.

XANTHIAS: . . . [Philocleon] is ill from a bizarre illness
that nobody will recognize or diagnose;
they’ll have to learn what it is from us. So: start guessing!

— Amynias here, son of Pronapses, claims the man
is a philokubos (“dice”).

SOSIAS: He’s talking nonsense, by Zeus,
judging the illness by his own symptoms!

XANTHIAS: True enough, though “philo- ” is the start of the evil.

Here next is Sôsias’ claiming to Derclyus that
the man is a philopotês (“drinking”).

SOSIAS: Not at all; since
that illness is an affliction of gentlemen.

XANTHIAS: And now Nicostratus of Scambonidae claims
the man to be a philothutês (“sacrifice”) or a philoxenos (“hosting”).

SOSIAS: By the dog, O Nicostratus, not a philoxenos; since Philoxenus is a bugger.

XANTHIAS: You’re all just driveling; you’re not going to find it;
if you’re really eager to know it, quiet down and listen:

I’ll tell you now what’s plaguing the master.

A philêliastês (“Eliaia”) is what he is, like none other,
passionate ( eraô) for this— judging— and he groans
unless he sits in the front row. (Ar. Vesp. 71–90)

Aristophanes seems to have coined the word philêliastês, combining the nam-
ing ele ment phil- and the name of the body of 6000 citizens from which indi-
vidual juries would be empanelled, the Eliaia.78 The word is an opaque label:

the slaves have to gloss it with a description, “passionate for judging.” It is also
evaluative, describing a bad state to be in (see “plaguing,” “groans”). It mim-
ics the other phil- terms treated in the lines above as the names of diseases (76, 80, 87).79 All are bemused slanders.

Taken compositionally, each of the phil- terms could seem simply to
imply that the second ele ment somehow characterizes the subject of the
term. Indeed, if phil- meant “love of,” and the second ele ment were taken
as it were directly or literally, the names could seem to mean the following:

“lover of dice [a game],” “lover of drinking [a way of staying hydrated],” “lover

78 On the Eliaia, see MacDowell 1986, 30.

79 Cf. Cipriano 1990, 39; Thorburn 2005.

92 CH A PTER 3
of sacrifice [a way to propitiate the gods],” “lover of hosting [a part of hospital-
ity],” and “lover of the jury [a venue of demo cratic practice].” But this is not
quite right. Philokubos means profligate gambling.80 Philopotês means wallowing in alcoholic excess.81 Philothutês means, at least here, acting piously
for the sake of eating the meat produced in the sacrifice; elsewhere it might
mean “acting superstitiously.”82 We have already seen philoxenos used without
moral indignation in Homer; here the use suggests that the term could apply
to those who throw de cadent parties, but also, jokingly and more pungently,
to those who purchase foreign male prostitutes in Athens.83 Each is, at least, a
way of calling a person out for his excessive engagement with a common social
institution: gambling, drinking, feasting, and partying. These names are hu-
morous because the positive- sounding second ele ment refers only indirectly
to the characteristic that the comedian is lambasting.

The word in ven ted by Aristophanes here follows this pattern. The jury is a
preexisting social institution, to which a person’s orientation must be rightly
modulated. The name philêliastês is funny because while its naïvely literal
reading— “somehow repeatedly concerned with the jury”— would be anodyne
and possibly trivially patriotic or demo cratic, its actual use, in name- calling,
expresses a counter- normative involvement with something that this social in-
stitution implies.84 It is not that Philocleon likes the jury pool, or likes it a lot,
or likes it in the wrong way. Philocleon’s attitude toward the jury pool itself is
not really at issue. The slaves point out that he likes to wield arbitrary coercive
power over others. He has access to this power when he is empanelled on a
jury. It is funnier and more poignant, however, to say that he is philêliastês
than that he enjoys abusing his civic power: phil- names point to some social

80 Aristotle uses the term, for which the Revised Oxford Translation provides “addicted to gaming” ( Phgn. 808a31), in a parallel with philoloidoros (“abusive,” 808a32), philogunaios (“fond of women,” 808a36), and philupnos (“somnolent,” 808b6). The Alcidamean Odysseus 27
pre sents the “ great badness” of dice: it harms the losers, ridicules the winners, and the proceeds are almost always spent straightaway.

81 Hdt. 2.174.1 expresses his low esteem of the Egyptian Amasis: “a philopotês and a real jester (φιλοσκώμμων) and never a get- down- to- business kind of guy”). Hippoc. Aer. 1 contrasts the ones who are “philopotai and eat multiple big meals and are indulgent” with those who exercise and labor and refrain from drinking. Antiphon the Sophist is cited to have said “nor to be called philopotês, seeming to neglect your business, having been drowned in wine” (μήτε
φιλοπότην κληθῆναι καὶ δοκεῖν τὰ πράγματα καταμελεῖν ὑπὸ οἴνου ἡσσώμενου), B76/D72.

Pendrick 2002, 422–23, is misleading when he says that Aristophanes, at least here, treats the term “as a virtue,” but see his note on ancient accusations of philopotia.

82 Starkie 1897 ad 82.

83 Cf. Gilula 1983, contra MacDowell 1971 ad 84.

84 Cf. Konstan 1985, 27–28, 31–33: humor comes about only if an other wise salutary desire

“is represented as a pure obsession, detached, in the final analy sis, from the acknowledged public value of its goal.”

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 93
institution in which one can choose (wrongly) how involved one might be. The
playful slaves can more safely evaluate their master negatively by building a
name on a “positive” institution and letting name- calling patterns induce the
listener to understand their negative judgment.

The Second Ele ment, Soph- : A Focus on Sophoi (“Sages”)

I have so far argued that the term pre sent in the second ele ment of a phil- prefixed name refers synecdochally to a social practice in which the person so
named has excessively or at least markedly involved himself. But we need to
identify the term before we can seek out the relevant social practice and exces-
sive involvement. This may be easy for “oars” or “coy smiles,” but is not for
the root soph- , whose related terms, sophos and sophia, underwent radical changes from their earliest attestation in epic to their period of greatest philosophical familiarity, the Athenian fourth century BCE. Even if Plato and Aris-
totle did not themselves innovate when they treated sophia as a comprehensive
wisdom concerning the nature of the world, more than a century had passed
since the likely coinage of philosophos; and given the term sophos’s profound changes in meaning from 600 to 500 BCE, we can allow a change of similar magnitude during the subsequent century, one marked by ever- increasing
consciousness of intellectual practice and status. Thus we cannot retroject the
picture of sophia we see in their works; we need instead to historicize and
study the words at the relevant time.

At the end of the sixth century BCE, the term sophos refers especially
to the insight appropriate to giving advice for living, especially at the po-
liti cal level, though also at the social, domestic, and personal levels. By that
period, sophoi had as archetypes the Sophoi, “Sages,” of two generations
earlier, intellectually and verbally prestigious con sul tants to cities and their
denizens. The second ele ment of the term philosophos points to some social
practice for which sophoi play a key role, and to which philosophoi could be judged excessively or at least markedly and repeatedly involved. This surely
includes giving guidance about living well, with the presumption of epis-
temic authority, with something like the goal of achieving the elite social
status of the Sages.

We must begin with the Archaic background, where sophos means excel-
lent at a specific skill, and then Theognis, where it broadens to mean excellent
at living and advising. In Simonides and Pindar we get clear evidence for the
term sophos as the valorization for those giving grave advice, typically with
existential, social, or po liti cal moment, and not just in technical categories.

94 CH A PTER 3

Epigraphical use shows conservativism, but it too eventually recapitulates the
shift from specific skills to a general condition of excellence in living. We can
rely little on the evidence from Heraclitus, who as we saw in the last chapter
counts rather as a radical epistemologist than as a passive recorder of language,
but the use of sophos in his fragments corroborates the shift in meaning we
will have already seen. I close this section by hypothesizing the origins of

Sophoi legends, which we can place in the century or more before Plato’s Protagoras, which provides the first extant reference to the “Seven Sages,” and
thus to the period of probable coinage of the term philosophos— I look to the
polis system, Persian incursion, and Babylonian precursors. Before turning to
the lexical evidence, however, we will study a few late classical discussions of
early uses of the term sophos.

Diodorus’s story about Pythagoras presented philosophoi as emulators of a
certain kind of person. This story assumes that the soph- second ele ment does
not refer simply to sophia conceived as “wisdom,” a superlative degree of intelligent competence in living, but to membership in an elite social class with arche-
typal Sophoi, “Sages.” The historical- linguistic question is whether by the time of the coinage of philosophos, in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE, the adjective/noun sophos or the abstract noun sophia could and commonly did refer to such a class. It is well known that by the fourth century BCE, Greeks saw in
their sixth- century BCE past a cultural category of Sophos, “Sage,” most recog-
nizable in the stories of the Seven Sophoi.85 But the Seven Sophoi are attested for the first time only in Plato’s Protagoras (343a1– b3), written in the early fourth century BCE. This has led some people to believe that he in ven ted the category.86

This view is not utterly implausible, given that, as we will see, the term sophos
appears to have meant “technically skilled” early in its career.87

Yet there are historiographical reasons for accepting the basic real ity of

Diodorus’s story. In the first- generation Peripatetic Demetrius of Phalerum’s
chronological List of Archons, which is concerned to synchronize impor tant

Greek events, he says that Thales was the first to be called (a) sophos, dating
this naming to the archonship of Damasias in 582 BCE, and that it is from that

85 Recently, Martin 1993; Sharp 2004; Nightingale 2007, 173–78; Tell 2011, 15–17; Kurke

2011.86 Fehling 1985, critiqued by, among others, Martin 1993, 112–13; Bollansée 1998a and 1999; Leão 2010b, esp. 413–14; Engels 2010, 9–40; YC 1.267–71.

87 The etymology of sophos is famously confounded; Boisacq 1938, 888 (with bibliography showing slight consensus around “seeing clearly”); Buck 1949, 1213–14; Frisk 1954, 4.754; Chantraine 1968 s.v.; Beekes 2010, s.v.; Rendich 2010, 268–69 (“good illumination”); Floyd 2012

(“sharp,” “wedge”); Vernhes 2014a and 2014b; Sauge 2014, n10 (related to τεύχω, τυγχάνω).

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 95
date that the others of the Seven Sophoi came to be so called.88 If this story is true— and all or most of the Seven Sophoi did live in the early sixth century

BCE89— then the concept sophos, as a laudable status to be granted or recog-
nized, would have existed from the time of the Sages themselves. Thus the
idea would predate the coinage of philosophos, and allow the formation of
a recognized status for which I argue. Unfortunately, the story does not say
who certified Thales as sophos, or for what, even if we suspect that it was for
winning a verbal competition at a Panhellenic festival.90 Given Demetrius’s
calendrical preoccupations, he may simply have meant that Thales came to

Panhellenic prominence, for example for predicting an eclipse, around 582

BCE. Yet we need not doubt Demetrius’s story altogether. Demetrius col-
lected and published “Sayings of the Seven Sophoi,” revealing his explicit
interest in the sophoi as Sophoi (Stob. 3.1.172). Earlier writers anticipated his account of Thales and his colleagues. In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates,
speaking of Thales and others, says that the “so- called Seven . . . came to-
gether and dedicated the first fruits of their sophia to Apollo at his temple
in Delphi.”91 This might imply that the Oracle claimed Thales to be sophos
or sophôtatos, as it claimed of Socrates in the fifth century BCE (and that

Chaerephon’s idea to ask about Socrates came from such stories circulat-
ing in the fifth century BCE), or that at the Pythian games, founded at that
period, Thales won an award or competition in something related to being

(what was then considered) sophos. Andron of Ephesus, a con temporary
of Plato, agreed that “ those also denoted Sophoi were contemporaneous
with Thales.”92 Andron is responsible for one of the famous “competition
of the Sophoi” stories circulating in Greece: “the Argives gave a tripod as
an award for virtue to the sophôtatos of the Greeks; Aristodemus of Sparta

88 DL 1.22: πρῶτος σοφὸς ὠνομάσθη . . . καθ᾽ ὃν καὶ οἱ ἑπτὰ σοφοὶ ἐκλήθησαν. For discus-
sion of this story, see Mosshammer 1976; Leão 2010a, 28–31; Rossetti 2015a, 214–21; and on Peripatetic research into the Seven Sophoi, see Fortenbaugh 2014, 115–19. Compare the story found at Hdt. 2.160.

89 Hellenistic chronographers dated the apogee of the Seven to 585, at the midpoint of Alyattes’s reign, when Thales supposedly predicted the eclipse.

90 DL 1.29–30 attributes to the Academic Eudoxus of Cnius and to a certain Eunathus of

Miletus the claim that a friend of Croesus is the one who honored Thales as wisest of the Greeks.

91 Pl. Prt. 343a5– b2 (for discussion see Leão 2010b). Pind. fr. 209 may provide evidence for a provenance of this story from at least the early fifth century BCE: τοὺς φυσιολογοῦντας
ἔφη Πίνδαρος· ἀτελὴ σοφίας καρπὸν δρέπ(ειν) (“the physiologists, says Pindar, ‘pick wisdom’s unripe fruit’ ”). Ιf only the second half is Pindaric, we won der to whom Pindar originally referred; but he seems to have in mind people related to but worse than those who pick sophia when ripe, presumably the sophoi themselves.

92 Clem. Strom. 1.129.4: συνεχρόνισαν δὲ οἱ συγκαταλεγέντες σοφοὶ τῷ Θαλεῖ. Andron’s dates: Bollansée 1998b.

96 CH A PTER 3
won, but he gave it to Chilon” (DL 1.30–31). Other tellers claim that a golden
tripod drinking- cup was found and given to a Sophos for his reputed wisdom,
but then passed along to other Sophoi out of modesty, and eventually dedi-
cated to Apollo in Delphi. Yet another version, apparently partway between

Andron’s and these, posits a single person awarding the prize to the wisest of
the Greeks, the owner ship transferred from one to another, and then dedicated
to Apollo or, on Apollo’s request, left with the final recipient. Though we know
these folktales only from the early fourth century BCE, their variety points to
a long and early provenance for the concept of sophos and an archetypal class
of Sophoi.93 Whether the concept goes all the way back to 582 BCE, as a literal
reading of Demetrius requires, remains uncertain. We must instead assess the
meaning of sophos across its earliest uses, to see when it could designate the
kind of widely prized practical competence represented by the (Seven) Sophoi.

We will find that it in fact does designate this by Pythagoras’s era, the end
of the sixth century BCE, and thus becomes available to be built into a phil-
prefixed name that means what Diodorus’s presumably fourth- century BCE
source took it to mean.

Evolving Pre- Classical Uses of Sophos

In the earliest extant uses of sophos, the term refers to laudable competence
in a to- be- specified practice. Archilochus, in the seventh century, speaks of
a “good fisherman(?) and sophos pi lot.”94 Homer speaks of a sophos builder (τέκτων) and of a builder who knows all (pertinent) sophiai.95 Hesiod uses the
related verb in reference to skill at seafaring.96 The Homeric Margites, writ-
ten by the time of Archilochus’ adulthood, has a man who is neither digger nor
plowman, “nor indeed sophos in any other way, falling short in all technai”

93 Hes. Op. 657 testifies to the awarding of tripods to poets; see Bollansée 1998a; Kurke 2011, 110–11; Verhasselt forthcoming, §3. Hdt. 8.124.1–2 says that after the victory at Salamis, Themistocles was “reputed wisest” (ἐδοξώθη . . . σοφώτατος) and received a wreath from the Spartans for his wisdom (σοφίης). Isoc. Antid. 313 says that Solon was the first Athenian to receive the name “sophist” (λαβόντα τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν ταύτην [sc. σοφιστής]); since Isocrates refers to the Seven Sophoi as the Seven Sophistai ( Antid. 235), he too implies an early tradition of deeming people exemplarily sophos.

94 Fr. 211 W: τρίαιναν ἐσθλὸς καὶ κεβερνήτης σοφός. The sophos- pilot trope arises again at Aesch. Supp. 770. The meaning of τρίαιναν is unclear; cf. LSJ s.v. A (“three- pronged fish- spear,”

“the badge of Poseidon”) against Edmonds 1931 ad loc. (“steersman”).

95 Hom. Il. 23.712 (σοφὸς ἤραρε τέκτων, a variant reading found in Philoponus and referred to in Eustathius’s comments on Iliad 15.412 [instead of κλυτὸς]; see “Homerus” F2 EGF); Il.

15.411–12 (πάσης | εὖ εἰδῇ σοφίης). On Homeric tektôn see YC 1.46–50.

96 Hes. Op. 649 (οὔτε τι ναυτιλίης σεσοφισμένος οὔτε τι νηῶν); see YC 1.162–69.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 97

(fr. 2 W).97 Sophiai—or more properly, ways of being sophos— are differentiated in the way technai are.98 There is no being sophos simpliciter. Assume, contrafactually, that there is a state of sophos toioutôi, “sophos in what ever.”

This would make sophoi or sophoi andres mean something like “profession-
als.” We could imagine a class of professionals— especially when doing mac-
roeconomics or social theory— but not of the Seven Professionals. So it does
not yet mean anything like “Sage.”

By the sixth century BCE the use of sophos changes drastically. Theognis (fl.

544 BCE) writes that the sophos man can spot counterfeit gold and silver.99

He speaks not of an expert or professional in metallurgy but of the person who,
with a worldly sensibility, sees through deceit and confusion. Elsewhere The-
ognis uses sophos and sophia to refer to this worldliness and a competence with re spect to human nature, opposites of a credulous naïveté or social ignorance. Theognis does not conceptualize or typify sophoi as Sages. But he does
use the term sophos to refer collectively to qualities that the Greeks came to
apply to the Sages: keen judgment about others, the wherewithal to persuade
them, and a self- knowledge that amounts to turning that social sensitivity on
oneself.100 Sophos takes this most general form in the “Ages of Man” poem
by Theognis’s con temporary, Solon: according to the poem, a sixty- year- old

97 Arist. Eth. Nic. 1141a15 + Clem. Strom. 1.25.1: τὸν δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἂρ σκαπτῆρα θεοὶ θέσαν οὔτ᾽
ἀροτῆρα | οὔτ᾽ ἄλλως τι σοφόν· πάσης δ᾽ ἡμάρτανε τέχνης. See Gostoli 2007, 11 and 75, for dating and analy sis of sophos as “expertise.”

98 Sophos again modifies tektôn in (Pindar’s?) description of Alcman, reconstructed as τέκτον(-) πα]ρθενίων σοφῶν, “carpenter of skillfully- produced maiden songs” (Alcm. fr. 13(a), first published in 1957). Alcm. fr. 2(i).1 and Anac. fr. 72.2 (μ᾽ οὐδὲν εἰδέναι σοφόν) have sophos in terms of horse manship (the latter meta phor ically for the skill of sexual conquest). Bacchyl.

10.37–45 says that dif fer ent men take dif fer ent paths, specializing in dif fer ent “fields of knowledge” ( epistêmai), such that one man is sophos by sharing the honor of the Graces; one by having knowledge of prophecy; one by aiming an artful bow at boys; and one in animal husbandry, presumably including horse manship.

99 Thgn. 120: καὶ ἐξευρεῖν ῥᾴδιον ἀνδρὶ σοφῷ; cf. LSJ s.v. σοφός A.2, “worldly- wise.”

100 Thgn. 876: “the one having a mea sured wisdom” (μέτρον ἔχων σοφίης) knows that
wine deserves both praise and blame; this involves an appreciation of variable effects on people. 1074: the sophia that involves turning a versatile êthos toward one’s vari ous friends is better than “ great virtue” (and contrasted with inflexibility at 218). 563–65: one ought to learn from a good man who knows all sophiai sitting next to you whenever he says something sophos; apparently this means tips on how to live, not lessons in par tic u lar technical skills. 790: the narrator would substitute nothing for his “excellence in/and sophia” (ἀρετῆς
σοφίης), the cultivation of his mind among good people (μετὰ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐσθλὸν ἔχοιμι
νόον, 792), which must again refer to social competence. 502: drunkenness puts to shame the person previously sophos, which means either that it undoes one’s careful comportment or that it shows that that comportment and self- control do not go deep; see Ford 2002, 40–41, for context.

98 CH A PTER 3
lacks the power of speech and sophia for great acts of excellence that he once
had.101

In two poets who came of age (and thus linguistic maturity) in the late sixth
century BCE we see irrefutably the rise of the relevant concept of sophos as

Sage. Pindar (b. 518 BCE) has a delightfully paradoxical verse: “even about
the saying mêden agan [‘nothing in excess’] the sophoi spoke excessively!”102

In a victory ode from around 470 BCE, Pindar cites another maxim, “money,
money is the man”; joking that only those in great distress think this is true,
he dismisses such talk by acknowledging that his listener is sophos.103 Being
sophos thus means being familiar with universalizing maxims and their human
contexts of application.104 Alcaeus had already attributed this maxim to Aris-
todemus of Sparta, a man later to be considered one of the Seven Sages.105 In

462 BCE, Pindar pre sents a speech by Jason that begins with gnomic insight
about the minds of mortals, the priority of justice over deceit, the importance
of self- control, and the responsibility one must take for one’s eventual success,
and calls this a speech of “sophos words.”106

One reference, in Pindar’s Seventh Olympian, deserves close scrutiny
because it provides, if ambiguously, the closest we might find to an origin of
the idea of the Seven Sages, the group mentioned in Diodorus’s Pythagoras
story. As part of the epinician’s cele bration of the Rhodian tyrant Diagoras,

Pindar narrates the island’s founding myth: Helius fathered with Rhodos the
sons who were the “seven wisest in thought of that earlier generation of men”

(ἑπτὰ σοφώτατα νοήματ᾽ ἐπὶ προτέρων ἀνδρῶν παραδεξαμένους | παῖδας, Ol.

7.72–73). This provocative collocation of “seven,” “wisest,” and “ earlier gen-
eration” correlates with the background conditions appropriate to the rise of
a concept of Seven Sophoi.107 Earlier in the poem Pindar twice mentioned

101 Sol. fr. 27.16. See Noussia- Fantuzzi 2010, 369–90, esp. 387–88.

102 Pind. Hymn 1 fr. 35b: σοφοὶ δὲ καὶ τὸ μηδὲν ἄγαν ἔπος αἴνησαν περισσῶς.

103 Pind. Isthm. 2.10–12: “χρήματα χρήματ᾽ ἀνήρ” | ὃς φᾶ κτεάνων θ᾽ ἁμα λειφθεὶς καὶ
φίλων. | ἐσσὶ γὰρ ὦν σοφός.

104 Pind. Pyth. 3.80–84 also treats of the depth of insight needed for understanding gnomic insight, with four epistemic terms (though none are sophos- group terms): “Hieron, if you know correctly how to comprehend the epitome(?) of sayings (εἰ δὲ λόγων συνέμεν κορυφάν, Ἱέρων, ὀρθὰν ἐπίστᾳ), then having learned (μανθάνων) the ancient ones (προτέρων), you understand (οἶσθα): [a gnomic statement found in Hom. Il. 24.527–530]”; on κορυφάν as either “sum total,”

“sense,” or “height of,” see LSJ s.v. II.1–2 with Ford 2002, 79 (who translates “a choice part”).

105 Alcaeus fr. 360 PLF: χρήματ᾽ ἄνηρ, πένιχρος δ᾽ οὐδεὶς πέλετ᾽ ἔσλος (though with spelling of οὐδεὶς at DL 1.31).

106 Pind. Pyth. 4.138–41: σοφῶν ἐπέων . . . ἐντὶ μὲν θνατῶν φρένες ὠκύτεραι | κέρδος
αἰνῆσαι πρὸ δίκας δόλιον τραχεῖαν ἑρπόντων πρὸς ἔπιβδαν ὅμως· | ἀλλ᾽ ἐμὲ χρὴ καὶ σὲ
θεμισσαμένους ὀργὰς ὑφαίνειν λοιπὸν ὄλβον; cf. Dithyramb 2 fr. 70b.24.

107 On groups of seven in Greek my thol ogy, see Roscher 1904, 4–53 (20–21 on Helius) and Gernet and Boulanger 1970, 82. Bresson 1979, 32–33, 41, 121, and Verdenius 1972, 23, 27, deny

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 99
sophos- group terms, both times in reference to a generalized human excel-
lence.108 All the while, Pindar uses the poem to retail a two- tier provision
of the goods of civilization: first Athena’s technai, especially in pottery and
culture, and then Helius’s sophôtatoi, implicated in Rhodian po liti cal suc-
cess, in par tic u lar in the founding of three polities.109 Zeno of Rhodes (mid-
second century BCE) clarifies that this myth treats Rhodes as the cradle of all
civilization— including the techniques of learning, astrology, navigation, and
time- keeping— even of Egypt, which served merely as high ground for their
discoveries when they were flooded out.110 This story is in turn quite like the
account the Hellenistic Babylonian historian Berossus, which involves flood-
prediction, burial of writings, and a sail to safety,111 and another Babylonian
account of Seven Babylonian sages mentioned below. Thus, since we know
of no Rhodian my thol ogy of Seven Sophoi (or Sophôtatoi) before Pindar, and Zeno of Rhodes’s account seems to be in some way an elaboration of Pindar’s,
it is pos si ble that Pindar himself came up with this formulation, influenced

(if indirectly) by Babylonian ideas. The efficacy of Pindar’s mythmaking is
well- known.112 The fact that Olympian 7 was famous for being inscribed in gold
a reference here to the Seven Sophoi on the—to my mind, weak— grounds that whereas Sages have moral wisdom, Helius’s sons have technical ability (Farnell 1932, 55, believes that when Pindar, in line 53, refers to sophia he means the artist’s skill, but does not coordinate this with line 72), whereas Hirzel (cited in Martin 1993, 127n45) entertains the idea. For disagreements about the meaning of the line itself, including the source and relative superiority of the sons’

wisdom, see Paley 1868, 36n2; Seymour 1889, 116; Fennell 1893, 81; Wilamowitz- Moellendorff 1922, 366–68; Fernandez- Galiano 1956, 228; and Gentili 2013, 495. For the founding myth of Rhodes, see EGM 2.591–93. We know about Helius’s seven sons only from this poem and DS

5.57.1, where their excellence in “astrology” and thus in navigation and meteorology is noted (οἱ
δ᾽ Ἡλιάδαι διάφοροι γενηθέντες τῶν ἄλλων ἐν παιδεία διήνεγκαν καὶ μάλιστ᾽ ἐν ἀστρολογίᾳ.

εἰσηγήσαντο δὲ καὶ περὶ τῆς ναυτιλίας πολλὰ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ὥρας διέταξαν).

108 First, Pindar says that even someone sophos can lose his mind (αἱ δὲ φρενῶν ταραχαί

| παρέπλαγξαν καὶ σοφόν) but then still go to the Oracle ( Ol. 7.30–31); Pindar is thinking of the self- controlled person who, while imperfect and sub- divine, recognizes where authority and prudence lie. Second, Pindar defends the excellence of sophia— here associated though not identified with craftsmanship—as free of the deception or inauthenticity such apparent skill might be thought to involve (δαέντι δὲ καὶ σοφία μείζων ἄδολος τελέθει, 53).

109 Pind. Ol. 7.74–76: ἀπάτερθε δ᾽ ἔχον | διὰ γαῖαν τρίχα δασσάμενοι πατρωίαν, | ἀστέων
μοῖραν, κέκληνται δέ σφιν ἕδραι. This account appears to presage Protagoras’s “ Great Speech”

about Prometheus and Epimetheus in Plato’s Protagoras (320c8–323d2), in its reference to προμαθέος αἰδώς ( Ol. 7.44; see Moore 2015a, 408–15), its two- tier promulgation of technical and then po liti cal capabilities, and the parallel between Epimetheus’s failure to distribute competencies to humans and the gods’ failure to distribute land to Helius (58), which is solved by cunning and foresight (61–70). It is notable that the Protagoras is also the dialogue in which the Seven Sages are first discussed in extant lit er a ture.

110 DS 5.55–57.

111 BNJ 680 F4b.

112 See Morgan 2015 for Pindar’s po liti cal efficacy.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 99

9/18/19 1:20 PM

100 CH A PTER 3
letters on the Temple of Athena Lindia makes this poem uniquely situated to
contribute to the idea of the Seven Sophoi.113

Aside from these speculations about the Seven in Olympian 7, the pas-
sage shows that, for Pindar, sophia refers to more than poetic skill, even
if it also means this in Pindar.114 Indeed, the poetic sophos might just be a
special case or instantiation of a generally good and insightful counselor.115

Even when sophos does refer specifically to poetic skill, Pindar’s poetic skill
has a deep and systemic function as po liti cal advice- giving.116 His greatest
poems are written to activate and manage the norms accepted by the lead-
ing great and mighties of early fifth- century BCE Greece. This advisory
competence is thought of as distinct from mechanical abilities or facts and
theories learned by rote, and thus it is considered as potentially universally
available. Pindar says that the sophoi have their knowledge by nature, in
contrast to those who merely learn, who are boisterous and chattering.117

This is consistent with later doxographers, who, like Diodorus, almost never
mention the education of the Sages.118 The wise, Pindar says, are deemed

113 Gorgon of Rhodes in Σ Pind. Ol. 7.

114 For sophos as referring to the poet’s skill in Pindar, see the references in Slater 1969, s.v. b, and discussion of pre-474 usages in YC 2.16–41. Earlier: Hes. fr. 256 (παντοίης σοφίης
δεδαηκότα, referring to the citharist Linus); Sol. fr. 13.52 (ἱμερτῆς σοφίης μέτρον ἐπιστάμενος, referring to that provided by the Olympian muses; see Ford 2002, 18; Noussia- Fantuzzi 2010, 184–85); Ibyc. S151.23 (καὶ τὰ μὲ[ν ἂν] Μοίσαι σεσοφι[σ]μέναι | εὖ Ἑλικωνίδ[ες] ἐμβαίεν

†λόγω[ι; see Murray 1981, 90n21; Verdenius 1983, 42n132; Woodbury 1985, 200); Stesichorus S89.7–8 PMG (δαεὶς . . . μέτ[ρα] τε καὶ σοφίαν του[; see Lehnus 1972). Alcm. 16.2–3 (context: those who would judge Alcman’s skill; but παρὰ σοφοῖσιν is marked uncertain); Hom. Hymn Herm. 483, 511. See generally Noussia- Fantuzzi 2010, 359–61. Sappho 56.2 PLF, in which Sappho says that she does not expect another maiden to surpass her addressee (or herself?) in sophia, has uncertain meaning.

115 Pindar thanks his divinely supported “wise mind” for his success in praising Hagesida-mus (ἐκ θεοῦ δ᾽ ἀνὴρ σοφαῖς ἀνθεῖ πραπίδεσσιν ὁμοίως, Ol. 11.10–11). Cf. Nem. 8.40–41: αὔξεται δ᾽ ἀρετά . . . <ἐν> σοφοῖς ἀνδρῶν. On a more banal level, later in Ol. 11, Pindar praises the Locrians in southern Italy for being welcoming, experienced in excellent things (καλῶν), martially accomplished, and “most wise” (ἀκρόσοφόν, 16–19).

116 Thus the vaunting by Xenophanes B2/D61 of the civic value of his own (poetic, reformative, intellectual) sophia over the physical prowess of athletes (lines 11–14); see Ford 2002, 49–52.

117 Pind. Ol. 2.87–88: σοφὸς ὁ πολλ᾽ εἰδῶς φυᾷ· μαθόντες δὲ λάβροι | παγγλωσσίᾳ; cf. Pyth.

1.42, where the wise are born that way (σοφοὶ . . . ἔφυν). In Ol. 9.28–29, the wise become so in accordance with the divine (ἀγαθοὶ δὲ καὶ σοφοὶ κατὰ δαίμον᾽ ἄνδρες | ἐγένοντ᾽); cf. Pyth.

5.12–13, 8.74–76.

118 In Diogenes Laertius, this means Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobulus, Periander, Anacharsis, and Epimenides. Thales is said to have had no teacher (οὐδεὶς δὲ αὐτοῦ καθηγήσατο, 1.27), except that he once spent time with (συνδείτριψεν) some priests in Egypt. Pherecydes, only sometimes taken to be a Sophos, learned from (διακήκοεν) Pittacus. As we saw earlier in this chapter, Diodorus Siculus provides educational anecdotes only for Solon. In some cases, Sophoi are said to have travelled (Szegedy- Maszak 1978; Montiglio 2000, 88–89; Ker 2000; Nightingale 2004; Kurke 2011, 112–15), but travel differs from study, lessons, or mentorship.

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 101
so by their fellow citizens when they have triumphed over difficulties; they
may have wisdom about the gods and justice unavailable to other mortals;
and they recognize the unpredictability of the future, the dangers of self-
interest, and the prudence of restraint.119 Putting this evidence together, we
see that Pindar has a sense of the sophoi as notable persons, including poet
advisors, characterized by the use of maxims and gnomic statements, where
their having sophia means living a successful way of life— one that does
not come explic itly through striving— and an understanding of fundamental
aspects of human life and practices.

In case any question remains that Pindar could have a notion of the sophoi
who use maxims and compete for position in a cultural- intellectual hierarchy,
we need only look to his older con temporary Simonides (ca. 556–468 BCE).

In his Ode to Scopas, which is analyzed in Plato’s Protagoras, Simonides
calls Pittacus sophos for having expressed the maxim “hard it is to be good

(χαλεπὸν ἐσθλὸν ἔμμεναι).”120 Pittacus came to be one of the legendary Seven,
and here Simonides seeks to dislodge him from his status as advice- giver to
the Greeks. Elsewhere Simonides challenges Cleobulus, another of the even-
tual Seven, on the question of fame.121 What we see in Pindar and Simonides
we see, si mul ta neously, in (mostly Attic) epigraphical evidence. In the later
sixth century BCE, sophia and sophos refer to excellence in specific skills.122

But by the first de cades of the fifth century BCE, on the Athenian Acropolis,
we can read:

[ἐσθλὸν] τοῖσι σοφοῖσι σο[φ]ίζεσθ[αι κ]ατ[ὰ τέχνων]

[ h ὸς γὰρ] h έχει τέχνεν λοῖ[ο]ν᾽ h έχει β[ίοτον] ( IG I3 766) admirable it is for sophoi to exercise themselves in their skill—
for he who has a skill leads a better life

While this does not refer to a College of Sophoi, it points to the increasing ge-
nericization and collectivization of sophoi, the abstraction of their compe-
tence to goodness, and the boon to overall livelihood ( bioton).

119 Pind. Ol. 5.16; Pae. 6 fr. 52f.50–53; Nem. 7.17–18, 5.18.

120 Simon. fr. 542, Pl. Prt. 343b7; cf. Moore 2016.

121 Simon. fr. 581; see Ford 2002, 105–9. Simonides may have had competitive success; Pl. R.

335e9–10 includes him with Bias and Pittacus among the illustrious Sophoi, and he spent time with turannoi; cf. Slings 2000, 62–63; Wallace 2015, 6–8, 14–15.

122 Sophia: medicine ( IG I3 1393; cf. Wickkiser 2008, 18–19), pottery ( IG I2 522), unknown ( IG I3 949), poetry ( IG I3 833 bis; 480–70 BCE); sophos: sculpture ( IG I3 1265), horse manship and hospitality ( IG VII 3501; Boeotia).

102 CH A PTER 3

Pindar and Simonides have a con temporary in Heraclitus. In four fragments
he substantivizes the adjective sophos, referring to to sophon. This could refer to the content of sophia, were sophia an intentional state, like knowledge; it could also refer to the state of being sophos. In these four fragments he speaks of to sophon as “one” and distinct, separate, presumably, from the range of
pieces of knowledge a person might other wise have.123 The abstract noun so-
phia apparently objectifies this state of being sophos. Heraclitus speaks of the sophôtatos person as like an ape relative to god in terms of sophiai; exercising discipline is the greatest virtue and sophia; and, as we saw in chapter 2, Pythagoras is said to have devised a personal and highly dubious sophia.124

Heraclitus does not speak explic itly of sophoi as Sages. But he speaks of being
sophos as a unified state, in contrast to the earlier “professional of x” state; he talks about gnomic maxims and their understanding as characteristic of the
sophoi; he refers to the po liti cal relevance of sophia; and he praises Bias—
eventually thought of as the leading Sophos— as better than all other men. Thus
even Heraclitus seems to have an (implicit or abstract) idea of the Sages.

Thus we have sufficient reason to posit an idea of sophoi as sages by the
late sixth century BCE. It matters little that this fails to get us all the way back
to Thales himself, as Demetrius supposed. Indeed, we might suppose that the
idea could only have succeeded the lives of its archetypes. Here I conjecture
a dynamic of formation, though it would take another book to substantiate
it. The Greek polis- system that arose in the late seventh and early sixth cen-
turies BCE underwent remarkable strain in the late sixth century, with Ionia
experiencing increasing threat from the Persians, colonial enterprises feeling
mixed allegiances, and cities dividing along class and Medizing lines. Citizens
looked to models that promised civic amelioration. Adopting the skepticism of
mythical paradigms found in Xenophanes and Hecataeus, they restricted their
horizon to historical time and thus waxed nostalgic for their grandparents’

generation.125 There they found a series of successful po liti cal advisors, some

123 Heraclitus B32/D45: ἓν τὸ σοφόν, μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει Ζηνὸς ὄνομα;

B41/D44: ἓν τὸ σοφόν, ἐπίστασθαι γνώμην, ὁτέη ἐκυβέρνησε πάντα διὰ πάντων; Β50/D46: οὐκ ἐμοῦ ἀλλὰ τοῦ λόγου ἀκούσαντες ὁμολογεῖν σοφόν ἐστιν ἓν πάντα εἶναι; B108/D43: ὁκόσων λόγους ἤκουσα, οὐδεὶς ἀφικνεῖται ἐς τοῦτο ὥστε γινώσκειν ὅτι σοφόν ἐστι πάντων
κεχωρισμένον.

124 Heraclitus B83/D77: ἀνθρώπων ὁ σοφώτατος πρὸς θεὸν πίθηκος φανεῖται καὶ σοφίῃ
καὶ κάλλει καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πᾶσιν; Β112/D114a+b: σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα
λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας (cf. B118/D103: αὐὴ ψυχή, σοφωτάτη καὶ ἀρίστη); B129/D26.

125 A similar dynamic is apparent from, e.g., Aristophanes’s Frogs where the city’s salvation seems to be in replicating its best citizens from two generations earlier, 490–80 BCE. Compare this “nostalgic” view with Wallace 2015, 13: “During the seminal de cades 600–580, in response to the corruption of tyrants and the in effec tive ness of laws, a new type of po liti cal figure, the

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 103
never tyrannoi themselves, others— Solon, Pittacus, and Periander— having
had constitutional roles.126 Bias, for example, was persuasive in legal contexts,
advised the Ionians to flee to Sardinia to escape the Persians, tried to broker
a deal between Samos and Priene, and deceived Alyattes into abandoning his
siege of Priene; he may also have written a two- thousand- line poem about a
path to Ionian prosperity.127 Chilon was the first ephor of Sparta, strengthen-
ing that position’s role against the kings’ position, and opposing tyrannies
in Greece.128 Dicaearchus later remembered these sagely sophoi as “shrewd
legislators.”129 These same eminent forebears were vaguely remembered for
having shared their grandparentish wisdom, expressed in easy- to- recall gno-
mic maxims. With this po liti cal and linguistic skill we might include, as de-
rivatives or adjuncts, religious knowledge and poetic skill, but without any
specific competence in mind.130

This formation of the legends of vari ous sophoi, initially in their respec-
tive cities, could develop, with itinerant poets and traders, into a generalized
category.131 Their hebdomality would have postdated this incremental ac-
cumulation. One possibility is that the pattern “Group of Seven” found in

Greek my thol ogy set its mark on this category. But groups of nine and three
also proliferated, and the Sages are not mythological. A better possibility pre-
sents itself from evidence from Babylon, as I mentioned above. In 1960,
sophos or sophistês, offered wise counsel, mediation in civil strife, and po liti cal leadership to many Greek communities.”

126 On Solon as politician see Noussia- Fantuzzi 2010, 19–44. Pittacus was a legal expert and creator of laws (νόμων δημιουργός, Arist. Pol. 1274b18; νομοθέτης τε γὰρ ἀγαθός, DS 9 fr. 16; νόμους δὲ ἔθηκε, DL 1.76), a “chosen tyrant” (αἰσυμνήτας, Arist. Pol. 1285a30); and removed tyranny, civil strife, in equality, and war; see generally Bowra 1961, 136; Gagarin 1986, 59.

Periander planned a track across the Isthmus (DL 1.99) and arbitrated Athens’s dispute with Mytilene over Sigeon (Hdt. 5.95.2), all the while maintaining connections with Arcardia, Delphi, Olympia, Miletus, Lydia, and Egypt.

127 Persuasive: Hipponax fr. 123 W; Demodocus fr. 6 W; Heraclitus B39/D11; diplomacy:

Hdt. 1.170; Plut. Quaest. graec. 20 295e; poem: DL 1.85 (see Martin 1993, 118; BNP s.v. “Bias

[2]”; BNJ 439). He received special honors after his death (DL 1.85, 1.88). See also Konstantakos 2005. The claim by Ford 2002, 78, that he was a “tyrant- sage,” prob ably fits Pittacus better (see Arist. Pol. 1285a35–39; DL 1.74–76, 79).

128 DL 1.68; BNJ 105 F1; cf. DL 1.73, Paus. 3.16.4, BNP s.v. “Chilon [1].”

129 DL 1.40: συνετοῦς δέ τινας καὶ νομοθετικούς; sunetoi means understanding in practical affairs, per Arist. Eth. Nic. 1142b34–43a18. Cf. Plut. Them. 2.4 on Themistocles’s teacher Mnesophilus, whose sophia, sourced in Solon, concerns “po liti cal cleverness and practical understanding” (δεινότητα πολιτικὴν καὶ δραστήριον σύνεσιν); on this passage, see Kerferd 1950, 9; Kurke 2011, 173; Tell 2015, 10–11.

130 Lattimore 1939; Chroust 1947, 20–22; Kerferd 1950, 8–9; Kerferd 1976, 26–28; Kerferd

1981, 24; Vernant 1982 [= Vernant 1962], 69–81; Munn 2000, 16; Hadot 2002, 18–21. For a collection of sources see Snell 1943.

131 Tell 2007, 266–72, speculates that sophoi did in fact associate as an “international elite.”

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 103

9/18/19 1:20 PM

104 CH A PTER 3

German archaeologists unearthed a tablet from Anu’s Bīt Rēš temple, where

Gilgamesh ruled nearly five millennia ago.132 That tablet, the “Uruk List
of Kings and Sages,” which is from 165 BCE but is copied from an earlier
version, lists the seven “sages” ( apkallu) of antediluvian Mesopotamia, each
yoked to the king he advises. After the flood, there are no further groups of
seven, only a single sage and eight scholars who again advise their respective
rulers ( unmânu).133 Though the Babylonians listed their sages serially, not in
parallel, the Greeks could have adopted the “Seven Sophoi” from them and
distributed them geo graph i cally rather than temporally, as befits Greece’s de-
centralized po liti cal organ ization.134

The point relevant to the coinage of philosophos is that in the late 500s BCE,
sophos labeled less an exceptional intelligence or prudence than a kind of per-
son who could give exceptional practical advice to po liti cal figures as well as
timeless advice to fellow citizens in the generations to come.135 This usage
may have evolved from the earlier “excellent sailor” usage: as Socrates points
out in Plato’s Apology (22e1), those who are masters of their craft often gain a reputation as masters of much more. This extension can have firm grounding:

a good sailor may need good captaining skills as well, which include insight
into matters of justice and thoughtfulness; anyway, as the moral virtues seem
unified in some re spects, so too might the skills.136 By and large, excepting
the uses found in Heraclitus, which prove the rule in their self- conscious in-
novation, being sophos is a term for social engagement and problem- solving
in a way that is publicly determined and applauded. This suggests that, when

- êretmos is attached as second ele ment to phil- , the term philêretmos points to being a hardy sailor; - meidês makes a term pointing to a practice of coy lovers,

- sophos to a practice of exceptional civic advisors. So, just as “lover of oars”

does not rightly gloss the meaning of phileretmos, “lover of wisdom” misrep-
resents the meaning of philosophos. The word does not just clinch the phrase;
it coins a new one.

132 Panel W 20030,7, published by van Dijk 1962 and reproduced in van Dijk and Mayer

1980, vol. 2, no. 89.

133 See Reiner 1961 for another Akkadian text, LKA 76 rev., that speaks of “seven apkallu,”

with an argument (now perhaps otiose) that sages differ from their paired rulers. For the relation between sages and scribes, see Lambert 1957, 1, 9; Lambert 1962, 74. For discussion of the Uruk List of Kings and Sages, see Lenzi 2008.

134 Cf. Burkert 1992, 106–14; Martin 1993, 121–23 (adding Vedic Sanskrit tradition and his own hypothesis).

135 For an evolution of sophia that does not focus on the rise of the status of sophoi, see Ford 1993, 34–35; Kurke 2011, 95–102; Wolfsdorf forthcoming b.

136 Compare the philosophical navigator of the Platonic “ship of state” ( R. 488d5–489d1).

W H AT PHILOSOPHOS COU LD H AV E M EA NT 105

Conclusion: Occasioning the Composition of a Phil- Prefixed

Name- Calling Name

The pattern familiar from the history of phil- prefixed names is that they lack
an attitudinal component; lack a literally- referred-to object; are other- applied;
are often bemused or derisive; and have the second ele ment, typically on the
surface a neutral or good thing, that stands in for some conventional social prac-
tice or system.

The following is what I take to be a plausible coinage- situation for philoso-
phos. Suppose there were certain young men earnestly engaged in study and
conversation. Such study would not appear to onlookers to be connected to any
of the usual sort of learned trades. Perhaps these men act like students or ap-
prentices. But students of what discipline, apprentices to what experts? It looks
like they want to know about the kosmos, about the gods, about justice, about
life and death. Expertise in such abstract and general topics is the province of
the sophoi considered as wise advisors (“sages”). Thus it seems that one could
explain these people only by saying they want to become sophoi. But in the
traditional patterns one does not train to become a sophos; at some mature age,
one simply has become deserving of the name sophos. A young man studying
to become sophos is an odd, even risible idea. It is not obvious that such study
could be successful; it may even be hubristic. The sophoi of legend got that
way through remarkable self- application in warfare, leadership, agriculture,
writing, and travel. Such practical experience, even if accompanied by copi-
ous reflection and discussion, is what contributes to one’s wisdom. Aspirants
to sophos- status would, it would seem, be better off trying to live well than
thinking about living well. That is the eudaimonistic paradox. All the same,
here are some people who seem to be trying to shortcut the route to sophos sta-
tus. These aspirants are a funny group, with a funny social longing. They are
marked by their peculiar attitude to the convention called “being sophos.” The
phil- prefix denotes this markedness. Philosophoi would be coined to classify certain people as, at least on the surface, aiming to be deemed sophoi.

It is impor tant to distinguish this from the psychological translation, “love
of wisdom.” To say that someone loves wisdom is to purport to make a factual
claim about the objects of that person’s interest. The person who loves wis-
dom is a person who cares about, aims toward, or desires a certain cognitive
achievement, a kind of knowledge or intellectual competence or theoretical
virtue. Contrast this with name- calling connected to social conventions. In
name- calling situations, to say that someone traffics in being sophos is to say

106 CH A PTER 3
that it looks as though a person strives to gain a certain cultural status and
authority, a status and authority that likely cannot be attained in the manner
on display.

What students would these be? They would need to be numerous, publicly
vis i ble, and influential enough to be worthy of classification or castigation.

They would also need to exist over a long enough period for the name to ac-
quire durability. In the next chapter, I propose that they may be Pythagoreans.

4

Pythagoreans as Philosophoi

Pythagoreans in Croton

Chapter 1 showed that the Pythagoras story, one version of which depends on Heraclides, links the term philosophos to Pythagoras. Chapter 2 showed that Heraclitus speaks of philosophoi andres in ways that suggest a pos si ble
reference to Pythagoreans. Chapter 3 showed that the coinage of the term philosophos prob ably came from the impulse to name a group of people who
acted abnormally with re spect to sagehood. This chapter argues that the

Pythagoreans— a politically- organizing, quasi- religious group in southern

Italy, according to Walter Burkert (1972, 113–19, 132)— could be this group,
and it supports a historical linkage between Pythagoreans and philosophoi.

Admittedly, no pre- Academic text explic itly calls any Pythagorean a philoso-
phos; we are working with circumstantial evidence. Yet Heraclides’s claim
that Pythagoras called himself philosophos proves completely plausible, as
does the inference that he had already been called philosophos by others.

And at least one instance of the social situation underwriting the coinage of
the term philosophos appears to have existed. So we need not posit an ob-
scurely occasioned late sixth- century BCE desire to have a word designating
the “love of wisdom” or “intellectual cultivation,” which would be implau-
sible, especially in the face of other perfectly acceptable phrases meaning the
same thing. The idiosyncratic shape that is cut by fifth- century BCE uses of
philosophos- group words can be accounted for as downstream versions of a
term defined ostensively by Pythagorean activity rather than as the result of
random chance. Fi nally, we can solve a paradox in recent Pythagorean stud-
ies, one that is emphasized most directly by Burkert: the confusing fact that
people call Pythagoras a philosophos despite his apparent lack of almost all
the intellectual attainments generally attributed to phi los o phers. In effect,

Pythagoras need not even have been considered a phi los o pher in order to be
called a philosophos.

The first (or among the first) objects of name- calling as philosophoi seem
to have been the participants in the Pythagorean movement in Magna Graeca

108 CH A PTER 4
that lasted for nearly three- quarters of a century.1 Such people lived in com-
mercially vibrant cities throughout Italy, many of which had large oligarchic
or quasi- democratic governments that could be readily influenced by like-
minded voting blocs, and traveled enough to be seen by many people, not all
of whom would have understood or appreciated their studious activity. The
name could easily have traveled far, given the likely quantity of gossip about
po liti cal developments in Magna Graeca. The stories that tell of Pythagoras
naming his “practice” philosophia suggest that he was being treated as accom-
modating an initially other- applied name and vindicating it. If Pythagoras
never in fact called himself philosophos, presumably those in his near circle
did, and they retrojected the idea for doing so onto their intellectual leader.2

At some later point, during the era of the Socratics after their master’s death,
the name may have come to refer to a par tic u lar discipline separate from the

Pythagorean lineage.

The most plausible details of Pythagoras’s admittedly fantasial biography
support these possibilities. According to the sources, he resided in Samos
until age forty, emigrating once he judged his liberal existence impossible
under the tyranny of Polycrates.3 In that first half of his life he is said to
have studied broadly and far afield, zealously pursuing foreign wisdom, and
adopting ascetic and purificatory practices.4 He may have initiated Samian
community discussions and have taken associates into caves for deeper con-
versation.5 A dubious story that he harbored Zalmoxis, to be recounted in
chapter 5, at least implies movement in aristocratic society, business connections, and notoriety for his intellectual ingenuity.6 He prob ably had similarly
elite connections to ritual practice, as anecdotes linking him to Apollo and

Delphi imply.7 He is said to have arrived in Croton with charisma, rhetorical
versatility, and innovative ideas for institution building; all of these quali-
ties suggest that he had Samian experience exercising all three, especially
reflection on po liti cal egalitarianism, local self- reliance, and personal self-

1 On this period, see, among others, von Fritz 1940; Minar 1942; Dunbabin 1948, 360–62,

366–67; Morrison 1956; Morrison 1958, 202; Philip 1966, 25–26; Burkert 1972, 109–20; Kahn 2001, 6–9.

2 Ebert 2001.

3 Strabo 14.1.16.1; Apul. Flor. 15; DL 8.3; Porph. VP 9, 16.

4 Porph. VP 1, 6–8, 17; DL 8.2–3; Strabo 14.1.16.2.

5 Porph. VP 9 (though Rowett 2014, 112n4, expresses doubt).

6 Two stories similar to Hdt. 4.95 are told at Porph. VP 14–15. Rossetti 2013 thinks Pythagoras published a book while in Samos, taking Heraclitus fr. 129 as evidence; this is rather uncertain (cf. DL 8.6).

7 See DL 8.5, 8, 21, and 8.11, 13, with Kurke 2011, 108–11; Rowett 2014, 113–14; Huffman

2014, 288.

PYTH AGOR EA NS AS PHILOSOPHOI 109
improvement.8 Even if Polycrates’ rule may once have supported a public
life of cultural critique—as his patronage of Alcmaeon and Ibycus might
suggest9— Pythagoras may eventually have found himself too public and too
critical.

Life in non- tyrannical Croton may have given freer reign to Pythagoras’s
novel or out spoken way of life. Showing himself thoughtful, educated, well-
traveled, and gifted, he is said to have persuaded the Council of Elders
to or ga nize age- and gender- graded groups, to which he then addressed
himself.10 While he appears to have inspired the young especially,11 he in-
fluenced people broadly enough to be considered practically a lawmaker,
an avatar of the nomothetic sages Charondas and Zaleucus;12 this prob ably
means that his emphasis on virtue, friendship, and the sharing of property
caused notable changes in legislative and executive action as those young
people grew up.13 His po liti cal power would come, then, from an unusual
direction: the intellectual or ideological Bildung of a broad class of soon-
to-be leaders, perhaps constituting hundreds or thousands of acolytes, par-
tisans, or allies.14 His combination of learning, eloquence, fresh ideas, and
an orientation to self- development would plausibly have been distinctive at
such high po liti cal levels. For those outside his force field of persuasion and
mental revolution, these aspirations would have deserved a name if anything
deserves a name.

8 DL 1.13 implies that he did some philosophizing before moving to Italy.

9 Ibyc. fr. S151.47–48; Hdt. 3.121.1; Strabo 14.1.6.1; PBerol. 7927, 1.24–33.

10 Porph. VP 18, attributed to Dicaearchus, discussion at Rowett 2014, 114–16, 119–20. Huffman 2014, 281–84, observes that the verb Dicaearchus uses to refer to Pythagoras’s effect on the elders is ψυχαγωγέω, which means that he is portrayed “as employing illegitimate appeals to the emotions to ‘beguile’ and ‘bewitch’ his audience,” and thus “as a charismatic charlatan.” But his account of the verb does not look to the abstract noun, which in Plato’s Phaedrus (half a century before the Peripatetic author) is not obviously dubious; see Moore 2014c.

11 Isoc. Bus. 29; Iambl. VP 17.71, 18.88, 35.254; Just. Epit. 20.4.14; Minar 1942, 25, 104; Rowett 2014, 118.

12 Lawmaker: DL 8.3; Charondas and Zaleucus: DS 12.20.1; Sen. Ep. 90; DL 8.16; Porph.

VP 21; Suda ζ 12.

13 Because we cannot determine the precise route by which coiners came up with the word
philosophos, I mention here a possibility connected to Pythagorean alienation of private property. Perhaps his circle disdained being philochrêmatos (adjective first attested in Andoc. 4.32
and related verb in Antiphon B103) or philokerdês (first attested in Thgn. 199; Pind. Isthm. 2.6), and encouraged self- improvement over tyrannical philotimia (first attested in Pind. fr. 210)—
thus perhaps they were called philosophoi in their pursuit not of money or power but the esteem owed to a good advisor.

14 DL 8.3: about three hundred. Pythagoras judged the best education to be citizenship in a well- governed city (Aristoxenus in DL 8.16).

110 CH A PTER 4

Pythagoras’s Contemporaneous and Near- Contemporaneous

Reputation

Our identifiable sources for Pythagoras’s self- application of the term philoso-
phos date no earlier than Heraclides’s writings from after the 370s. But Hera-
clides prob ably relied on an internal tradition, from sources with social, senti-
mental, or intellectual connections to Pythagoras’s circle; at least his writings
on Pythagoreanism— and other early philosophers— suggest as much. Time
and perhaps secrecy have obscured this internal tradition and its sources. Yet
an early external tradition remains. This range of outsider observations about

Pythagoras take vari ous perspectives, from bemused distance to fulsome
praise. Scholars of ancient Pythagoreanism have studied this evidence often.

We will analyze it for something par tic u lar: Pythagoras’s salient and popu lar
features, which support the hypothesis that he was labeled a philosophos, in
par tic u lar for his combination of intellectual and po liti cal influence, and his
connections to the term sophos and to legendary sophoi.

The earliest reference to Pythagoras is from Xenophanes of Colophon, his
con temporary and a traveling poet, epistemologist, and critic of religion.15

Xenophanes tells a story that when Pythagoras heard a dog yelping in pain, he
asked its master to stop beating him; the tone of its cry informed Pythagoras
as to which friend it had reincarnated.16 The story testifies to the notoriety
of Pythagoras, the intellectual provocativeness of his theory of palingenesis
during his own lifetime, the ridicule it earned, and, crucially, Xenophanes’s
aiming, as Heraclitus did, to compete with Pythagoras in the realm explic itly
of sophia.17

We studied Heraclitus’s attitude toward Pythagoras in chapter 2, but we should reprise its key testaments. The fragment espousing that attitude most
directly is B129: “Pythagoras of Mnesarchus practiced research more than
anybody else, and selecting from some writings, made his own sophia,

15 Xenophanes B7/D64. Diogenes Laertius introduces his quotation of this story as sup-
porting the view that Pythagoras had lived a number of lives (ἄλλοτε ἄλλον αὐτὸν γεγενῆσθαι, DL 8.36). Since the quotation itself begins with “And when” (καί ποτέ), Xenophanes may have told other such tales about Pythagoras (Burkert 1972, 121). Xenophanes, likely living mostly in Western Greece, may have lived a few de cades longer than Pythagoras (Guthrie 1962, 157).

16 Lesher 2001, 78–81, argues that Xenophanes directs his critique not against the theory but against Pythagoras’s claim to superhuman perceptual sensitivity. The common view that Xenophanes was “manifestly bent on exposing Pythagoras and his teachings to ridicule” (Cameron 1938, 15) must be tempered by the fact that Xenophanes found it worthwhile to mention him and his teaching, and by the fact that, in this passage at least, he does not explic itly reduce the idea of reincarnation to absurdity.

17 For Xenophanes’s competition in sophia, see B2/D61.12–14.

PYTH AGOR EA NS AS PHILOSOPHOI 111
polymathy, and mischievous doings (κακοτεχνίη).”18 Heraclitus asserts that

Pythagoras strove consciously for sophia, and did so through quasi- scholarly
techniques of collection and collation. This is in contrast to attaining a universal
sophia through less overtly scholarly ways, such as the hard experience of life,
self- investigation, and concentration. In B40—“Polymathy does not teach in-
sight, for then it would have taught it to Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again to

Xenophanes and Hecataeus”—Heraclitus says that what ought to be sophia
or nous is, in the unifying program of these early rationalizing and system-
atizing researchers, just a mass of opinions. Heraclitus judges this factitious
wisdom not merely epistemically suspect but, in its use as clever oratory, as
leading to bad public or moral consequences. This explains Heraclitus’s call-
ing Pythagoras “leader of the imposters.”19 Heraclitus elsewhere recognizes
the degree to which people trust those who seem the most learned. These three
fragments pre sent Pythagoras as notoriously learned (in a way) and a marketer
of himself as learned (in another way).20 Heraclitus thus criticizes Pythago-
ras’s self- presentation as a person with epistemic authority, and consequent in-
tellectual, religious, and civic authority.21

What Heraclitus indicts Pythagoras for— accumulating passels of knowl-
edge and turning them into charismatic speech— becomes, in Empedocles’s
eyes, cause for cele bration. “And there was among them a man of surpassing
knowledge, a supreme master of all kinds of wise (σοφῶν) deeds, who had ac-
quired an im mense trea sury of understanding. For, whenever he extended all
his understanding, he readily saw each of all the things that are, in ten and even
twenty generations of men.”22 The unspecified “man” has generally been thought
to be Pythagoras.23 Unlike Heraclitus, Empedocles claims that Pythagoras’s

18 For further discussion, see, e.g., Cameron 1938, 23n11; Guthrie 1962, 157–58; Huffman

2008; Rossetti 2013.

19 Heraclitus B81; see Baron 2013, 160–61.

20 Cameron 1938, 23 (with 30), claims that in scorning Pythagoras’s inquisitiveness Heraclitus refers “not [to] an other- worldly navel- contemplating wisdom, but [to] an active pursuit of wisdom through observation”; this claim seems without evidence.

21 There is a tradition that Heraclitus “listened to . . . Hippasus” ( Suda s.v. Ἡράκλειτος), an apostate Pythagorean (Iambl. VP 18.81), and could have learned from him. But Hippasus may simply have been likened to Heraclitus for treating fire rather than the Pythagoreans’ number as the first princi ple (Arist. M. Α 984a7; see also Cameron 1938, 24–26).

22 Empedocles B129/D38 (= Porph. VP 30): ἦν δέ τις ἐν κείνοισιν ἀνὴρ περιώσια εἰδώς, |
παντοίων τε μάλιστα σοφῶν <τ᾽> ἐπιήρανος ἔργων, | ὅς δὴ μήκιστον πραπίδων ἐκτήσατο πλοῦτον.

| Ὁππότε γὰρ πάσῃσιν ὀρέξαιτο πραπίδεσσιν, | ῥεῖ᾽ ὅ γε τῶν ὄντων πάντων λεύσσεσκεν ἕκαστα, |
καί τε δέκ᾽ ἀνθρώπων καί τ᾽ εἴκοσιν αἰώνεσσιν (precise text disputed). For debate about the meaning, especially of the final line, see Burkert 1972, 138; Inwood 2001, 63, 213; Kahn 2001, 12.

23 DL 8.54 gives an abbreviated version of the poem; he cites Timaeus for the claim that

Empedocles means Pythagoras, but admits that others believe he meant Parmenides. See Baron 2013, 164–68.

112 CH A PTER 4
capacious knowledge is superlative, providing him with a wealth of under-
standing, generating effective action, and giving him insight into the nature of
real ity. That insight amounts to a historical sensibility conjoined with a capac-
ity to forecast the future and a sensitivity to the human lot. Empedocles treats

Pythagoras as practical in the way that the Sophoi are practical.

Ion of Chios, the fifth- century BCE tragedian and belletrist, speaks yet
again to Pythagoras’s polymathy and intellectual influence, taking a careful
and perhaps ironic middle ground between Heraclitus and Empedocles. He
claims that although Pherecydes of Syros is dead, his soul lives on happily, “if
truly (εἴπερ . . . ἐτύμως) the sophos Pythagoras saw and learned the gnômê

[thoughts?] of all men.”24 This poetic fragment attributes to Pythagoras a
view of a personal soul’s endurance after death, and treats it as provocative
enough both to cite and to express reservations about its truth.25 It links Pher-
ecydes, sometimes counted among the Seven Sophoi, to Pythagoras treated
as sophos.26 It also suggests that Pythagoras accumulated extensive knowl-
edge, either “about” the “thoughts” of all men or “from” all men, namely, all
those from whom a person might learn.27 In another fragment, Ion says that

Pythagoras attributed to Orpheus some verses he himself wrote.28 In doing
so, Pythagoras placed himself in the midst of Greek religious culture, perhaps
with the devious goal of leveraging for himself Orpheus’s authoritativeness.

Orpheus was sometimes considered the first philosophos, and definitely a leg-
endary sophos person.29

24 Ion B4: εἴπερ Πυθαγόρης ἐτύμως ὁ σοφὸς περὶ πάντων | ἀνθρώπων γνώμας εἶδε καὶ
ἐξέμαθεν. The translation is fraught, especially the target of “truly” (ἐτύμως) and the referent of gnômê; on the latter, compare Cameron 1938, 22 (“destinies”); Edmonds 1931 (“marks,” citing Thgn. 60); and Guthrie 1962, 158 (“minds”). Cf. Minar 1942, 124.

25 On εἴπερ in Ion’s Ionic as ironic or skeptical, see Dover 1986, 30.

26 Pherecydes, deemed by some the first prose writer about nature and the gods (DL 1.116, citing Theopompus), was sometimes included among the Seven Sophoi (DL 1.13, 1.42, 1.122) or as relevantly con temporary with them ( Suda φ 214). Ancient authors often thought Pherecydes taught Pythagoras: DS 10 fr. 4; DL 1.13, 8.2; Porph. VP 2; Iambl. VP 2.9; Tzetz. Chil. 11.74–75.

Schibli 1990, 2 (with 11–13), argues that he was born around 585 BCE, making this pos si ble; see also West 1971, 1–9, 213–18 for details. Granger 2007 gives an overall account.

27 On the view that Ion claims that Pythagoras got his wisdom from all men, thus recapitulating Heraclitus’s view, see Kranz 1934, 227; Huxley 1965, 40; Schibli 1990, 12. Dover 1986, 30, gives: “achieved knowledge and understanding beyond that of all men” (my emphasis); similarly, Kahn 2001, 11.

28 DL 8.8 B2. For Ion’s historiographical interests, see Huxley 1965, 37–40; West

1985, 74–76; Dover 1986, 32; BNJ 392; EGM 2.698–99. For his po liti cal interests, see Jacoby 1947.

29 Orpheus as philosophos: DL 1.5. As sophos: see chapter 9, pp. 265–66.

PYTH AGOR EA NS AS PHILOSOPHOI 113

Herodotus, in the final quarter of the fifth century BCE, refers explic itly
to Pythagoras twice.30 The first time is in his discussion of Egyptians, where
he notes that certain Egyptian religious prohibitions agree with rites called

Orphic and Bacchic, but that they are really Pythagorean (Hdt. 2.81).31 This im-
plies that Pythagorean spiritual practices had taken broad hold by Herodotus’s
time and had so established themselves that people forgot their provenance. It
also implies, as Ion had implied, similarities between Orphic and Pythagorean
practices, however those might be defined.32 The second reference concerns

Thrace and the Getae, a religious group that accepted Zalmoxis as god and be-
lieved in an immortal soul (Hdt. 4.93–5; cf. DL 8.2 and Pl. Chrm. 156d5–6), as

Pherecydes and Pythagoras famously did. A rationalized version of this story
circulating in the Pontus, where Herodotus picked it up, knew Zalmoxis as
a manumitted slave of Pythagoras’s from his time living in Samos.33 Appar-
ently Zalmoxis learned soul- immortality from Pythagoras. He may also have
learned how to make money and move in aristocratic society. Herodotus ob-
serves, by a litotes, that Pythagoras was “not the weakest Greek sophist” (οὐ
τῷ ἀσθενεστάτῳ σοφιστῇ),34 casting him instead as the strongest. As we will
see in chapter 5, Herodotus uses sophistês as his word for Sophos (of the Seven Sages variety), and it is putative sophistai who practice philosophein (1.30).

Herodotus also observes that Pythagoras contributed to Zalmoxis’s gaining
insight into Ionian ways of life (δίαιτιάν τε Ἰάδα) and a deeper character (ἤθεα
βαθύτερα).35 All this suggests that while he was in Samos, Pythagoras had po-
liti cal, intellectual, and cultural traction, and shared it with Zalmoxis.

30 Herodotus is often thought to allude to Pythagoras (and Empedocles) on a third occasion, at 2.123, when he says that some to- be- left- unnamed Greeks presented the Egyptian view of transmigration of souls as their own discovery; see, e.g., Burkert 1972, 126; Kahn 2001, 13.

31 This may mean that Herodotus believes that Pythagoras’s views come from Egypt, as

Schorn 2014, 298–99 suggests.

32 See Cameron 1938, 5–7, 15–16, 33n19; Guthrie 1952, 46–47, 216–21; Burkert 1972, 125–

33; Livingstone 2001, 157–59; Kahn 2001, 19–22; Betegh 2014.

33 See Cameron 1938, 12–15; Minar 1942, 4–6; YC 1.306–10, for complications raised by
this passage. Herodotus’s reference to Pontus is an in ter est ing one: Heraclea on the Pontus had a strong intellectual tradition, and two of its citizens, Herodorus and Heraclides, had pronounced Pythagorean interests. Its relative proximity to Thrace may have given currency to Zalmoxian tales (which may have appealed primarily to the nobility: Schorn 2014, 301).

34 Contrast the translation of LM 4.37: “one who was not at all the weakest, the sage Pythagoras.” It is not clear whether Herodotus treats travel as a central characteristic of sophistai, though LM 1.29 might suggest he does.

35 These remarks led Lévy 1926, 6, to say that Herodotus treats Pythagoras with re spect, in contrast to Heraclitus’s and Xenophanes’s acrimony. If so, we may won der what redeemed Pythagoras’s reputation in the intervening half century. (Perhaps his students were no longer a po liti cal or cultural threat?) Schorn 2014, 300–2, exercises more caution, showing Herodotus’s (deliberate?) obfuscation about his attitude toward Pythagoras.

114 CH A PTER 4

Prob ably not long after Herodotus wrote his History, the first- generation

Socratic Antisthenes of Athens declared that Pythagoras had a great reputa-
tion for making speeches, fitting manner to audience, and that this capacity
revealed a great skill— “it is part of sophia to discover the form of sophia (τρόπον τῆς σοφίας) suitable to each person” (V A 187 SSR)— that again relates him to sophia.36 “Pythagoreans” are mentioned at Dissoi Logoi 6.8 as sophistai and successful teachers of sophia and virtue (on the work’s date, see
chapter 7). Three other authors from the same period, Glaucus of Rhegium, Democritus, and Anaximander of Miletus, provide corroborating evidence.37

Isocrates writes about Pythagoras once, in the Busiris (ca. 370s BCE),
explic itly connecting him to philosophia and relying, apparently, on earlier
traditions. Discussing Egyptian piety, Isocrates describes “Egyptian philos-
ophia” and the putative divisions of labor it involves. Egyptian priests intro-
duced medicines for the body and philosophia for the soul, which had the
power not just to form laws but also to investigate real ity; since the elders
kept civic order, and the young did astronomy and geometry, we might guess
that Isocrates means that it is the latter who did philosophia.38 Isocrates says
that Pythagoras studied this Egyptian piety and thus brought “philosophia in
general” (τὴν τ᾽ ἄλλην φιλοσοφίαν) to the Greeks.39 He goes on to say that

36 On this fragment see Horky 2013, 88–90; Prince 2014 ad loc. Another first- generation

Socratic, Aeschines (if Plut. De curios. 2.516c relies on his work; see VI A 90 SSR), may have treated Socrates as curious about Pythagoras’s exemplary skill of persuasion (Σωκράτης δὲ
περιῄει διαπορῶν τί Πυθαγόρας λέγων ἔπειθε).

37 Glaucus says that his con temporary Democritus studied with Pythagoreans; Thrasyllus
says that he wrote an admiring work on Pythagoras himself (DL 9.38), indicating the early importance of such studies. Anaximander, an allegorist from the same period, wrote an “exegesis of Pythagorean symbola” ( Suda α 1987). Anaximander’s perceived need for an exegesis of these sayings implies a long- standing impression that Pythagoras had something serious and nonobvi-ous to say. Anaximander also interpreted Homer (Xen. Symp. 3.6) and wrote about first inventors ( BNJ 9 F3), which may suggest that he perceived Pythagoras as a sophos- level personage.

See generally Burkert 1972, 166.

38 Isoc. Bus. 22–23. Isocrates does not mention here whether Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul; at any rate, Guthrie 1962, 160, asserts that the Egyptians certainly did not recognize transmigration.

39 Isoc. Bus. 28. Livingstone 2001, 157–59, argues that Isocrates followed Herodotus on this (cf. Kahn 2001, 6, 12–13). The phrase τὴν τ᾽ ἄλλην φιλοσοφίαν has confused translators: Norlin 1928 has “all philosophy”; Mirhady in Mirhady and Too 2000, 56, has “the rest of philosophy”; and Horky 2013, 90–95, has “the other philosophy,” meaning other than Isocrates’s philosophy, thus specifically the Egyptian study of mathe matics as a study of nature (perhaps implying that Isocrates is the second inventor of philosophy?). But this noun- phrase is found in Philostr. V A 4.25: Menippus was erotically overcome, despite τὴν . . . ἄλλην φιλοσoφίαν ἔρρωτο, which appears to mean “being strong in philosophy generally/usually”; see Smyth 1920 §1276
for the construction (“usual, general”), citing Antiph. 3.b.1. This would suggest that Isocrates means “philosophy in general,” as I have translated it (and recently, LM 4.25). Still, the matter is uncertain.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 114

9/18/19 1:20 PM

PYTH AGOR EA NS AS PHILOSOPHOI 115

Pythagoras gave serious and con spic u ous attention to sacrificial and purifica-
tory matters, with the hope that it would bring him human if not also divine
favor. He succeeded in this: “for by so much did he exceed others in reputation
that all the young desired to be his students, and their elders preferred to see
their children associating with him than doing their own work; and this ac-
count [Isocrates adds] cannot be disbelieved, since to this day those claiming
to be (προσποιουμένους) his students are more impressive when silent than are
people famed for their great eloquence.”40 Isocrates had already warned that
those who pre sent themselves as having greater wisdom (κατεσχημάτισαν . . .

σοφίαν) or virtue than they really have do harm to those taken in by their pre-
tensions.41 He leaves open whether Pythagoras benefited from or benefited
others by his Egypt- sourced philosophy. He emphasizes instead that, for Py-
thagoras, doing philosophia was a way to seem intellectually impressive, as
befits a teacher, concerning the topic of highest value, namely divinity. It is
doubtful that Isocrates in ven ted this story’s key ele ments, an Egyptian phi-
losophia and a period of study by Pythagoras in Egypt. So Pythagoras must
already have been linked to philosophia, and his philosophia to his public intellectual and pedagogical influence.42

Isocrates’s con temporary Alcidamas, a rhetorician we will study in chap-
ter 7, calls Pythagoras a sophos, parallel in his importance to Italy with people like Archilochus, Homer, Sappho, Chilon, and Anaxagoras to their respective
cities of honor.43 He may also say that just as Athenians benefited from So-
lon’s laws, and Spartans from Lycurgus’s, Thebes flourished “once the leaders
came to be philosophoi.”44 These revitalizing leaders seem to be Epaminon-
das and Pelopidas, who liberated Thebes from Spartan hegemony in the early

40 Isoc. Bus. 28–29.

41 Isoc. Bus. 24. Livingstone 2001, 155–61, thinks that Isocrates insinuates that Pythagoras learned “not religious wisdom but religious charlatanism,” an ability to impress humans but not gods, and that because Isocrates did not have to mention the “marginal, mysterious figure” Pythagoras, his doing so is a tip- off that the point of the Busiris is to draw out the parallels between the restrictive Egyptian state and Pythagorean society.

42 Livingstone’s view that the Busiris responds throughout the text to Plato’s Republic, such that the view of Egypt here is the Republic’s city, and philosophia here is the Republic’s philosophia, suggests that he would not believe that Isocrates provides in de pen dent evidence for Pythagoras’s philosophicality. Kahn 2001, 12, makes the safer point that Isocrates’s remarks already indicate a proliferation of stories about Pythagoras.

43 Arist. Rh. 1398b11–16.

44 Arist. Rh. 1398b17–20. Ross 1959 punctuates the passage on the belief that both remarks are from Alcidamas; Freese 1926, by contrast, thinks that “something has fallen out” after the remarks about Anaxagoras and thus the Thebes remark may not be Alcidaman. Both Cameron

1938, 34, and Ebert 2001, 432, refer to this passage in support of the claim that Pythagoreans were called philosophoi from an early date. Pl. Phd. 61d6–7 with 64b4–6 support the view that Pythagoreans, including Philolaus, spent time in Thebes.

116 CH A PTER 4
fourth century BCE. Epaminondas was an outstanding philosophical student
of the Pythagorean Lysis.45 If the Pythagoreans were specially called phi-
losophoi, then Epaminondas would be called philosophos on account of his

Pythagoreanism.

Isocrates’s and Alcidamas’s con temporary Plato mentions Pythagoras and
the Pythagoreans only twice explic itly, both times in the Republic.46 Socrates
mentions the “Pythagoreans” for having treated music and astronomy as sister
sciences ( R. 7.530d6–9). Three books later, Socrates observes that in contrast to Homer, who won no acolytes, Pythagoras gained the affections of his followers to an unusual degree (διαφερόντως . . . ἠγαπήθη), teaching them a “way of
life” (ὁδόν τινα; τρόπον . . . τοῦ βίου, R. 10.600a10– b3). Here Socrates reveals Pythagoras’s social and intellectual legacy, mentioning two possibly coincident groups: people called (ἐπονομάζοντες) “Pythagoreans” and some de-
voted followers who adopted the way of life he taught or modeled. The first had
views about mathe matics, in par tic u lar that (the same) mathematical princi ples
underlie both auditory and spatial relations, and these views can prob ably be
traced, at least minimally, to Pythagoras.47 The second group, the followers,
came to live like one another but unlike others. This group was drawn to-
gether in its idiosyncrasy by Pythagoras’s emphasis on the value of changing
one’s life and by his personal lovability. Whereas the “Pythagoreans” adopted
a mode of reasoning shareable across disciplines, the followers adopted a
mode of deciding what to do and how to be. These two groups shared a self-
conscious reformation of their respective practices: scientific and investigative
on the one hand, practical and existential on the other. It would seem therefore
that Pythagoras, according to Plato’s Socrates, stood for the deliberate effort
to change for the better. The followers, in adopting a new mode of life, would
make this effort quite public. Even the Pythagoreans would stick out in their
pursuits of cross- disciplinary work, which, like con temporary interdisciplin-
ary proj ects, cannot be readily explained by appeal to the usual goods of the
individual disciplines, in this case playing and teaching music, or developing
the skills for surveying, navigation, and astronomy.

Plato’s talk of people related to Pythagoras reveals Pythagoras’s distinctive
and public approach to self- improvement, a scholarly, wholehearted, and

45 Corn. Nep. Ep. 2; see also Cic. De or. 3.34; Off. 1.4; Paus. 9.14; Ael. VH 3.17; Iambl. VP

35.250.

46 Kahn 2001, 13–14, affirms the tradition that Prometheus in Plato’s Philebus (16c2d–7) stands for Pythagoras, and Palmer 2014 tracks Pythagorean influences through Gorgias, Phae do, Republic (see also Rowett 2014, 115, 120), Philebus, and Timaeus. See especially Ebert 2001 for the Phaedo as evidence that Pythagoreans were distinctively called philosophoi.

47 Cf. Guthrie 1962, 161–62; Kahn 2001, 13 (supposing Socrates refers to Archytas); Horky 2013, 98–99.

PYTH AGOR EA NS AS PHILOSOPHOI 117
concerted effort. In preceding authors, Pythagoras is seen to seek copious
knowledge, especially from others, and to proj ect the results. Those early au-
thors continually describe him with the language of sophos, sophistês, and philosophia. He has notable views of the soul; it is plausible that his psychological insight contributed to his attractiveness and to his success at getting people to
change their lives. In general, then, the con temporary and near- contemporary
attitudes toward Pythagoras are of just the sort we would expect for someone
who has been called by a name, philosophos, that means wanting distinctively
to become a scion of the Seven (or however many) Sophoi, an initiate in that
legendary class of cultural elites.

Aristotle’s Protrepticus as Evidence, via Iamblichus

Earlier in this book we have seen that others (prob ably all) in the fourth century

BCE accepted that Pythagoras was called philosophos, at least by himself: Her-
aclides and the sources for Diodorus and Diogenes, but also Heraclides’s pre-
de ces sor or con temporary, the person I have called the Sicyon author. Obvi-
ously later authors shared that belief, notably Cicero, who had much greater
access to classical materials than we do, and can hardly be cited for zealous
credulity. The most in ter est ing corroboration for reliability of the Pythago-
ras tale, however, comes from Aristotle, in work now known only through
excerpts by Iamblichus of Chalcis. Aristotle, apparently in his own voice in
his Protrepticus, seems to accept Heraclides’s story, which places in Phlius a

Pythagoras who has to explain the name philosophos. Aristotle’s research into

Pythagoreanism, which cata logued its legends and analyzed its philosophi-
cal tenets, and his research into the history of philosophy, were theretofore
unparalleled. As a long- term member of the Acad emy, he would have heard
nearly every story in circulation about early philosophical machinations.

What ever his reconstructive tendencies, Aristotle is classical Athens’s most
reliable source on philosophy. And he seems to accept Heraclides’s account.

This is a strong argument in favor of it, and thus the early connection between

Pythagoras and the name philosophos.

In chapter 12 of his late third- century CE Pythagorean Way of Life [ VP], Iamblichus pre sents a version of Pythagoras’s festival explanation remarkably
similar to the one that Cicero attributes to Heraclides. It differs in excising
the dramatic context, Leon’s talking with Pythagoras, and extending the ex-
planation about the objects of philosophy’s study, to include remarks about
number, beauty, and priority. Each chapter in Iamblichus’s work begins with
a summary of his own devising. This chapter begins: “His discourse about

118 CH A PTER 4
philosophia: the fact that he was the first to call himself a philosophos and the reasons for that word.” Iamblichus assem bles his works from verbatim
but unattributed excerpts interspersed with his own remarks, and, according
to Doug Hutchinson and Monte Johnson, the most recent editors of this pas-
sage and related passages, his chapter summaries always pertain to the source
from which he draws. This means that Iamblichus will quote in this chapter
from the passage of some work in which Pythagoras explic itly discusses phi-
losophy and in which his inauguration of the self- appellation is made explicit.

Below is the bulk of the chapter; I emphasize the lines that most echo Cicero’s
lines:

And it is said that Pythagoras was the first to call (προσαγορεῦσαι) himself a
philosophos, not only initiating this new use of a word (καινοῦ μόνον ὀνόματος
ὑπάρξας), but also usefully teaching beforehand its proper objects (πρᾶγμα
οἰκεῖον προεκδιδάσκων).48 For he said that the entrance (πάροδον) of human
beings into life is like a crowd meeting at festivals. For as there, while all
sorts of humans gather, each arrives with its own business: one hurries to
sell wares for the sake of money and gain; another comes to display bodily
strength for the sake of reputation, and there is a third group— and this one
is at least the most free— that assem bles for the spectacle (θέας) of the place, the beautiful works of manufacture, and the excellent per for mances and
speeches, the displays of which usually occur at festivals. So also in life all
sorts of men martial themselves together (συναθροίζεσθαι)49 in the same place
for what they each take seriously: longing for money and luxury seize some;
desire for governing and leadership, rivalrousness and a mania for reputa-
tion possess others. But the purest way of life for a human being is the one
satisfied by (ἀποδεξάμενον) the observation of the most beautiful things (τὴν
τῶν καλλίστων θεωρίαν), which one may also term (προσονομάζειν) “philo-
sophical.” Beautiful, for a start, is the spectacle of the entire heaven and the stars revolving in it, if one observes (καθορῷη) their order; for, after all, it is this way
by participation in the primary and intelligible. And the primary is the nature

48 Against all manuscripts, which print προεκδιδάσκων (“teaching beforehand”), Cobet 1878b, 338, followed by Nauck 1884, reads προσεκδιδάσκων (“teach in addition”), on the grounds that Cic. Tusc. 5.4.10 writes that Pythagoras in ven ted the name and later amplified the thing itself ( sed rerum etiam ipsarum amplificator fuit). But, as I argue below, Iamblichus is surely not drawing on Cicero; and it is rather to be expected that Pythagoras would be doing first what he is later named for, not vice versa. In any event, προσεκδιδάσκων is a rare and late word, found elsewhere only in Them. Or. 32.358b and perhaps in Jοseph. AJ 17.6.1 (scribes may have replaced it with the more familiar ancient word, according to Hudson 1720 ad loc.), which suggests that it would be Iamblichus’s remark, not a quotation, that would be at issue.

49 This is found in MS P; Deubner prints ἀθροίζεσθαι.

PYTH AGOR EA NS AS PHILOSOPHOI 119
of numbers and ratios running through all things, according to which all these
things are harmoniously arranged and suitably ordered. And wisdom (σοφία) is
truly a knowledge concerned with first things, beautiful, divine, undefiled, and
always the same and in the same state, by participation in which all other things
may be called beautiful. And philosophy is zealous pursuit of such observation (ἡ
ζήλωσις τῆς τοιαύτης θεωρίας). Beautiful also is this care bestowed on education
which is directed to improvement of human beings.50 (Iambl. VP 12 58–59)

The close similarity of Cicero’s and Iamblichus’s passages, despite minor dif-
ferences, points to a shared source.51 It does not seem that Iamblichus relies
on Cicero himself, both because Iamblichus goes further and because the part
in excess of the Ciceronian overlap seems not his own extension of Cicero’s
words— they are stylistically continuous with the preceding prose and neces-
sary to the explanation found in the overlap. Iamblichus could well be relying
directly on Heraclides’s work, then, for the greater part of VP 12. This might
involve his having On Diseases before him, or something else that excerpts or
embeds a direct quotation.

Actually, we have reason to won der whether Iamblichus may have read Her-
aclides through an intermediary. He wrote about the Pythagorean explanation
at Phlius in the next volume of his multivolume On Pythagoreanism, called
the Protreptic to Philosophy. Chapter 9 has this summary: “An approach to exhortation from the intention of nature, according to the reply Pythagoras gave
to those in Phlius who found out from him who he was and for the sake of what
he has been born, attending to which we reach the conclusion of the protrep-
tic as a whole” (Iambl. Pro. 4,9–13).52 As in the previous work, the chapter
summary always refers to material found in Iamblichus’s source text. This is
impor tant because Iamblichus neither mentions nor quotes anything concern-
ing Phlius in the chapter itself. The closest we get is the following:

50 For the Greek of this passage, see Appendix, pp. 325–26.

51 Only Cicero explains that the festival is “a magnificent display of games in a gathering from the whole of Greece”; but, on the assumption that Iamblichus quotes from a fourth- century BCE author, we would not suspect his source to need to explain festivals— Sosicrates does not either. Similarly, only Cicero adds that winners at festivals earn crowns, another detail that is irrelevant for classical Greeks. Cicero condenses, relative to Iamblichus’s account, the objects the spectators take in, to “what is being done and how.” He also condenses, relatively speaking, when giving the gloss on the analogy, the pursuits of the non- philosophers, from six items divided among two groups to two items divided among two groups. He adds a Latin expansion of the Greek term philosophos. Fi nally, he concludes by emphasizing that insofar as the high worth of observation is underlined by its lack of acquisitiveness, philosophy surpasses all other pursuits.

52 For the Greek of this and the next two passages, see Appendix, p. 325.

120 CH A PTER 4

Being asked [sc. what we were generated by nature and the god in order to do],

Pythagoras said, “to study the heavens (τὸ θεάσασθαι . . . τὸν οὐρανόν),” and
he claimed he was a spectator of nature (θεωρὸν . . . τῆς φύσεως), and for this
sake had passed into (παρεληλυθέναι) his way of life. (Iambl. Pro. 9 51,6–8)

We recall the final line, about “passing into” a life, from the middle of Cicero’s
passage and the beginning of VP 12. The quotation “to study the heavens,”

and the gloss “spectator of nature,” appear to condense the sentences of VP 12
that immediately follow the Cicero overlap. The chapter summary implies that
in the source material Pythagoras is responding in Phlius to some questions.

So it appears that Iamblichus is citing from some highly compressed version
of Heraclides’s story that preserves some of the dramatic context but saves
little of the direct speech. We do not here get any of the festival analogy. It
shows up only a page later, when the source text goes its own way:

For just as we travel abroad to Olympia for the sake of the spectacle (θέας) itself,
even if nothing more will come from it— for the observation (ἡ θεωρία) itself
surpasses much money— and as we attend (θεωροῦμεν) the Dionysia not to
get anything from the actors— indeed we rather pay for it— and as we would
choose many other spectacles over much money, so too the observation of the
whole [i.e., universe] ought to be honored over all that is judged to be useful.

For surely one must not travel with great seriousness for the sake of watching

(θεάσασθαι) people acting as women and slaves, or fighting and racing, and not
think that one must be a spectator of the nature of what exists, and the truth—
for free. (Iambl. Pro. 9 53,19–54,5)

This is a free- associating gloss on the Pythagoras story, and its reference to
the Dionysia puts it in the voice of a fifth- or fourth- century BCE Athenian.

The prose, with its parentheticals, multiple examples, and sinuous argument,
looks rather like Aristotle’s. And indeed it is Aristotle’s: scholars have long
understood that Iamblichus’s Protreptic relies on two main sets of works: Pla-
to’s dialogues (readily identified, because we have all of them), and Aristotle’s

Protrepticus of 353 BCE (not so readily identified, because it is lost). Doug

Hutchinson and Monte Johnson have recently clarified the way Iamblichus re-
lies on Aristotle’s work and have shown in par tic u lar that this chapter itself
comes from Aristotle.53 So, to spell out the consequence, Aristotle has writ-
ten in the Protrepticus about Pythagoras’s responding to a question in Phlius
about his being a philosophos.

53 Hutchinson and Johnson 2005. My reconstruction in these pages owes much to HJ.

PYTH AGOR EA NS AS PHILOSOPHOI 121

This means that Heraclides and Aristotle, contemporaries in Plato’s Acad-
emy from 367 BCE, both wrote about Pythagoras in Phlius. They could have
done so in de pen dently, sharing some unknown source for the Phlius detail
and the core of the festival idea, or one could have relied on the other. If Hera-
clides relied on Aristotle,54 Heraclides might still get the credit for developing
the explanation as he did; however, Cicero, an assiduous reader of Aristotle’s

Protrepticus,55 credits Heraclides not only for that, but also for the location
and dramatic details, which on this hypothesis he should (more justly) have
credited to Aristotle. So, it is probable that, instead, Aristotle relied on Hera-
clides. This may mean that he summarized Heraclides’s account, or, more
likely given the evidence we have, referred at least to some dramatic details—

Pythagoras, Phlius, a question— and then put the upshot of the festival expla-
nation into his own words. Hutchinson and Johnson’s recent reconstruction
of Aristotle’s Protrepticus complicates matters a bit, since they show it to be
a dialogue that features—as they conjecture— both Heraclides and Aristotle
as characters.56 So it is not clear who would have presented either a full or
simplified version of the Pythagoras story. I judge most probable that the char-
acter Aristotle acknowledges the Heraclidean provenance of a story which he
goes on to adumbrate.

There is one more telling piece of Iamblichean evidence, this one not obvi-
ously ascribed to Aristotle: the eighth chapter of On the Pythagorean Life. It
is the first in a sequence of four chapters (8–11) concerning Pythagoras’s first
trip to Croton. Iamblichus summarizes this one as “When and how he traveled
to Croton, what he did on his first appearance, and what words he spoke to
the youth.” In the latter part of the chapter, Iamblichus says that Pythagoras
encouraged the youth toward education (παιδεία), and gives some content.

The language recalls the fourth- century BCE prose moralists. The chapter
concludes:

Education (ἀγωγαῖς) basically accounts for the differences between human be-
ings and animals, between Greeks and barbarians, between the free and ser-
vants, and between philosophoi and any random person. In sum, there is so much
superiority here that while those found running faster than others at Olympia
were seven from one city, those superior in wisdom (σοφίᾳ) from the whole

54 This is the view of Jaeger 1962, 98; see Burkert 1960, 166–69.

55 Cicero modeled his (lost) Hortensius on Aristotle’s Protrepticus (evidence in HJ); he even defended philosophia in that work by explaining its name, according to Boethius De topicis differentiis 1188a.

56 See Hutchinson and Johnson 2018, 112–13 for the characters, and 127–36 (and passim) for the argument that the work is a dialogue.

122 CH A PTER 4
inhabited world numbered seven. And in later times, in which he himself [sc.

Pythagoras] lived, one man alone surpassed all others in philosophia. For he
called himself by this name (τοῦτο τὸ ὄνομα), rather than “wise” (σοφοῦ).57

(Iambl. VP 8 44,5–15)

Iamblichus seems to be claiming that education is so far from having a trivial
effect as to be responsible for the qualitative difference in sophia between
the Seven Sophoi and other putative sophoi, and even in philosophia between Pythagoras and other putative philosophoi. This fits well enough with the preceding discussion. But then Iamblichus gives an explanation for Pythagoras’s
referring to himself as extraordinary in philosophia, rather than as a sophos.

Thus we meet again, in strange form, the not- sophos version of the Pythagoras
story we have attributed to the Sicyon author and have seen again in Dio-
dorus. This alternative account, which crowns chapters 8–11, prob ably does not come from Heraclides’s On Diseases, which appears to have focused on

Empedocles, and, as Gottschalk has argued, prob ably abjures this pessimistic
view of wisdom’s inaccessibility (Gottschalk 1980, 26–36).58 And the final two
sentences must be Iamblichus’s own chapter wrap- up.59 He is free associating
to a non- Heraclidean linkage he has read elsewhere between the philosophoi
and the sophoi. He stands in a long tradition of people viewing Pythagoras and
the Pythagoreans specifically as philosophoi.

Conclusion: The Plausibility of Such Name Calling

A final piece of evidence comes again from Iamblichus. The following pas-
sage appears to come from some fourth- century BCE source.

And first, exhorting (προτρεψάμενος) in the most famous city Croton, he gained
many aspirants (ζηλωτάς), so that it is said that he got six hundred people not
only moved toward the philosophy that he shared with them, but also toward the
so- called common life (τὸ λεγόμενον κοινοβίους), according to his command.

57 For the Greek of this passage, see Appendix, p. 326.

58 Reference to Olympic games is a common topos; see, e.g., Arist. M. α.2 994a22–23 (even as Jaeger secludes here); Iambl. VP 8.40.

59 The chapter has already mentioned philosophia without providing any contrasts with sophia; the sentence is not worded quite right (for the sake of parallelism, the antecedent of τοῦτο
τὸ ὄνομα, “this name,” should be philosophos, not philosophia); there is actually no explanation for Pythagoras’s preference for philosophos/ philosophia; and as we have seen from VP 12, the meaning of philosophia is so impor tant to Iamblichus’s sources as to justify presenting the matter at length.

PYTH AGOR EA NS AS PHILOSOPHOI 123

And these were the ones philosophizing (οἱ φιλοσοφοῦντες), but many others
were listeners, whom they called (καλοῦσιν) akousmatikoi.60 On one occasion,
so they say, the first he held after arriving alone in Italy, the man got more than
two thousand by his speeches. (Iambl. VP 6.29–30)

This passage, which attends to language peculiar to the Pythagorean circle,
suggests that a certain group of Pythagoreans was called “the ones philosophiz-
ing” in the same way another group was called “akousmatikoi.” How early
they were called this, we cannot say, but the author seems to imply an early
date. (The lore concerning the silence of the Pythagorean acolytes may em-
phasize the centrality of good conversation to that life: talk is cheap, yet the
skills of worthwhile talk may take years of training to acquire.)

This chapter has aimed to show that the Pythagoreans would be plausible
and even likely candidates to be called philosophoi, on the grounds that they
were seen and spoken about as acting in a way that would give rise to the coin-
age of the term philosophos. As chapter 3 had it, to be so called, someone would need to appear to be repeatedly and (thus) excessively concerned with
a social institution denoted synecdochally by the second ele ment soph-. The
most likely such referent would be the deeming of people as culturally elite
sophoi, in the context of po liti cal, social, and personal advice- giving. So, it looks like philosophoi would have been coined for people who appeared to be
striving to be sophoi, in a way that was not altogether admirable. Targets of
the coinage of philosophoi would thus have to be people who acted in ways
that would at least appear to conduce to the special advice- giving competence
of sophoi, did so with enough notoriety as to deserve a name and allow that
name to outlive them, and were engaged in a pursuit that people judged either
impractical, imprudent, or improper. The scarcity of historical rec ords from
the late sixth century BCE means that there may have been, unbeknownst to
us, numerous such persons. We do know, however, of at least one such group,
the Pythagoreans, who fit these three par ameters. They did study, talk, and
adopt ways of life that apparently constituted their attempts to live well; they
came to prominence in Greece’s largest commercial colonies; and their het-
erodox views and ambitious politics earned them intellectual criticism and
po liti cal vio lence. The evidence surveyed in this chapter has focused on the
ways near- contemporary authors commented on the Pythagoreans’ being
thought to be (aspiring to be) sophoi, and their noteworthy ave nues of per-
sonal exercise meant to satisfy their ambition. This sort of evidence and this

60 Deubner secludes from “it is said . . .” to “. . . akousmatikoi” and Nauck the first clause of that seclusion, against manuscripts.

124 CH A PTER 4
sort of account might be considered a mere adjunct to histories of philosophy,
since it is simply unclear whether Pythagoras or his nearest po liti cal associates

“philosophized” in the way most con temporary readers would understand the
term. But it is at the heart of the history of philosophia, if, for better or worse, it is their be hav iors that occasioned the coinage of the term.

Whereas this chapter studied people for whom the philosophos word group
might have been used, the next chapter studies people who actually used the
philosophos word group. The way they do so tracks what we might expect,
should those words have been formed in the way described so far in this book.

D E V E L O P M E N T

5

Fifth- Century Philosophoi

Diffusion and Dynamism after Pythagoras and Heraclitus

The term philosophos and its cognates show up hardly a half- dozen times in
fifth- or very early fourth- century BCE Greek— that is, before Alcidamas,

Isocrates, and the Socratics. Blame this largely on the devastation of the
century’s prose works. But even in surviving treatises, none uses instances
of the word family more than once. The selectivity with which authors use
them suggests strict limits on its application. Besides being an impor tant con-
sideration on its own—it speaks against philosophos meaning something as
broadly relevant as “given to intellectual cultivation”— the constellation of sev-
eral narrow uses allows us to infer an earlier and tighter range of meanings
from which each diverged.1

This chapter focuses on six texts: Herodotus’s Croesus- Solon exchange in
his history of the Persian Wars, Pericles’s Funeral Oration in Thucydides’s his-
tory of the Peloponnesian War, the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine,

Gorgias’s playful encomium Helen, Aristophanes’s comedy Ecclesiazusae ( Assemblywomen), and one of Lysias’s forensic speeches. Only the Ecclesiazusae
has a firm date (392 BCE); the others have win dows of possibility of several
de cades, from the early 430s till as late as 380 BCE. Thus a few may over-
lap with usages of philosophos cognates discussed in chapters 6 and 7. Most, however, surely come from the 430s, 420s, or 410s. (No substantial prose work
predates Herodotus.)2 These instances exhibit enough of both unity and va-
riety to allow meaningful retrospective reconstruction of the earliest history
of the term philosophos.

What we find from this survey is that being philosophos means doing what
might position a sage to make definitive claims about the good life (Herodo-
tus); discussing fundamental po liti cal and social issues before the decisions

1 Divergence could vary according to the philosoph- parts of speech, but the paucity of evidence prevents tracking such fine- grained change or constancy, and what evidence there is from the fifth century BCE does not warn that such variance could be large.

2 The closest competition is the so- called Old Oligarch’s (difficult to date) Constitution of the Athenians.

128 CH A PTER 5
which they underlie become urgent (Thucydides); doing medicine by reliance
on hypotheses about the under lying princi ples of human nature and their cos-
mic analogues rather than on practical assessment of diet and environment ( On

Ancient Medicine); debating deep issues that are neither po liti cally nor me-
teorologically exigent and prob ably turn on logical considerations (Gorgias);
revolutionizing a city’s constitutional arrangements rather than propounding
incremental legislative or policy change ( Ecclesiazusae); and seeking ways
out of personal difficulties reflectively (Lysias). Taken as a whole, then, being
philosophos means continuously investigating, usually in conversational ex-
change, the under lying and significant normative structures that constitute
city- and life- guiding princi ples. This supports the linguistic hypothesis of
chapter 3, that the term philosophos points to the idea of acting, repetitively, to become like political- advising and maxim- spouting sophoi. We also see
diversity by the end of the fifth century BCE: the Hippocratic treatise shows a
natural- scientific side to philosophia; Gorgias recognizes its formalized per-
for mance; and Lysias, prob ably the latest author, domesticates philosophia into self- directed, albeit exceptional, life planning. The be hav ior that prompted the
coinage of philosophos may have already included these scientific, formalized,
and self- directed ele ments, along with the more prominent po liti cal and exis-
tential ele ments, and only certain later users of the term emphasized them;
alternatively, one or another ele ment—my guess is the one found in Gorgias’s
formalized usage— shows actual innovation.

An appendix of three likely uses of philosophos or philosophia in the fifth century BCE, connected to Zeno, Simon, and Democritus, follows this chapter. They corroborate claims made here, but with such evidentiary challenges
as to warrant only subsidiary consideration.

Herodotus’s Solon and His Sage Wisdom (Hdt. 1.30)

Early in the first book of his History (ca. 425–15 BCE),3 Herodotus puts
a use of the verb philosophein (Hdt. 1.30) squarely in the context of sagely
sophoi (whom he calls sophistai), which we would expect from the conjec-
tured coinage situation.4 Herodotus introduces the scene by describing the

3 For the date of authorship, see Fornara 1971; Munn 2000, 43; and bibliography at YC

1.1n1.

4 Cf. DL 1.12 and Aristid. Or. 3.677; see Ford 1993, 36–37, and FGH 1005 ad F7, for discussion. The practice continued to Aristotle, who called the Seven Sages both sophistai ( On Philosophy fr. 5 Ross) and sophoi (fr. 8 Ross), and Isoc. Antid. 235, who says that Solon is called sophistês but that the word is now a dishonorable appellation. I suspect that, for Herodotus in the 125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 128

9/18/19 1:20 PM

FIFTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 129
imperial successes of the Lydians in the early sixth century BCE, the details
of which provide the impor tant “sage” context. In his final episode about King

Alyattes’s life, Herodotus observes that Periander of Corinth, considered by
later authors as one of the Seven Sophoi, brought peace to Sardis and Miletus
by intercepting a Delphic oracle.5 Herodotus then describes the first actions
of Alyattes’s son, Croesus: the subjugation of the Greeks of Asia Minor and
the plotting about the subjugation of the islands of its coast. At this point a cer-
tain sage — either Bias of Priene or Pittacus of Mytilene, Herodotus is not sure
which— comes to Sardis and analyzes Croesus’s and the islanders’ respective
expectations. Croesus is “exceedingly pleased with his reasoning and, think-
ing he had spoken appropriately,” decides to sue for peace with the islanders.6

He has other ways to expand his empire, and thus the wealth of Sardis still
grows. At its height came “all the other Greek sophistai alive at the time, each
for his own reason.”7 Herodotus must have in mind Periander, Bias, Pitta-
cus, and their ilk. Since he later mentions Thales and Chilon in their capacity
as po liti cal advisors,8 and the Lydian Sandanis,9 such men are prob ably
included, too. Herodotus then says that even (καὶ δὴ καί) Solon of Athens
late fifth century BCE, the term sophos had become broader than it once was, and therefore less appropriate for a po liti cal advisor than the professional name sophistês.

5 Hdt. 1.20–22. Periander was notoriously excluded from some lists of the Seven Sophoi because he was a tyrant (cf. Paus. 1.23.1; Stamatopoulou 2016). Hdt. 1.96–101 describes the pattern of devolution from sophos to intimidating tyrant in his account of Deiokes.

6 Hdt. 1.27. About fifteen years later, Herodotus says, Bias tries to rescue the Ionians from their slavery to the Persians by advising, at a counsel of all Ionians, that they emigrate to Sardinia; he adds that, before the Ionian defeat, another core sage, Thales of Miletus, had recommended po liti cal unification of Ionia (Hdt. 1.170).

7 Hdt. 1.29: οἱ τε ἄλλοι πάντες ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος σοφισταί, οἳ τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον ἐτύγχανον
ἐόντες, ὡς ἕκαστος αὐτῶν ἀπικνέοιτο. “For his own reason” seems the best way to express ὡς
ἕκαστος, in light of the ensuing lines that take up Solon’s reasons for coming, though Sage 1985, 12, has “As each one of these sages came, so came Solon.” How and Wells 1912 suspect that some of them may have come because of the wealth, arguing that “sophists” are later associated with venery; but Herodotus does not have “sophists” of Protagoras’s ilk in mind. There is also a question about the meaning of the ἄλλοι; I have taken it to mean “all the other sophistai (sc.

the ones not yet mentioned in Book 1), but Sage 1985, 12, has “ there came . . . many [visitors], among whom were all the Greek sages.”

8 Thales: Hdt. 1.170; Chilon, as ἀνήρ . . . σοφώτατος: Hdt. 7.235.2, with a Chilon of Lacedaemon who gives advice at 1.59.2 and a Chilon son of Demarmenos who does not (perhaps the sage’s grand son, as Macan 1895 guesses) at 6.65.2.

9 Herodotus says that Sandanis, already considered a sophos, became more famous for giving clever though unheeded advice to Croesus about the austerity of the Persians and the pointlessness of conquering them (Hdt. 1.71). Herodotus also mentions, on three occasions, the legendary prophet Melampus, a sophos anêr, whose prophetic followers he calls sophistai, and who brings Dionysian ritual from Egypt to Greece and, when asked to cure madness in women caused by Dionysus, ruthlessly extorts half a kingship: Hdt. 2.49, 7.221, 9.34.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 129

9/18/19 1:20 PM

130 CH A PTER 5
came,10 after visiting Amasis in Egypt.11 Solon had recently made laws for the

Athenians. So as not to have his laws repealed, which could happen only with
his express approval, he went abroad for ten years. He claimed for his purpose

“observation” (κατά θεωρίης πρόφασιν, Hdt. 1.29).12 Herodotus believes that

Solon in fact traveled for both reasons— constitutional stability and observa-
tion ( theôria). Solon is received by Croesus in his palace, and after several days, Croesus arranges for him to see his trea sury in its blessed greatness (μεγάλα
τε καὶ ὄλβια). Having given Solon time to observe (θεησάμενον) and inves-
tigate or appraise (σκεψάμενον) all of it, Croesus makes a remark and asks a
question:

Athenian visitor, much word has arrived to us about you concerning both
your wisdom (σοφίης) and your wandering (πλάνης), that, philosophizing

(φιλοσοφέων), you have covered much of the earth for the sake of theôria. So the
desire came to me to ask you whether you have by now seen the most blessed

(ὀλβιώτατος) of all men.13 (Hdt. 1.30.1)

Croesus expects and hopes that Solon will say that he has, and that it is Croe-
sus himself. But Solon describes the more blessed lives of three other men (Hdt.

1.30.3–1.31). When Croesus asks whether he is being deliberately insulted,

Solon lectures him about the tenuousness of human life, gives detailed calcu-
lations about the number of days in a human life, contrasts the ways a rich and

10 The structure of this and Herodotus’s previous paragraphs implies that he includes Solon among the sophistai (contra: Stein 1869; How and Wells 1912); see Powell 1938 s.v. σοφιστής; Sage 1985, 244; McNeal 1986, 119, citing Hdt. 1.1 (τῇ τε ἄλλῃ χώρῃ ἐσαπικνέεσθαι, καὶ δὴ καὶ
ἐς Ἄργος); YC 1.395–400. Thus καὶ δὴ καί must mean “and even,” where Solon either would not immediately have been expected or is to be focalized. Andrea Purvis’s formulation, “Of par ticu lar note” (in Strassler 2007), gets the force right.

11 Herodotus says that Solon adopted “an admirable law” from Amasis, that each person
each year must declare his occupation—as a just and honest one—to his respective governor: Hdt. 2.177.2. (Herodotus’s next and final mention of Solon is his trip to Cyprus and praise of its king as best of tyrants: 5.113.2.) Arist. Ath. Pol. 11 says only that Solon went to Egypt “for business (ἐμπορίαν) and for theôria.”

12 On prophasis, see Pearson 1952, esp. 209n18; on Solon’s wandering, see Montiglio 2000, 88. Havelock 1963, 280–81, pre sents theôria and its object too vaguely with his gloss “desire to see the world.”

13 Ξεῖνε Ἀθηναῖε, παρ’ ἡμέας γὰρ περὶ σέο λόγος ἀπῖκται πολλὸς καὶ σοφίης εἵνεκεν τῆς
σῆς καὶ πλάνης, ὡς φιλοσοφέων γῆν πολλὴν θεωρίης εἵνεκεν ἐπελήλυθας· νῦν ὦν ἵμερος
ἐπειρέσθαι μοι ἐπῆλθέ σε εἴ τινα ἤδη πάντων εἶδες ὀλβιώτατον. The MSS disagree about the
clause following φιλοσοφέων, some replacing γῆν πολλὴν with τῆν πολλὴν, τὴν πόλιν, or τῆς
πολλῆς, resulting in the following translations: for the sake of theôria you have “gone through much” or “come to the city.” This provocative variation makes little difference for my argument.

The most thorough analy sis of the text is at YC 2.99–115.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 130

9/18/19 1:20 PM

FI FTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 131
a fortunate man can be happy, and observes the impossibility of perfection in
any part of life (Hdt. 1.32).14

Croesus’s use of philosophein gives an impor tant insight into the early uses of
the term.15 Croesus says that Solon has a reputation for having sophia,16 which
implies that he takes him to be sophos— and thus also, I believe, a sophos.17

Midway through his Histories, Herodotus describes the sophos Anacharsis of Scythia as “having done theôria over much of the earth” (γῆν πολλὴν θεωρήσας)

and as “presenting his copious sophia” (ἀποδεξάμενος κατ᾽ αὐτὴν σοφίην
πολλήν, Hdt. 4.76.2).18 It is as a sophos, then, and one who has seen and judged
many people and their appurtenances and situation, that Croesus queries Solon
for his view about the most blessed of men.19 The first clause’s “wisdom . . .

wandering” matches the second clause’s “theôria . . . covered much land.” The
participle, philosopheôn, must therefore gloss and give a name to Solon’s travel
and concern for understanding the world that is, according to Croesus, charac-
teristic of his efforts to be a sophos.20 Philosophein seems to name the way of life that appears oriented toward becoming a sophos.

It is not trivial that Herodotus uses philosophos- group words only once.

The word must have for him a special, charged, and narrowly tailored mean-
ing, used not for just any intellectual cultivation (many instances of which

14 The passage from Hdt. 1.29–32 has received much scholarly attention; see, e.g., Benardete 1969, 16–19; Redfield 1985, 102; Belloni 2000, 160–64; Nightingale 2004, 63–64; Sharp 2004, 90–93; Ker 2000, 312–13; Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella 2007, 97–104; YC 1.400–6.

15 YC, the most sustained inquiry into this passage, seems to assume that Herodotus provides the earliest extant use of the entire philosophos group and perhaps implies that Herodotus coined the term; obviously I disagree. Riedweg 2004, 167–68; Riedweg 2005, 96, recognizes that the “natu ral way” Herodotus uses the word shows that the word “had been in use for some time.”

16 Croesus is prob ably saying that news has arrived “concerning” (εἵνεκεν) his sophia, not that the news has come “ because of” his sophia, though this is pos si ble.

17 Cf. Peterson 2011, 203. If Solon’s advice represents Herodotus’s worldview, as Shapiro 1996 argues, we do not need to reject the equation of Solon with sophos on the grounds that it would entail, absurdly, that Herodotus is also a sophos; sophoi just are sophoi if they influence other people’s views for certain kinds of reasons (like those of Herodotus).

18 At 4.42.1, Herodotus says that he is the only one known for wisdom (σοφίης πέρι) in the Pontus. Anacharsis is explic itly included among the Seven Sophoi at DL 1.41–42. See Redfield 1985 on the rich concept of touristic travel in Herodotus.

19 The long cap on this story at Hdt. 1.86.3 follows the familiar model of sophos advice to leaders cited above; see generally Bischoff 1932 and Lattimore 1939.

20 This is obscured in many translations: Nightingale 2004, 63–65, “how you have trav-
eled much of the earth philosophizing and pursuing theôria,” as though it were an in de pen dent activity; De Sélincourt 1954, “how widely you have travelled in the pursuit of knowledge,”

conflating participle and explanation for Solon’s travel; Legrand 1932, “le gout du savoir et la curiosité”; Rawlinson 1862, “from love of knowledge and a wish to see the world”; and recently Purvis in Strassler 2007, “We hear you have wandered through much of the world in search for knowledge.”

132 CH A PTER 5

Herodotus references through the Histories).21 What this tightly worked set
piece shows is that philosophein is, according to Herodotus’s Croesus, the ac-
tivity appropriate to those aiming to become members of that Panhellenic
cultural elite, equally known as sophoi or sophistai, where expansive travels and spectatorship prepare a person to give profound judgment about the human
experience. It is a ste reo typed practice connected with sagehood, and one that
provides people like Solon, a lawmaker, adequate cover. It is not a common-
place, broadly distributed activity; it is not obviously what Milesian research-
ers are doing when they investigate, systematize, and write; it is not obviously
deliberative or po liti cal; and it is practiced by a fluid but delineable group of
people.22

Thucydides’s Pericles and Defense of Athenian Philosophein

(Thuc. 2.40)

Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War also includes a single use of
a philosophos- group word, again the verb philosophein, this time specifically connected to deliberation about po liti cally relevant matters before they become urgent.23 Midway through his Funeral Oration of 431 BCE, Pericles

21 Why Herodotus has only Croesus apply it only to Solon is uncertain— perhaps it is Solon’s travel to Egypt and Sardis or his being Athenian, perhaps it is Solon’s fame for gnomic poetry, perhaps it is the mere fact that this is the only conversation with a sophistês that Herodotus records— but the connection must have struck Herodotus’s contemporaries and later audiences as particularly apt. Solon comes to seem a paradigmatic sort of (non- disciplinary) philosophos: see, e.g., Pl. Chrm. 154e8–155a3 (implied); RL 133c3–4 (implied); Xen. Symp. 8.39; [Dem.]

Erot. 50.5 (ca. 350–30 BCE); Aeschin. In Ctes. 108, 257 (ca. 330 BCE); cf. In Tim. 41 (ca. 345 BCE); DS 9 frr. 1.2, 4.2; Plut. Solon 3; Malalas 6.6.

22 This argument is contra Chroust 1947, 22; Morrison 1958, 208; Hadot 2002, 16; Frede

2004, 23; Nightingale 2004, 63–65. While Herodotus himself may have a Milesian investigatory sensibility, even if Solon serves in some way as his avatar (per Shapiro 1996), Solon need not himself have that sensibility.

23 The book may have been written as late as the mid-390s BCE; see Pouilloux and Salviat

1983, 391–403, and 1985; and Munn 2000, 5–6, 11–12, 305–6, 316–27, 433n57, 434n61, who argues that Thucydides could have written only after the war, after Socrates’s execution, and during the reconstruction of democracy and empire. Others have thought that because the History breaks off at 411, he must have died then; or because Paus. 1.23.9 states that he was murdered en route to Athens, it was shortly after 404 that he stopped writing. In any event, the speech may faithfully rec ord Pericles’s speech of 431: Thucydides seems to have taken close notes of speeches from the beginning of the war (Thuc. 1.22); many people would have been at Pericles’s speech and so could have corroborated Thucydides’s sketch; and if anyone were worth quoting verbatim, it would be Pericles. See also Gomme 1945, 2.104, 2.126, 2.129–30, 2.136, who argues that some passages would be appropriate as spoken in the 430s but not after 404. But nothing rides on the matter except chronological bookkeeping.

FI FTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 133
defends the Athenians from slander. “We beautify with economy, and we
philosophein without softness” (φιλοκαλοῦμέν τε γὰρ μετ᾽ εὐτελείας καὶ
φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας, 2.40.1). Critics of Athenian hegemony, it ap-
pears, have slung these names at the Athenians; Pericles accepts the names but
not the negative imputations. The charges and nature of Pericles’s corrections
are not exactly obvious, since Thucydides uses these verbs only once; “beau-
tify” (φιλοκαλέω) makes its first appearance in Greek here (and only appear-
ance in classical Greek), and “philosophize” (φιλοσοφέω) makes one of the
first appearances in Greek here. Both terms and their qualifications, novelties
presented with such witty compression, call for a gloss; we get it in the subse-
quent five sentences:

Wealth we use rather for timely activity (ἔργου) than for boastful speech (λόγου);
and someone’s admitting to poverty is not shameful— what’s more shameful is
for him not to flee actively (ἔργῳ) from it. Some of us concern ourselves with
both house hold and po liti cal matters; while others, though occupied by activity

(ἔργα), lack nothing in their appreciation for po liti cal matters. We alone consider
the man who lacks any part in these to be, not unmeddling (ἀπράγμονα), but
useless, and it is we ourselves who either decide or at least make correct sense of
affairs (ἤτοι κρίνομέν γε ἢ ἐνθυμούμεθα ὀρθῶς τὰ πράγματα), not considering
it to be speeches (λόγους) that undermine activity (ἔργοις) but rather the failure
to have already come to understand, through speech (λόγῳ), how to act (ἔργῳ)

when one must. For we so excel others in both our boldness and especially
our thinking through (ἐκλογίζεσθαι) what ever it is we pursue; in other men,
confidence is really ignorance, and calculation (λογισμός) brings hesitation. The
men rightly judged strongest in soul are those who know (γιγνώσκοντες) most
clearly what is terrible and what is pleas ur able and who, on account of this, do
not turn away from risks. (Thuc. 2.40.1–3)

The unnamed critics accuse the Athenians of being all show and all talk; Peri-
cles explains that, far from being enervating, Athenian philokalein and phi-
losophein contribute to agency and power— indeed, the word ergon shows
up five times in the first three sentences, logon three times. He makes quick
work of philokalein, apparently interpreted as the con spic u ous consumption
associated with the mid- century building program that much of the Delian

League tribute funded. Pericles justifies the expenses as capital improvements
necessary (and no more than necessary— μετ᾽ εὐτελείας) to prepare the city,
and presumably Hellas at large, for likely eventualities. What looks like self-
indulgent ornamentation counts as prudent outfitting. Pericles then general-
izes to say that the real prob lem is complacency about the financial situation

134 CH A PTER 5
in which one might find oneself; such complacency would show a failure to
prepare oneself for “timely activity.”

This explanation applies equally to philosophein, apparently interpreted as
the dithering and delay associated with the capacious network of formal and
informal mid- century demo cratic decision- making bodies. This is a criticism
familiar from Plato’s Callicles: philosophein has its charms for the youth, but in adults it makes one incapable of facing the hard facts of po liti cal life, that one
must simply act ( Grg. 484c–85e). Philosophein reflects “softness” (μαλακία), taking the easy route of non- self- assertion.24 Many readers have supposed
that Pericles means to defend Athenian “philosophizing” as intellectual cul-
tivation or scientific pursuits among the elite.25 But he is really saying that
philosophein is the citizenry’s talking through fundamental po liti cal issues—
including the nature and value of the expedient, bad, and pleasurable— before
the po liti cal exigencies whose response relies on them arise. By implicit defi-
nition, the talking called philosophein does not realize itself in explicit po litical decision- making; but that is not because it is incompetent to eventuate
in action—it precedes any such call for action, and when the call comes, the

Athenians will be better prepared, having more considerations already fully
and clearly in view, than anybody else. According to Pericles, then, not only
is philosophein useful as a collective activity rather than harmful to the city

(conducive of malakia); it is the best preparation for a city’s prosperity— each
citizen like a sophos.26

24 A morally charged term, malakia characterizes people unwilling to confront po liti cally or militarily impor tant hardships, toil, and danger (Hdt. 6.11; Thuc. 1.122.4, 2.61.4, 2.85.2, 5.7.2, 5.75.3; Lys. 10.11); in the fourth century BCE it is fit explic itly into moral theorizing (Xen. Symp.

8.8; Arist. Eth. Nic. 1150a31).

25 E.g., Ford 1993, 40 (“genteel refinement”); Hadot 2002, 16 (“intellectual activity and the interest in science and culture which flourished in their city”); and Laks 2002, 30 (“being attracted by the fine arts and lit er a ture”). Rusten 1985 is only half- right when he says that “it is no longer necessary to dilute the force of φιλοσοφοῦμεν to ‘general culture’, since it need not apply equally to every Athenian,” and not right in claiming that “on an individual level . . . φιλοκαλεῖν
is virtually a synonym for φιλοσοφεῖν.” Gadamer 1982, 141, is too speculative when he argues that philosophein “means ‘interest in theoretical questions,’ for ‘beautiful’ refers to the domain of that which surpasses the necessary and useful and is sought for its own sake just because it is pleasing.” Gomme 1945, 119–21, who mostly discusses philokalein, does not take the discussion of po liti cal preparation to gloss the meaning of “philosophize,” but instead as a parallel— “the comparison is with other Greeks, Boeotians, and Peloponnesians, who would think a love of learning to be as inconsistent with courage as po liti cal discussion with decisiveness of action”—
but this seems a misreading of Thucydides’s logic.

26 Isocrates says nearly the same thing in the mid-300s BCE: Athenian excellence comes
from philosophizing, which is the education that prepares people to give and understand
speeches (Isoc. Antid. 250).

FIFTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 135

In the Athenian context of Pericles’s late 430s BCE, or in the ensuing de-
cades during which Thucydides wrote his history, philosophein names a spe-
cific mode of po liti cal conversation, one in which all can participate but not
one that characterizes every sort of discussion or practice of mental develop-
ment. The focus is not on sophia or an attitude toward sophia, but on the proclivity to prepare to give advice and make decisions necessary for a city’s
being run well. This usage shares much with that of Herodotus’s Croesus, who
takes philosophein to refer to the actions that allow Solon at a moment’s notice
to advise him, a po liti cal leader, on the excellence of his life and life choices.

A minor difference is that with the term, Thucydides emphasizes the verbal
tendencies of the Athenians, whereas Croesus does not emphasize verbal
tendencies; but Herodotus may presage Thucydides’s usage of philosophein
after all, since his Solon responds to Croesus’s question loquaciously, with a
range of moralizing stories, mathematical calculations, and disquisitions on
gods, men, and mortality. Both would be glossed better as “ doing what might
make one be treated as a Seven Sage style sophos” than as “loving sophia” or

“working to improve one’s mind.” We will see something similarly po liti cal,
conversational, and preparatory in Gorgias’s and Aristophanes’s work. But
first we shall take a detour into the Hippocratic corpus, to a less po liti cal use
of the term, to see another way that philosophein involves the study of deep
background considerations on which practical decisions are to be made.

The Hippocratic Critique of Empedoclean Philosophia- Inclined

Doctors (Hippoc. VM 20.1)

Sometime perhaps around 420 BCE, an unknown Hippocratic author draws
an explicit connection between Empedocles’s writings on nature and so- called
philosophia (prob ably the earliest extant occurrence of the abstract noun).27

He does so in this text, On Ancient Medicine, to vivify a contrast between his
favored medical approach and the more abstract and cosmological approach of
other doctors and sophistai (“teachers,” “experts”) that he says “tend toward
philosophy” (τείνει . . . ὁ λόγος ἐς φιλοσοφίην). While the text is not about phi-
losophia per se—it is about the technical success of medicine as has long
been practiced, not just with the influx of new thinking—it provides excellent
evidence for a meaning of philosophia that seems best explained by a Pythag-

27 420 BCE: Schiefsky 2006, 64, arguing with “some confidence”; Lloyd 2006, 366, doubts
that such confidence is warranted. In further support of Schiefsky’s view: the reference only to Empedocles and no other thinker, and the language of “above and below the earth” (see below, pp. 138–40). On the text, see YC 1.351–54, and more broadly 1.348–60.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 135

9/18/19 1:20 PM

136 CH A PTER 5
orean provenance, and that shares, with the po liti cal usages seen in Herodo-
tus and Thucydides, the emphasis on reasoning through the fundamentals in
some department of life removed from the pressure that comes from the ur-
gency to make a decision.

Chapter 20 of On Ancient Medicine, the section with most relevance to our
account, begins with an intradisciplinary dispute.28 The author states that
some doctors and sophists (presumably teachers of or lecturers on medicine)

claim that successful treatment requires having learned “what the human is”

(ὅ τι ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος) and having learned it before they actually have to effect
a cure of a human—as we saw Thucydides’s Pericles say that Athenians talk
about matters before they actually have to confront a prob lem.29 The content
of this “what is x” question, and thus the way to answer it, depends on the
questioners’ view of the proper knowledge of nature. For these sophists and
doctors, this knowledge is cosmogonic and compositional. They think they
must know the origins and parts of the universe. Given that humans are part
of nature, this cosmogonic and compositional knowledge includes knowing the
origins and parts of humans. The Hippocratic author disagrees with this infer-
ence, that knowing the whole of nature will allow one to know humans in a
way relevant to health. He does not spell out his critique, but he seems to find
several prob lems with the “philosophical” approach. First, the scale of those
investigations is wrong; second, the creation stories that provide philosophical
interest focus on isolated moments of becoming rather than on the interactions
between the things that have come to be, which cause sickness and health; and,
third, having simplified the world to a mixture of basic stuffs— “hot, cold, dry,
wet, or what ever else you want”— the complexity that is material to human
well- being gets forgotten.30 He proposes as the proper knowledge of nature
not philosophia, but rather something interactional in a fine- grained way. The
doctor must know “what the human being is in light of what one eats and
drinks, and what it is in relation to other things one does (ἐπιτηδεύματα), and
how each thing will affect another (ὅ τι ἀφ᾽ ἑκάστου ἑκάστῳ συμβήσεται).”31

This relational, dynamic, and particularistic view of the nature of medical
knowledge conceives of knowledge in a way radically dif fer ent from the way
the philosophia- tending opponents do. They look back in time and space, seek-

28 See Dunn 2005, 60–63, for the insightful sophistic moves the author makes throughout
the text.

29 Hippoc. VM 20.1: δεῖ καταμαθεῖν τὸν μέλλοντα (“one must learn [now] what in the future . . .”); compare to Thuc. 2.40.2, quoted above.

30 This list and number of ele ments and the dismissive “or what ever you want” (ἢ ἄλλο τι ὅ
ἂν θέλωσιν) open the treatise, Hippoc. VM 1.1.3.

31 Hippoc. VM 20.3. This passage is paraphrased for the case of “rhe toric” in Pl. Phdr.

271d1–7.

FI FTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 137
ing from where and what something— a human— came to be, and then di-
agnose illness by projecting something anomalous onto that development or
attained state. Our author, by contrast, exhorts doctors to observe, in the pre-
sent, how humans are modified by the most intimate aspects of their environ-
ment, what humans take into their bodies, and what they work on, and then
to diagnose illness by identifying troublemaking environmental causes. For
example: too much unmixed wine for anyone or too much cheese for certain
people. This clinical work in the natu ral history of human flourishing and ill-
ness may take as long as the environment is wide; but at least the evidence is
vis i ble and concrete, not merely hy po thet i cal.

It is in describing his opponents’ medical epistemology that the Hippo-
cratic author appeals to the philosophia typified by Empedocles and the like-
minded. In “tending toward” (τείνει)32 that philosophia, such medical prac-
ti tion ers write “about nature from its origin what the human being is and
how it first came to be and from what it was compounded.”33 His critique of
philosophia actually has two parts. As we saw in the previous paragraph, the
core of the criticism comes from his preference for the interactional model:

the cosmogonic model simply does not provide “any clear knowledge” and it
lacks “precision.”34 We can now add the filigree to this criticism, which is his
claim that philosophia- inflected writings (γέγραπται) by doctors and soph-
ists belong in the realm less of medicine than of “writing” (τῇ γραφικῇ). Our
author appears to say that the “philosophical” writings fail to get through to
the realities they purport to describe; their excellence is found not in their fit
with the world but in their internal compositional arrangement.35 He is prob-
ably not charging medical philosophia with absolute irrelevance, as being a
theory that informs no practice, since he makes only a comparative claim. But
he does suggest that its priorities are expositional, like persuasive power and
explanatory simplicity and breadth, rather than the technical goals of efficacy
and applicability.

Thus the Hippocratic author associates philosophia with advocating a
method of simple, universal, logically fundamental explanations for tough

32 LM 6.319 translate this as “belongs to”; the difference concerns the degree of overlap between what prac ti tion ers of medicine and prac ti tion ers of philosophia do, but the pre sent analy sis does not turn on it.

33 The syntax of the first part of this phrase, οἳ περὶ φύσιος γεγράφασιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὅ τι ἐστὶν
ἄνθρωπος, obscures the logical relation between writing “what the human being is” and writing “about nature from its origin.” The final verb, συνεπάγη, from πήγνυμι, appears to be Empedoclean (found in B15/D52, B56/147b, B86/D213, B107/D241); see Schiefsky 2006, 305–6, for discussion and further occurrences of the verb in fifth- century BCE physics.

34 Concerns about “precision” have already arisen, in Hippoc. VM 9, 12.

35 For the history of this sentence’s interpretation, see Schiefsky 2006, 306–10.

138 CH A PTER 5
issues. At the beginning of his treatise, he calls this “using one or two hy-
po thet i cal causes.” This method of hypothesis is inappropriate for medicine,
which deals with the manifest body and its surroundings, for it is suited
rather to speaking about hidden matters, where access is other wise blocked

(τὰ ἀφανέα τε καὶ ἀπορεόμενα).36 This includes, “for example, the things in
the sky and the things below the earth” (οἷον περὶ τῶν μετεώρων ἢ τῶν ὑπὸ
γῆν).37 While study of the things in the sky and below the earth is not a defini-
tion of philosophia— philosophia is not mentioned in these opening pages—it is taken as an appropriate or ste reo typical or legible occasion for philosophia.

Thus the meaning of the phrase should give us more information about phi-
losophia than we get in chapter 20, and so we will discuss it in detail.

In the Sky and below the Earth

The things in the sky (τὰ μετεώρα) include both the celestial and atmospheric
bodies. Their study involves describing their motions, their ingredients, and
their origins. One’s physics determines one’s belief about the effect of their
relative positions on the mundane world, either as predictive or as causal. But
studying ta meteôra is not just studying the stars, their patterns, and their powers. It is studying every thing beyond our planet; and if our planet is to be
considered somehow akin to the things beyond it, then it is in effect studying
every thing whatsoever and, to some degree, studying every thing at once. This
is cosmology. Abstracted from par tic u lar bodies, it is geometry and mathe-
matics. Abstracted further and given a methodological spin, it may even in-
clude analy sis as such.38

This totalizing view of “the things in the sky” as “every thing” might seem
to leave “the things under the earth” with relatively little territory of their own.

This could suggest that the polarity simply emphasizes the totality.39 But it
is not the only pos si ble way. Evidence for its importance comes from the fact
that the nearly contemporaneous play, Aristophanes’s Clouds, turns a joke on
the very subject: a character’s ignorance of the original referent of “below the
earth.” Strepsiades sees some denizens of Socrates’s school bent over like
animals. He eventually learns that their anuses are looking toward the heav-

36 That these issues were fodder for fifth- century BCE debate is clear from Alcmaeon B1/D4

(= DL 8.83) and Euripides Oenomaus fr. 574 (τεκμαιρόμεσθα τοῖς παροῦσι τἀφανῆ; cf. fr. 811).

37 Hippoc. VM 1.3. The word order suggests that a better translation is “subterranean things.”

38 On analusis in ancient Greek philosophy, see Menn 2002. Thanks to M. M. McCabe for prompting this idea.

39 And it may have mythic origin: Pindar’s story of Polydeuces allows him to choose to
spend half his existence “ under the earth” (γαίας ὑπένερθεν), the other half in the golden homes

“of the heaven” (οὐρανοῦ) (Pind. Nem. 10.87–88).

FIFTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 139
ens (ἐς τὸν οὐρανόν) because they themselves are learning to do astronomy

(ἀστρονομεῖν διδάσκεται).40 In the meanwhile, however, he is baffled by their
heads. “Why ever are they looking toward the earth (ἐς τὴν γῆν βλέπουσιν)”?

His guide replies: “They are seeking what is beneath the earth” (ζητοῦσιν . . .

τὰ κατὰ γῆς). “So they’re seeking out bulbs?”41 If that’s the case, they should
not strain so hard, Strepsiades says; he can help them find some wonderful ones.

But why, he asks, are those others really (σφόδρ᾽) bending down? He is an-
swered, paradoxically: “they are diving below Tartarus” (ἐρεβοδιφῶσιν ὑπὸ
τὸν Τάρταρον) (Ar. Nub. 187–94).42 This set piece requires that by around 420

BCE the Athenians already knew the polar expression. It also requires that there
be something counterintuitive about the idea of studying the things under the
earth. What is under the earth is in princi ple beyond human experience and
perception.

Yet the reference to “below Tartarus” suggests that those who have passed
on may come to know its denizens in the land of Hades; investigating beneath
the earth is reflecting on death, the afterlife, judgment, and the career of the
soul. This is prob ably because the under ground is associated with burial, with
the origins of plants, with the depths of the sea, and with all that is hidden from
the clear light of living day. But the below is also associated with other sorts of
investigative concern. Mining may be an impor tant one, which would concern
geology as such, but also theories and experiments concerning the pieces of
land that contain mineral- rich ore. This would also include the exploration
and creation of caves. The temperature of under ground water, and its relation
to flooding, would be another. Empedocles explains hot springs by appeal to
under ground fires; Oenopides of Chios, Thrasyalkes of Thasos, and others ex-
plain the Nile’s fluctuations by appeal to the inverse proportion of atmospheric
and geological temperature.43

Thus, as informative about the nature of philosophia, study of “the things
in the sky and below the earth” is overdetermined, a pattern to fit a broad range
of investigations, but also a pursuit directed toward (or not away from) the
eventually practical. Some of those investigations have instrumental value:

navigation, crop planning, and other sorts of forecasting; mineral extraction,
irrigation, and the interpretation or prediction of earthquakes and volcanoes.

40 In Ar. Av. 689–91 (414 BCE), Aristophanes jokingly has Prodicus include, in his study of the things above (περὶ τῶν μετεώρων), the nature of birds.

41 Βολβοί usually refers to bulbs of the Muscari comosum, a Greek delicacy now called the tassel grape hyacinth.

42 Tartarus is the lowest part of Hades (Hes. Theog. 119, 721–810).

43 Empedocles A68/D110; Oenopides B11; Thrasyalkes (A)1; Anaxagoras A91/D66; Dio-
genes of Apollonius A18/D25. Plausibly influenced by this line of reasoning is Pl. Phd. 111c4–
e4. See further Schiefsky 2006, 136–39.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 139

9/18/19 1:20 PM

140 CH A PTER 5

Some address human choice at a life- defining level, connected to piety, self-
care, and our respective dooms. Yet others have their application to life formu-
lated in a roundabout way: acquiring a general and cogent comprehension of
the entire world such that human nature, and thus the nature of human disease,
may eventually be inferred. We see no emphasis on philosophia as a pursuit
done purely for the plea sure of contemplation or the satisfaction of won der,
or for the intrinsic value of knowledge. Of course, nothing excludes the pos-
sibility of such emphasis. Yet, crucially, the Hippocratic author nowhere sup-
poses that applying philosophia to medicine is a category error. His charges
are against the rounding errors that accumulate when one goes to a general
statement of the world and then back to an individual situation in the world.

Empedocles of Acragas

Rather than defining philosophia as investigating what is “in the sky and below
the earth,” the Hippocratic defines it ostensively: it is what Empedocles and
those like him do, when they study nature. The citation of the Sicilian Emped-
ocles does more than exemplify the relevant practice; it provides the archetype
for it. Doing philosophia is basically doing what Empedocles does. This sug-
gests that the Hippocratic author mentions Empedocles for reasons beyond, as

Mark Schiefsky has put it in his careful study of the text, his “keen interest in
anthropogony and embryology” and his status as “the first thinker to develop
a clear concept of elemental constituent.”44 Philosophia itself manifests inter-
est in biological generation and in analytic perspicuity, and it can be said to do
so because philosophia names what Empedocles does.

This opens a question: why was Empedocles said to practice philosophia?

There must be a strong connection between those first called philosophoi and

Empedocles. We find such connections in two places: in the public linkages
made between him and Pythagoreanism and in his fame for a life that com-
bines politics, oratory, and intellectual investigation as Pythagoras’s did.

Diogenes Laertius claims that Empedocles succeeded Pythagoras as rep-
resentative of the Pythagorean school.45 Timaeus of Tauromenium, a fourth-
century BCE Sicilian with access to Italian documents, says that Empedocles
listened to (ἀκοῦσαι) Pythagoras, obviously with some intermediation.46

44 Schiefsky 2006, 302–3.

45 DL 8.50. Diogenes Laertius discusses Pythagoras at 8.1–50 and Empedocles at 8.51–77.

Hippolytus says that Empedocles came after the Pythagoreans and shared with them an interest in daimones and reincarnation (Hippol. Haer. 1.3).

46 DL 8.54. Timaeus is cited again at 8.71–72 for his critical attitude toward stories about Empedocles’s death and surrounding myths; this adds to the credibility of his claim about discipleship. Neanthes of Cyzicus, a reliable fourth- century BCE historiographer, says that Em-

FIFTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 141

Alcidamas, a student of Gorgias, who is in turn said to have been Empedocles’s
student, gives a more precise account. Both Zeno and Empedocles studied with

Parmenides; Zeno then went off on his own, and Empedocles studied fur-
ther with Pythagoreans and Anaxagoras.47 As we saw in chapter 1, Heraclides wrote an account of Pythagoras’s self- appellation of the term philosophos in
his On Diseases, which other wise celebrated Empedocles.48 Clearly, fourth-
century BCE historians, rhetoricians, and phi los o phers took Empedocles for
a Pythagorean, and indeed perhaps as the most impor tant Pythagorean; their
evidence would likely have come from the fifth century BCE, which is the pe-
riod of the sources that the Hippocratic author of On Ancient Medicine would
have known.

The connection between Empedocles and Pythagoras goes beyond the ped-
agogical and the doctrinal. Pythagoras earned his fame as a dazzling public
speaker, for the deep and systemic po liti cal influence he wrought in the oli-
garchies of southern Italy, and thanks to his mythic figure as wonderworker;
he also had close ties to Western Greek medical innovators. In this re spect,

Empedocles recapitulates the Pythagorean model for winning familiarity and
admiration across the eastern Mediterranean. Aristotle calls Empedocles the
discoverer of rhe toric.49 Elsewhere he notes Empedocles’s impressive diction
and poetic fa cil i ty, and his production of historical verses, tragic drama, and
po liti cal speeches.50 The Peripatetic Satyrus says that Empedocles was a “top
orator” and the teacher of Gorgias, who is now even more famous in rhe toric.51

His oratory prob ably had more than belletristic and technical relevance; he
weighed heavi ly in Acragas’s po liti cal and social life.52 But Gorgias also
pedocles poeticized Pythagoreanism, and studied with a Pythagorean (DL 8.55). Also on the Pythagoras- Empedocles connection, see DL 8.56; Philostr. V A 1.1, 6.5; Ath. 14.620c– d; Plut.

Quaest. conv. 728e; Hierocl. In Carm. Aur. 23.2; Porph. Antr. 8; Olymp. In Grg. 35.12; and Euseb. Praep. evang. 10.14.15.

47 DL 8.55–6; see again chapter 9. Empedocles lived at the right time to have studied with Anaxagoras and to have read his writings (Arist. M. Α 984a11–13; see O’Brien 1968, 94–96).

48 DL 8.67; Gottschalk 1980, 15–22; see again chapter 10.

49 Arist. Sophist fr. 1 Ross.

50 Arist. On Poets fr. 1 Ross.

51 Quint. Inst. 3.1.8, DL 8.58, Suda ε 1002. In Pl. Meno 76c, Socrates speaks in the “manner of Gorgias” by citing Empedocles. See Spatharas 2001, 11 with bibliography, for reservations about the connection.

52 DL 8.63–73: Empedocles spoke in favor of po liti cal equality, championed the people against tyrannical and self- serving magistrates and Council, and dissuaded his fellow citizens from civil strife (cf. Horky 2016). Thanks to his wealth and consequent influence on po liti cal decision-makers, he helped dissolve a newly instituted “One Thousand,” presumably the oligarchic governing body. He is said to have been offered the kingship; he declined this position, and all leadership roles, to preserve his life of simplicity (λιτότητα) and freedom (ἐλεύθερον), ac cording to Xanthus of Lydia and to Aristotle (see Schepens and Theys 1998; Kingsley 1990). He was forthright in 125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 141

9/18/19 1:20 PM

142 CH A PTER 5
testifies to his teacher’s wizardry. Timaeus recounts Empedocles’s anemolog-
ical feats. Heraclides recalls his medical and prognostic miracles as well as the
posthumous stories of his apotheosis. Empedocles himself claims— echoing

Pythagoras’s entrance to Croton— that as he entered cities, men and women in
the thousands revere and follow him, plying him with commercial, prophetic,
and medical questions.53

At the same time, the scope of Empedocles’s intellectuality surpassed that
of virtually anyone else. As the Hippocratic author implies, it went from na-
ture as a whole, what we would call cosmogony and physics, to all subordi-
nated pro cesses, especially those that recapitulate the macro- scale pro cesses:

speciation, embryology, and physiology. From these patterns of generation and
constitution, Empedocles would draw moral conclusions about justice, ani-
mal rights, and self- improvement.54 Empedocles’s naturalizing program was a
total system of inquiry and solution. Just so, the charismatic Pythagoras drew
par tic u lar attention to himself and his associates thanks to their expansive re-
search interests coupled with involvement in po liti cal upheaval on the eastern
and western edges of the Greek world. Pythagoras’s public (even if secretive)

and concerted efforts looked like he sought recognition as the progeny of the
incisive, canny, useful, and po liti cally consequential sophoi of two generations earlier. This combination of public brilliance and unusual zeal provided good
grounds for the coinage of philosophos. The term could then be applied to
those who seemed relevantly similar to this Pythagorean archetype. The geo-
graph i cal, pedagogical, and research continuity between Pythagoras and Em-
pedocles would support calling the latter philosophos.

If Empedocles’s par tic u lar interests were tightly associated with his
fame, then they could come to infuse the term philosophos with new mean-
ing. If those first called philosophoi were not so called for their cosmogonic
or physical interests— and of course they may have been— then those in-
terests would not, early on, be denoted by the term; but with Empedocles’s
domination of certain intellectual trends in the following generations, those
interests would come to be denoted by the term.55 This usage we could then
see in our Hippocratic author’s text. And that is philosophia as specifically
the investigation of macro- scale structures for eventual practical applica-
tion to human life.

his critique of luxury and the compromise between power and integrity, forcing him to go into exile, not to return.

53 DL 8.59 (wizardry), 8.60 (feats), 8.61, 67–68 (miracles and apotheosis), 8.62 (followers).

54 Arist. Rh. 1373b6–17, Cic. R. 3.11.19, Iambl. VP 24.108.

55 Contrast this view with McKirahan 2010, 252, who speaks of Empedocles as a “phi los o-
pher” only in the re spect that he “articulated a complex and novel theory of the kosmos.”

FI FTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 143

Gorgias and Quick- Witted Debates (Gorg. Hel. 13)

By the fourth century BCE people recognized an influence of Empedocles
on his fellow- Sicilian, Gorgias (ca. 485–380 BCE), or at least a recapitula-
tion. Prob ably Empedocles’s oratory constituted some of that influence. But
prob ably it would not have been limited to the practical application of topoi
and figures of speech. Plato treats Gorgias as accepting Empedocles’s theory
of effluences, a theory meant to explain perception and perceptual real ity (Pl.

Meno 76c). Gorgias wrote a work called On Non- Being, which appears to respond to Parmenidean arguments about what exists.56 His speeches about

Palamedes and Helen contributed to epistemology, the philosophy of lan-
guage, and reflection on justice, personal identity, and moral responsibility.57

Isocrates grouped him with the Western Greek thinkers Parmenides, Zeno,
and Melissus; an anonymous fourth- century BCE author analyzed him with

Xenophanes and Melissus.58 As the arguments mooted by Socrates in Plato’s

Phaedrus purport to show, successful rhe toric requires a surprisingly broad
range of preliminary studies, psy chol ogy not the least of them. Thus it might
be Empedocles’s entire “philosophical” enterprise that contributed to Gorgias’s
rhetorical excellence.59

This may provide impor tant background for understanding Gorgias’s
single extant use of a philosophos- group word, in his Helen, prob ably from around the end of the fifth century BCE.60 The encomium investigates in-voluntary action in the context of Helen’s removal to Troy. Absolving Helen
of responsibility in case she was talked into going, Gorgias argues that per-
suasive speech does not facilitate choice; it instead compels the audience to
carry out the will of the speaker, just as physical force does. In §13, he gives

56 Its seriousness as a work of metaphysics is debated: see, e.g., Dodds 1959, 7–8 (a joke); Guthrie 1971, 192–200 (reductio ad absurdum); Kerferd 1981, 93–100 (sincere); Wardy 1996, 6–24 (deliberately ambiguous); Consigny 2001 (sincere in its radical antifoundationalism); Mc-Comisky 2002 (consistent with other works); and Palmer 2009, 35–36 (its doxography of metaphysics influenced Aristotle).

57 Vitali 1971; MacDowell 1982; Mazzara 1999; Constantinidou 2008.

58 Isoc. Hel. 3; Antid. 268; ps- Arist. MXG.

59 Do Gorgias’s brilliant anti theses and phrasal balances prosodize the elemental composition of the kosmos?

60 Gorgias B11/D24. Olympiodorus ( In Grg. proem 9) claims that On Non- Being inaugurated his writing career, in the late 440s CE. Gorgias traveled to Athens in 427 BCE, perhaps for the first time though maybe not for the last time (Spatharas 2001, 12), and wowed the Athenians with novel speeches (DS 12.53; Thuc. 3.86; Pl. Hp. mai. 282b4– c1; Timaeus in Dion. Hal. Lys.

3), but we have no evidence that the Helen was this text. Some scholars (e.g., Constantinidou 2008) find intertextual play between Gorgias’s Helen and Euripides’s Trojan Women (415 BCE) and even his Helen (412 BCE), suggesting that Gorgias presented his work in this half- decade.

144 CH A PTER 5
three examples. The speeches of meteorologoi replace belief with belief, de-
stroying the first, building up the second, thereby making what is initially
unbelievable and unclear (τὰ ἄπιστα καὶ ἄδηλα) appear the opposite, namely
true and clear, “to the eyes of belief” (what ever that poeticism means).61

In “the compulsory competitions using speeches”— presumably those in
legislative and forensic settings— words please and persuade the audience,
apparently irrespective of their truthfulness.62 Fi nally, in contests of philo-
sophical speeches (or, less likely, phi los o phers’ speeches, φιλοσόφων λόγων
ἁμίλλας), quickness of judgment (γνώμης τάχος) reveals the mutability of
belief- based opinions.63

Apparently these exemplary cases of persuasive effect occur in competi-
tion. Gorgias must have chosen them because they reveal change(s) of mind
over a brief period, and because the criterion of success in these competitions
is conviction: the best competitors will best exemplify Gorgias’s point. They
prob ably do not require competition, as solo recitals or cooperative panels dis-
play. But contest may be their default or salient mode. Meteorologoi seek for
their interpretation of signs— from environmental changes to the future in
farming, health, or other practical endeavor—to prevail over the interpreta-
tions of others.64 The “compulsory” speakers compete for the allegiance of
their audience. We are surely to understand “philosophical speeches” on this

61 τοὺς τῶν μετεωρολόγων λόγους, οἵτινες δόξαν ἀντὶ δόξης τὴν μὲν ἀφελόμενοι τὴν
δ᾽ ἐνεργασάμενοι τὰ ἄπιστα καὶ ἄδηλα φαίνεσθαι τοῖς τῆς δόξης ὄμμασιν ἐποίησαν. A con-
temporary instance, from Aristophanes: “This is the thinkery of wise souls (ψυχῶν σοφῶν).

| There men live who, speaking about | the heavens (τὸν οὐρανὸν | λέγοντες), persuade us (ἀναπείθουσιν) that it is an oven | and that it is around us, and we are embers” (Ar. Nub. 94–97).

See, further, Pl. Phd. 96b1, 97a8, for Socrates’s remarks about being persuaded back and forth by the speeches of phusiologia.

62 τοὺς ἀναγκαίους διὰ λόγων ἀγῶνας, ἐν οἷς εἷς λόγος πολὺν ὄχλον ἔτερψε καὶ ἔπεισε
τέχνῃ γραφείς, οὐκ ἀληθείᾳ λεχθείς. For the meaning of “compulsory contests” see MacDowell 1982, 39–40, but also Wardy 1996, 163n35. The Aldine edition of 1513 proposes ἀγοραίους in the place of ἀγῶνας, coming to about the same meaning, as well as ἔτρεψε (“turned”) in place of ἔτερψε (“pleased”), which is plausible. LM 8.179 translate the passage quoted above as “contentions that constrain by means of speeches,” but this is opaque in the context.

63 φιλοσόφων λόγων ἁμίλλας, ἐν αἷς δείκνυται καὶ γνώμης τάχος ὡς εὐμετάβολον ποιοῦν
τὴν τῆς δόξης πίστιν.

64 Hippoc. Aer. 2.14–26 (recognizing that some people ignore the relationship between health and meteôrologia/ astronomia); Eur. fr. 913 (contrasting meteôrologoi, who use decep-tions [ἀπάτας], make random guesses on the basis of what is unknown [ἀφανῶν], and have no solid judgment [οὐδὲν γνώμης μετέχουσα], with the pious); Pl. Crat. 396c2 ( meteôrologoi say that “looking at things above” [ὁρῶσα τὰ ἄνω] purifies the mind), 401b7 and 404c2 ( meteôrologoi as the first namers of the gods, who are also adoleschai); Pol. 299b7 (condemning those meteôrologoi who presume to speak better, by appealing to climate, about navigation and health than sailors and doctors); Phdr. 270a1 (all great skills require adoleschia and meteôrologia about nature).

FIFTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 145
model, as concerned primarily with making their case against the speeches
of opponents. This is not a cynical view, reducing philosophy to sophistry or
rhe toric; rather, it means that their structure comes from the burden to articu-
late and defend an argument, not simply to appreciate real ity, orient oneself
toward the truth, or love wisdom.

Despite the similarities, Gorgias distinguishes philosophical exchange from
the two other competitive modes. By “necessary” debates, Gorgias seems to
mean those demanded by a city’s constitution: persuasion seeks decision and
action in the audience, while plea sure helps to effect the advocate’s will. Phil-
osophical exchanges might count contrastingly as “unnecessary” insofar as
they lack an urgent decision- making role, or a legal- coercive structure, or an
outcome that depends wholly on the preference of an audience whose sole
task is to express its preference. This could imply that philosophical speech
is leisured and optional, an intramural recreation without grave consequences
to the city (the usual source of “necessity”); or that it unfolds in a freewheel-
ing, conversational, and loose way; or that it has only internal or participant-
judged criteria of success. Yet these possibilities might also be qualified.65 Not
all discussions with decision- making relevance are urgent, held in the moments
before action is required. They could be for the sake of preparation, or deep
background, or strategy, or eliminating possibilities that would always be bad
or inappropriate. Nor do all debates outside the political- formal structure of
a courtroom or assembly hall lack strongly held and policed practical norms.

The symposium, for example, observes more or less definite rules of turn-
taking, topical relevance, and verbal register. Fi nally, the criterion of success
may not come from outside observers but also need not be the free choice of
the competing parties; relatively self- enforcing standards of consistency, per-
tinence, and pro gress might suffice. A moderated view, then, is that philo-
sophical exchanges prob ably lack the urgency that would make them count
as necessary, and thus lack the attendant formal structures meant to ensure a
decision no matter what disagreement (and thus delay) exists. While this does
not entail that philosophical exchanges follow the argument absolutely wher-
ever it goes, they can surely follow it further than “necessary” exchanges can.

Gorgias also distinguishes philosophical exchange from meteorological talk.

This might surprise us, given the linkage in On Ancient Medicine of philoso-
phia with the study of ta meteôra. Evidently Gorgias uses the term differently, even if (which is unlikely) he excludes anatomy, cosmogony, and physics from
meteôrologia, leaving those fields for philosophia. He does not specify how he 65 Pl. Tht. 172c8–175b7 stylizes the distinction between necessary ( legal) and leisured (philosophical) speeches.

146 CH A PTER 5
uses the latter term, but we might find its meaning at the handoff between Em-
pedocles’s and Gorgias’s preoccupations, at what we might call a philosophical
rhe toric. This would include the analy sis of language, knowledge, perception,
and the norms of agency and social comity. Such topics deal with the imper-
ceptible and obscure, attitudes toward which, like the origins of the universe,
max out epistemically at the “belief- based opinions” so vulnerable to change
by philosophical debate. When Gorgias pre sents “quickness of judgment”

(γνώμης τάχος) as the exemplary feature of philosophical debate, he seems to
have in mind arguments in which the interlocutors respond directly to each
other’s speeches, without prepared set pieces. Success in such debate might
depend on diagnosing weaknesses in opponents’ syllogisms rather than on the
accumulation of facts. Skill in logical diagnosis involves acute attention to
language, reasoning, and belief as such.

Gorgias’s mention of philosophical speeches in his triad of examples points
to the notoriety, though not necessarily the popularity, of such talk.66 The term

“philosophizing” surely does not refer to all conversations between intellectu-
ally curious men and women, or between those who prefer truth over falsity.

In the same way, meteorological talk is narrower than any casual talk of the
weather or the night sky, and compulsory talk is narrower than any talk about
the city’s future and a criminal’s past. In the familiar cases, the narrowness is
well defined. So too in philosophical speech.

For Gorgias, philosophical speeches are public competitive diagnoses of
an opponent’s views about the topics at the nexus of Empedocles’s and Gor-
gias’s interests, notably those that devolve from the nature of language, rea-
soning, and knowledge. There is a family resemblance with the be hav ior of
those who appeared to strive for sophos- hood. The conversations among the
earlier generation would have seemed abstract but concerned nonetheless with
social and existential, and thus po liti cal, questions, with unexpected hypoth-
eses about the soul, web of life, ratios, harmony, and intuition undergirding the
apparently practical answers. Perhaps this form of activity attributed to sixth-
century BCE philosophoi had, for all its indirectness, an evident civic bias.

By the late fifth century BCE, however, things had changed. Social observers
may have seen an occasional differentiation within this sophos- striving group
of people who preferred talking about ta meteôra and people who preferred
talking about ta legomena or ta noêmata (“the things talked about” or “the things thought about”); the latter group struck them as more like the earlier

66 DL 9.52 claims that Protagoras initiated verbal contests (λόγων ἀγῶνας), gave sophis-mata to “disputants” (πραγματολογοῦσι), and brought about “eristic competitors” (ἐριστικῶν); but since he says nothing about the dating or the relationship to philosophia or to Gorgias, we can infer nothing of relevance.

FI FTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 147
generation than the meteorologists did. They may also have noticed that some
participants in more properly meteorological conversations oriented themselves
less to po liti cal influence than the others. So, while the name philosophos may have been applied throughout the fifth century BCE to those who seemed sufficiently similar to those first called philosophoi, what counted as “similar”

changed, with certain features becoming more pertinent. Gorgias, follower of

Empedocles, Sicilian and Aegean traveler, would have both a conservatizing
notion linked to Empedocles and a contemporizing notion linked to recent
intellectual trends.

Aristophanes and Constitutional Innovation (Ar. Eccl. 571)

The po liti cal side of philosophia, connected to discussing and thinking through civic structures, which we have already seen explic itly in Thucydides and Gorgias, shows up again in Aristophanes, in his sole extant use of a philosophos-
group term. In Ecclesiazusae (392 BCE), Praxagora has just won control of

Athens for the women of the city. She waits to explain the plan that will bring
about the benefits such rule entails.67 The chorus tells Praxagora to delay no
longer:

Now indeed you must rouse a concentrated mind (πυκνὴν φρένα) and a
philosophic
thought (φιλόσοφον . . . φροντιδ᾽) that knows how (ἐπισταμένην)

to defend (ἀμύνειν) your fellows.

For, an idea (ἐπίνοια) comes from your tongue
for a shared good fortune, exalting the citizen populace
with myriads of benefits of life. Now’s the time to clarify (δηλοῦν) what can
be done;
our city needs some wise invention (σοφοῦ . . . ἐξευρήματος).

So go through the whole of it,
leaving only what has been done and what has already been said earlier.

For they hate if they spectate old things repeatedly.

But don’t delay— you’ve got to nail down those thoughts (διανοίας)—
since quickness (ταχύνειν) contributes most to the satisfaction of the spectators.

(Ar. Eccl. 571–80)

67 Ar. Eccl. 212–38, 441–53, 492, 560–67.

148 CH A PTER 5

Editors only slowly accepted philosophon as scanning correctly in the text.68

The meaning has remained uncertain. Yet as with Thucydides’s Pericles, the
chorus takes considerable effort to gloss the adjective which, given its posi-
tion in the statement, looks somewhat wry. Being philosophical involves giv-
ing a verbal defense (ἀμύνειν . . . γλώττης), and thus a piece of spoken advo-
cacy. The advocacy is for something thought out (ἐπίνοια, διανοίας), and thus
perhaps more expansive than the normal run of self- directed notions. It takes
up topics of universal or fundamental importance: the common prosperity

(κοινῇ . . . εὐτυχίαισιν), the civic realm (πολίτην δῆμον), and flourishing in
its fullest description (μυρίαισιν ὠφελίαισι βίου). It involves clarification

(δηλοῦν) about possibility (δύναται), is connected to wisdom (σοφοῦ), and
can propose something heretofore unimagined (ἐξευρήματος, μισοῦσι . . . τὰ
παλαιά). Fi nally, its characteristic speed is fast (οὐ μέλλειν, ταχύνειν).

Much of this description is immediately familiar from our earlier authors.

For the Hippocratic author, philosophy tended to the abstract and novel. For

Thucydides and Herodotus, it took up deep questions of civic success and
personal flourishing. Gorgias spoke of verbal advocacy motored by mental
speed. For Aristophanes, then, being philosophical must be engaging in the
specific kind of discussion about unseen and underappreciated norms govern-
ing the successful civic life that we saw in all those earlier authors.69 He also
pre sents it as quasi- competitive, instrumentally and socially valuable, and po-
tentially radical. The practitioner may contribute to po liti cal success in the
way a sophos would. Aristophanes uses the term with no sense of cosmology

(as in the Hippocratic author), or primarily of disputation (as in Gorgias), or
primarily of existential judgment (as in Herodotus). He confines the applica-
tion to po liti cal problem- solving.70

68 Dindorf 1826, looking to Ar. Eq. 787, and Blaydes 1881 give φιλόδημον; Meineke 1860
concedes the manuscript reading but suggests φιλόκοινον as much better; von Velsen 1883, looking to Ar. Nub. 358, and trying to maintain the dactyl, proposes φιλόμουσον; Rogers 1906, 84, 208, deletes φρένα καὶ φιλόσοφον as “useless to the sense, and destructive to the metre, and have plainly crept into the text from some gloss on the words πυκνὴν φροντίδα.” Bergk 1872, noting an Archilochean meter and citing Ar. Vesp. 1526, amended only slightly to φιλόσοφον τ᾽; for metrical analy sis, see Ussher 1986 ad 571–80; Sommerstein 1998, 188 (citing earlier scholarship).

69 Huber 1974, 109–10, observes a hint of the pejorative tone in this passage. Van Leeuwen 1905 ad 571 glosses the chorus to be requesting a clever plan worthy of a (school) phi los o pher; this might get the wryness but is prob ably anachronistic. Halliwell 1997a, 280, suggests an

“allusion to the currents of intellectual speculation on which Aristophanes has drawn for Praxagora’s communistic scheme.” Heberlein 1980, 59–60, and Rothwell 1990, 87, note that all the language in this passage is appropriate for sophists.

70 Historians of philosophia have often thought that the absence of the term philosophos from Aristophanes’s Clouds (423 BCE, revised after 418) gives reason to think it absent from con temporary Athens. It does not: (i) It is absent from many of Plato’s Socratic dialogues (see p. 190); (ii) metrically ˘ ˘ ˘ ˣ, it requires a resolution, found only rarely in Aristophanes (in

FIFTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 149

Lysias and Personal Problem- Solving (24.10)

The terms philosophia and sophia had always been foreign to forensic or rhetorical address, Isocrates argued in the 350s BCE ( Antid. 270). Excluding his
own work, the extant speeches from the Ten Attic Orators bear out his claim.71

Lysias’s au then tic work, which spans from 404 through the first quarter of
the fourth century BCE, includes only one use of philosophein; a half- century
later we see three trivial uses of philosophos in Aeschines (389–14 BCE), simi-
lar uses of the verb in a pseudo- Demosthenic speech and a pseudo- Lysianic
speech, and some post- Isocratean uses in the pseudo- Demosthenic epideixis,

Eroticus. They all show that philosophos- group terms describe a quite peculiar sort of person, argument, and practice, such that orators have rare occasion to
deploy them. Indeed, philosophos cannot refer to just any sort of aspirant to
self- improvement, philosophia to just any sort of scheme of intellectual culti-
vation, or philosophein to just any sort of reasoned pursuit of knowledge.

Lysias wrote the speech “On the Refusal of a Pension to a Handicapped Per-
son” at some point in the period 403–380 BCE.72 In it he says: “I recognized,
council, that every one having some misfortune investigates (ζητεῖν) and phi-
losophizes (φιλοσοφεῖν) how to carry on least painfully” (Lys. 24.10.4). In the
next sentence he glosses his activity as “I discovered” (ἐξηῦρον, Lys. 24.10.7).

Thus for Lysias philosophizing is akin to investigating, perhaps hypothesiz-
ing and reflecting on vari ous paths out of a difficulty. It might imply the use of
sequential, branching arguments; it surely does not imply the love of wisdom
or general intellectual cultivation. Lysias’s use therefore shares something of

Thucydides’s and Aristophanes’s uses, though Lysias does not specify a po-
liti cal or civic context. And as with those potentially contemporaneous uses,

Lysias does not treat philosophizing as laudatory, but as appropriate for get-
ting oneself out of a bad situation.73

Clouds, see 512, 1161, 1169; see Dover 1968, 164, and 233–35; and (iii) the (sole) uses in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Gorgias suggest a po liti cal relevance to philosophoi that does not especially characterize Aristophanes’s Socrates.

71 Cf. Todd 2007, 575.

72 Schuckburgh 1890, 325; Todd 2000, 252.

73 This use of the verb philosophein shows up again in Isocrates’s Antidosis (121) and with negative connotation twice later. The pseudo- Lysianic “On an Accusation of Defamation:

against Members of a Club” has the speaker claim that his defamers direct opposing arguments at him simply to “philosophize” rather than to assert their honestly held position (8.11.4; Todd 2000, 88–89, and 2007, 541–52, argues for a post-300 BCE date). In philosophizing they speak tactically and with ulterior motives. Whether or not the speaker rightly diagnoses his defamers’

argumentative motivations—it is itself a debating trick to ascribe “debater’s arguments” to one’s opponents— “philosophizing” means the tricky use of debating words. Similarly, in a speech 125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 149

9/18/19 1:20 PM

150 CH A PTER 5

Conclusion: The Earliest History of Philosophia

This chapter has studied six of the earliest post- Heraclitus uses of philosophos-
group words. Looking backwards from them, they provide evidence for the
claim that the term philosophoi referred first to people who, because they were seen always to be concertedly discussing and studying fundamental social,
psychological, and cosmological matters, were thought to be striving to be

Sophoi, the po liti cal and life advisors famous from the early sixth century

BCE. In none of these uses does the word philosophoi or its cognates obvi-
ously mean “intellectual cultivators” or “lovers of wisdom,” even if those to
whom the term is applied could on occasion be truly described in such ways.

The focus tends to be on something more concrete: making judgments about
the best life; deliberating about po liti cally salient questions before action on
their basis is necessary; reasoning from cosmic structure to medical applica-
tion; competing about ethical or psychological or epistemological matters; re-
flecting profoundly on po liti cal constitutions; and, eventually, tracing out paths
around complicated life obstacles.

These six uses outline the meanings of the term available by the early fourth
century BCE, notably among the Socratics, Xenophon and Plato in par tic u-
lar, and the rhetoricians, principally Isocrates and Alcidamas. They make less
surprising the variety of meanings we find there, including examining one-
self and others, arguing about the nature of justice, redirecting one’s desires,
learning about civic affairs, and practicing po liti cal speech giving. Ultimately,
they provide several spans for the bridge between philosophos as used by Py-
thagoreans and by Heraclides in his On Diseases. The term underwent change
and fissure; by studying its scions, we can see both whence it came and whither
it might go.

Appendix to Chapter 5: Three More Fifth- Century Uses

This appendix discusses pos si ble uses of the philosophos family by Zeno of

Elea, Simon the Shoemaker, and the people of Abdera.

attributed to De mos the nes, “philosophized” means “contrived” ( Or. 48.49; Scafuro 2011, 336, argues for inauthenticity and date ca. 341/0). This use seems to descend from the external observers of Gorgias’s “philosophical speeches,” speech used as quick- turning debate.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 150

9/18/19 1:20 PM

FI FTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 151

1. Zeno of Elea’s Controversial Book

A con temporary of Parmenides and his monistic fellow traveler, Zeno of Elea
was a mature thinker by 449 BCE and died in 430 BCE. The only reference
to the name of his writings comes in the tenth- century Byzantine encyclope-
dia called the Suda. It refers to one as Against the Philosophoi (Πρὸς τοὺς
φιλοσόφους). If the Suda correctly attributes this work to Zeno, it would pro-
vide the second- earliest attestation to the term philosophos. This would be ob-
vious, had Zeno written the title. Even if did not, which is more likely, the title
would imply that he used the word philosophoi in his text, perhaps in a phrase
like “I argue against the philosophoi thus:. . . .” or “The philosophoi say . . .

but this is impossible, for. . . .” After all, he and Parmenides were already
considered philosophoi shortly after their deaths;74 a posthumous title could
hardly call his target “philosophoi”— later editors would not want to imply that

Zeno also argued against himself. He must have been arguing against those
he called philosophoi. This is even to be expected, since he apparently directed his paradoxes against pluralists, either Pythagoreans in par tic u lar or
whomever someone like Heraclitus could call “researchers into much.” That
he contended is clear from the title or contents that the Suda ascribes to an-
other of his books, Quarrels (Ἔριδες). That he dealt explic itly with those in
the Pythagorean or research vein is suggested by the book title Interpretation
of [the Ideas of] Empedocles (Ἐξήγησις τῶν Ἐμπεδοκλέους).75

For all this, many scholars do not accept such a book by Zeno. Some might
judge the Suda unreliable in general, but without impugning the specific claim,
this skepticism would miss its mark. Many believe Zeno wrote only one book,
based on the purported absence of any reference to multiple books of Zeno’s
in Plato’s Parmenides (127c–28e).76 Yet the dialogue takes place in 449 BCE,
leaving two de cades for further authorship; and even then, the conversation
between Socrates and Zeno hardly restricts Zeno to having written a single
book.77 Furthermore, no later reference to Zeno’s arguments about plural-

74 By the time Plato wrote the Parmenides, he could have his characters explain their being

“quite philosophical” (μάλα φιλόσοφοι) by saying that they want to hear what Zeno used to talk about (Pl. Prm. 126b8–9).

75 The dispute about the number of Empedocles’s poems, and the reasonable assumption
that there was only one, as argued by Inwood 2001, 8–19, 78–79, means that the plural τῶν probably refers to ideas, doctrines, arguments, etc. Zeno’s works: Suda ζ 77.

76 E.g., Heidel 1940, 22; Burkert 1960, 170; Graham 2010, 245. LM 5.165 treat any evidence for multiple books as potentially implying “the existence of apocryphal writings.”

77 We hear of τῶν . . . γραμμάτων (Pl. Prm. 127c3, 127d3, 128c7 [omitted by Proclus, secluded in Burnet 1901]); οἱ λόγοι (127e9, Socrates referring to individual arguments; Procl. In Prm. 694.18 says there are forty); τὸ γράμμα (Pl. Prm. 128a3, 128b8, 128c3, 128d3, all spoken by Zeno); singular pronouns (128d7, 128e2). Burnet 1930, 311, thinks these pages in fact imply

152 CH A PTER 5
ity, place, motion, and compositionality includes a book title; while this may
imply their source in a single text, one that defended Parmenides’s monism
against those who tried to lambaste it, the fact that Zeno’s popularity came from
his forty paradoxes does not tell against his having written other works.78 The
eleventh- century CE Arabic scholar Al- Mubassir, in his Life of Zeno of Elea,
claims that Zeno wrote “a single book, about nature”;79 but this is no more
persuasive an account than the Suda’s account.80 Furthermore, our titles
could refer to vari ous sections or editions of a single text.

Even if we are to accept the Suda’s account, there remains a question
about the number of titles it attributes to Zeno; the existence of an Against
the Philosophoi requires there to be four. The modern critical edition of the

Suda, Ada Adler’s 1928 Teubner text, however, attributes only three to him:

ἔγραψεν Ἔριδας, Ἐξήγησιν τῶν Ἐμπεδοκλέους, Πρὸς τοὺς φιλοσόφους περὶ
φύσεως: “he wrote Quarrels, Interpretation of [the Ideas of] Empedocles,

Against the Philosophoi on Nature.” Adler puts no comma after φιλοσόφους,
yielding a single title, Πρὸς τοὺς φιλοσόφους περὶ φύσεως ( Αgainst the Phi-
losophoi on Nature), rather than two, Against the Philosophoi and On Nature.

On her punctuation, if Zeno did not provide the titles, we would lose evidence
that Zeno himself spoke of philosophoi, since later scholars could have re-
ferred to Pythagoreans, Empedocles, or whomever else as “phi los o phers on
nature” specifically to exclude Zeno and Parmenides, who, in Aristotelian
terms, were not phi los o phers of nature: after all, nature involves change, and they reject the possibility of change. Yet Adler’s punctuation is implausible.81

Texts called Περὶ φύσεως ( On Nature) are attributed to nearly all other early

Greek phi los o phers, and indeed to Zeno by Al- Mubassir, so we should expect
one for Zeno; we should expect a comma before it. Nor does extant Greek else-
where rec ord the locution οἱ φιλόσοφοι περὶ φύσεως, so we should reject it
as a title.82
multiple books; he says that “Plato makes Zeno say the work by which he is best known . . . ,”

citing 128d6. To my eyes, however, that passage includes no such qualification.

78 See Pl. Prm. 128d1 for Zeno’s defense of Parmenides, and Lee 1936, 6–8, for the post-Platonic philosophical understanding of Zeno’s writings.

79 Rosenthal 1937; Untersteiner 1963, 16–24.

80 DL 1.16 does not include Zeno among those who have written a single book.

81 The editors of Zeno A2/R35 punctuate such as to attribute four texts.

82 To formulate the idea of “philosophoi on nature” properly, one should follow Arist. Part. an.

640a5, where περὶ φύσεως is governed by a verb that is in turn governed by a subject, philosophoi.

Strabo 16.2.24.3 might seem to provide a relevantly parallel construction—[the Sidonians are also]

φιλόσοφοι περί τε ἀστρονομίαν καὶ ἀριθμητικήν— but this means something like “cultivate the practices of astronomy and arithmetic”; φύσις is not a practice to cultivate. Gal. De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 9.6.54.5 might seem even closer— παρὰ δὲ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις περὶ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀρετῶν— but Galen’s propositional phrase seems to have an implied verb from the previous clause.

FI FTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 153

We thus have good reason to accept Against the Philosophoi as a title re-
flecting the words in something Zeno wrote, and can infer that philosophoi
named Zeno’s opponents, presumably combative intellectuals committed to
making claims about plurality.

2. Simon the Shoemaker

Diogenes Laertius reports that Simon the Shoemaker, an Athenian craftsman
at the time of Socrates whom he calls the first author of “Socratic dialogues,”

“made a sketch” of a Socratic conversation titled On Philosophy (Περὶ
φιλοσοφίας). Whether Simon named it or not, the title implies a conversation
about the term philosophia datable before 399 BCE. In fact we might date it
even earlier, since Socrates became eminently quotable by the 420s BCE, as
comedies by Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes witness, and an anecdote
pre sents Simon as well- known to Pericles, who died in 429 BCE.83 We can
infer that the term or practice of philosophia was controversial or confusing
or impor tant enough to merit noteworthy discussion, as did, for example, on
the topics of the teachability of virtue, the nature of beauty, and the art of con-
versation. This tells against dismissing Socrates- era philosophia as mere or
unmarked intellectual cultivation; we do not see other sketches or dialogues
from that time simply about paideusis, “learning” in general.

Even more than the evidence from Zeno, the value of this testimony has
been doubted— indeed, I have never seen it adduced, even hypothetically, in
accounts of the history of philosophia. The main prob lem is that we have no
fragments from Simonic texts or other witnesses to them.84 This alone might
not trou ble us, since many other fifth- century BCE authors met the same fate.

More troubling, however, is the fact that Diogenes includes his Simon biography
in a group of five other Socratics, although in the case of none of these Socratics
do we have fragmentary evidence: Crito, Glaucon, Simmias, and Cebes.85 The
worry is that, even if Simon was a real person, and one with whom Socrates ac-
tually had conversations, and about whom other Socratics wrote, the texts listed
in Diogenes were only fictitiously attributed to him, their topics imported from
the interests of the Socrates character in fourth- century BCE authors.

83 Plut. Mor. 776b implies that Socrates and Pericles met at Simon the Shoemaker’s shop.

84 Diogenes lists thirty- four dialogues that fit into a single volume. There are manuscript difficulties: Diogenes says he is listing thirty- three; three are presented in a second group (οἱ δέ); and the only dialogue- title without a Peri, τί τὸ καλόν, is listed twice. But the lists of works by known authors (e.g., Aristotle) face similar difficulties.

85 DL 2.121–25.

154 CH A PTER 5

Yet many scholars have expressed sympathy for Diogenes’s attributions.86

His notice of Simon as the first writer of Socratic dialogues distinguishes him
from the other purported authors of Socratic lit er a ture.87 The very rare term
he uses, “sketch,”88 fits what one might imagine early reports of Socratic
conversation might look like: minutes of those exchanges useful to Simon
for answering questions about the best new Socratic arguments. We know of
a burgeoning and contemporaneous Athenian lit er a ture in anecdotes and re-
corded conversations, as, for example, those by Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus
of Thasos.89 Socrates would plausibly talk to people in shoe shops.90 Simon
may well have been the owner of just such a shoe shop in the Athenian ago-
ra.91 Other Socratics wrote about Simon.92

86 Recently: Hock 1976, 41–43 (with bibliography); Sider 1980, 16; Brumbaugh 1991; Goulet 1997, 121–25 (attending to the evidence from Aristotle’s commentators); Sellars 2001 [2003], 253–57; Cast 2008.

87 DL 2.123: διελέχθη τοὺς λόγους τοὺς Σωκρατικούς. Diogenes acknowledges earlier au-
thors of (non- Socratic) dialogues (DL 3.47–48), and grants Xenophon primacy in “having given to people” (εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἤγαγεν) his sketches of the things Socrates said (DL 2.48). He also retells an anecdote that Plato wrote Lysis while Socrates lived (DL 3.35); for the possibility that Socratic dialogues predated Socrates’s death (a common assumption in the nineteenth century), see DL 2.60, 3.38; Sider 1980; Tomin 1997.

88 The noun ὑποσημειώσεις is attested three times. Nicom. Ench. 1 incip. : “the handbook is a sort of sketch with which, by looking at the chapter headings, you may remember what is in the chapter contents, which are themselves much shorter than a proper treatment would provide for” (ἵνα ὑπὸ μίαν ἔχουσα αὐτὰ σύνοψιν ἐγχειριδίῳ τε ὡσανεὶ χρωμένη τῇ βραχείᾳ ταύτῃ
ὑποσημειώσει ὑπομιμνήσκῃ ἐξ αὐτῆς τῶν ἐν ἑκάστῳ κεφαλαίῳ κατὰ πλάτος λεγεμένων τε καὶ
διδασκομένων). In Iambl. VP 23.104,10–11, Pythagorean “dialogues and exchanges and memorabilia and sketches and treatises and publications” are said all to have used “symbols” and were difficult to interpret. DL 2.48 uses the verb ὑποσημειωσάμενος (“sketched”) to describe Xenophon’s Ἀπομνημονεύματα ( Memorabilia) of Socrates.

89 Dover 1986, 34–35, 37, speculates that Ion of Chios’s Ἐπιδημίαι (428–422 BCE) recorded, from Ion’s vantage, vari ous conversations with in ter est ing people, and may have made references to wise men, deserving “a place in the genealogy of the Socratic dialogues of Plato”; West 1985, 75, contains a similar view, likening Ion’s work to Stesimbrotus’s work On Themistocles, and Thucydides, and Pericles (so called at Ath. 13.589d).

90 See Xen. Mem. 4.2.1 (discussion in Rossetti 2011). Stob. 4.32.21 relates a story about Crates’s hearing a reading of Aristotle’s Protrepticus in a shoemaker’s shop. In Plato, Socrates speaks frequently about shoemaking: Prt. 319d; Grg. 447d, 491a; Symp. 221e; R. 333a, 397e, 443c; Tht. 146d.

91 In the 1950s, archaeologists discovered, at the agora’s edge, a shoemaker’s shop with a ΣΙΜΟΝΟΣ scratched onto a potsherd: see Thompson 1960; Lang 1978, figures 12 and 13 and
adjacent text.

92 Phaedo of Elis wrote a Simon (DL 2.105; Suda φ 154), which Diogenes Laertius says is one of only two universally accepted dialogues by Phaedo. Synesius Dio 13.3 observes that even Simon the Shoemaker did not agree with every thing Socrates said, which suggests a tradition of his general concurrence with Socrates; this tradition could come from Simon’s narrative itself or, like the other evidence in Synesius’s passage, from a dialogue, perhaps that of Phaedo. DL

2.105 mentions a Skutikoi, “Cobblers’ Tales,” which might be attributable to Aeschines: the MSS

FIFTH- CENT U RY PHILOSOPHOI 155

So, as with Zeno of Elea, we have decent evidence for conversations by

Socrates about philosophia as a charged and normatively relevant topic.

3. Democritus “Philosophia” of Abdera

The Roman author of Varia Historia, Aelian (ca. 175–235 CE CE), rec ords that
the citizens of Abdera, home also to Protagoras, named Democritus, born
ca. 460 BCE, “Philosophia.”93 Should he have acquired this nickname be-
fore the end of his long life, this would be another early attestation to the word
philosophia, its use in jokey names, and its relative novelty and sense that it
counts as jargon. Democritus got called much by his compatriots, including

“Sophia” and “Laughter” ( Gelasinos); the Abderites told a story that when

Hippocrates first met him he judged him crazy, but then came to admire him
enormously.94 All this suggests vis i ble intellectual idiosyncrasy and a name to
go with it; it cuts against the idea that Philosophia could mean something so
general as “learning.”

No decisive evidence puts the nickname in the fifth century BCE. But
parallel nickname traditions allow it to be. The third- century BCE phi los o-
pher and satirist Timon of Phlius says that Anaxagoras “was called” Nous;

Plutarch treats the name- calling as concurrent with Pericles.95 The Suda says
that Antiphon was called “Speech Chef” (Λογομάγειρος); both the encyclope-
dia article and Philostratus, the chronicler of early Sophists, say he was called

Nestor. These nicknames could be con temporary, the latter especially, given
that Plato’s Phaedrus treats Nestor as a nickname for Gorgias as well, acknowl-
edging, from early in the fourth century BCE, the possibility of contemporane-
ous fifth- century BCE nicknaming.96 An Athenian founder of Thurii (444/3

BCE) named Dionysius gained the nickname Chalkous (“Bronze”), presum-
ably near his lifetime, since later authors had to hypothesize its meaning.97
read Skuthikoi, “Scythians,” but given Suda s.v., editors have often corrected it; see Goulet- Cazé 1997, 187–88.

93 Ael. VH 4.20; the verb is ἐκάλουν.

94 Ael. VH 4.20; Clem. Strom. 6.32.2.

95 DL 2.6 (ἐπεκλήθη); Plut. Per. 4 (ὃν οἱ τότ᾽ ἄνθρωποι Νοῦν προσηγόρευον).

96 Λογομάγειρος: Suda α 2744 (ἐκαλεῖτο); the term is hapax, and could well be a fifth-century BCE formulation on the model of λογοδαίδαλος (Pl. Phdr. 266e), λογογράφος (Thuc.

1.21), or λογοποιός (Hdt. 2.134). Nestor: Suda α 2745 (ἐκαλεῖτο) and Philostr. V S 1.15: “Having become most persuasive and having been called ‘Nestor’ for, when he spoke on anything, he would persuade. . . .” Nestor as Gorgias: Pl. Phdr. 261c. “Gorgias” and related terms themselves became nicknames: see Xen. Symp. 2.26; Philostr. V S 1.16.2; Ep. 73. Diogenes Laertius rec ords many nicknames for fourth- century BCE or early third- century BCE phi los o phers: in Book 2
alone, at §63, 83 (and 86), 86 (and 100, 116), 109, 111–12, and 131. Linforth 1917 argues for οἱ
ἀθανατίζοντοι as a nickname for Pythagoreans.

97 Ath. 13.602c (ἐπικληθεὶς), 15.668e bis (καλούμενος, προσηγορεύθη).

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 155

9/18/19 1:20 PM

156 CH A PTER 5

Should contemporaneous nicknaming be a fifth- century BCE phenomenon, and
should we find it odd to use “philosophia” as a distinguishing nickname once
it grew into a common term (by the early or mid- fourth century BCE), we
might hazard to include another entry into our cata logue of the earliest his-
tory of philosophia. Even if Abderites did not call Democritus “Philosophia”

in the fifth century BCE, their nickname prob ably reflects a word used fre-
quently by the author (as in Anaxagoras’s case); so we might fairly assume that

Democritus— who is not being called Philosophos— used the surprising word
philosophia a lot. While not confirmed by his sparse fragmentary remains, it
hardly seems improbable in view of the huge percentage of his work that has
been lost.98

98 I note a final (doubtful) fifth- century BCE use of philosophos. In his On Poets, Philodemus (first century BCE), writing about the connection between word sounds and plea sure, cites for evidence Antiphon, “one of the ancients— whether he believed himself to be rhêtorikos or philosophos (εἴτ᾽ οὖν ῥητορικὸς εἴτε καὶ φιλόσοφος ἠβούλετ᾽ εἶναι)” (Phld. Poem. [ PHerc.

994] col. xxxviii.14–23). It is uncertain whether Philodemus has a fifth- century BCE Antiphon in mind, and even if he does, whether he has evidence for that Antiphon’s having wondered whether he was philosophos, ipsissima verba (see Pendrick 2002, 243–44). Adding to the doubt is the fact that the earliest extant use of rhêtorikos appears not until Plato (in, e.g., the Gorgias—
though, admittedly, treated as a word quite available to Gorgias during Socrates’s life).

6

Socrates’s Prosecution as Philosophos

Did Socrates Exemplify the Philosophos?

For intellectual historians since Aristotle, and thus since the time of Heraclides’s

Acad emy, Socrates has underwritten a crucial moment in the development of
philosophy: either as a radical innovator, turning the discipline to ethics and
human nature, or as a profound reformulator, advocating for the centrality of
concepts, definition, and method in an ongoing practice.1 But he represents a
sea change not just for the thing, but also for the name. His death in 399 BCE
coincides with the linguistic explosion of the term philosophos that is revealed
by the earliest extant works of Alcidamas, Isocrates, Xenophon, Plato, and
others. Indeed, some scholars attribute a new view of philosophia to the first-
generation Socratics, and it is a fair hypothesis that Socrates had something to
do with it. Plato, for instance, vaunts philosophoi and vaunts Socrates, featur-
ing him as protagonist or impresario in all his dialogues except the Laws. One
might think that his friends deemed Socrates the paradigmatic philosophos.2

Perhaps not, however: in our largest body of Socratic lit er a ture, Xenophon’s
memorabilia and Plato’s dialogues, we either never or only rarely see Socrates
call himself philosophos or get called it by his companions. This hardly seems
an accident of usage, given the frequency with which both authors discuss or
mention philosophoi and philosophia. The infrequency of such descriptions of Socrates would mystify, were philosophos to have meant “lover of wisdom”

or “cultivator of one’s intellect,” since both authors treat Socrates as such a
lover and cultivator without equal. But the original usage of philosophos and
philosophia as described in chapters 2–5 should demystify this absence. The term presumably retained its wry, acerbic, or at least pointed quality, implying
that its target acts akin to sophoi or seeks to be (judged to be) a sage. In Plato, Socrates stridently rejects the appellation sophos anêr (“wise man”) and indeed the presumption or assumption that he is sophos about anything except
his own lack of sophia.3 In Xenophon, Socrates stridently rejects assimila-

1 For these choices, see Laks 2018, 1–2.

2 For Plato, see, e.g., Brown forthcoming.

3 See Peterson 2011, 19–36.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 157

9/18/19 1:20 PM

158 CH A PTER 6
tion to the distinctive caste of civically ambitious knowledge workers who
pursue sterile, dubious, or even impious lines of argument. So, in their apol-
o getic mission, Plato and Xenophon would hesitate to call Socrates a sophos-
wannabe or to treat him as simply one in a club of book- studying aspirants to
a wisdom- derived po liti cal success. Plato and Xenophon might have taken spe-
cial care not to call Socrates philosophos if he had already been ensnared by
the appellation; and much evidence allows that this might have been the case,
principally the associations made between him and Anaxagoras.4 So, what
happens in the fifth century BCE does not wholly stay in the fifth century

BCE, given the continued importance of Socrates to these fourth- century BCE
writers. But the care taken toward Socrates does not prevent Plato, who has a
dif fer ent relation to Socrates than Xenophon does, from accepting the charge
that Socrates philosophizes; he has, however, to explain the value latent in the
idea, and eventually in the word itself. Details of Plato’s redemptive proj ect
await chapter 8; in this chapter we will see the kernel of it, in the Apology.

Socrates was called philosophos. It is likely this name came, either directly
or indirectly, from Anaxagoras’s being so called, and thus from Anaxagoras
we might learn the content of the imputation. So the first half of this chapter
shows how Anaxagoras could be a vehicle for the travel of the term philoso-
phos into the Athenian cultural scene and then in the application to Socrates.

The second half treats of Xenophon’s series of attempts to dissociate Socrates
from or to qualify the imputation that he was a philosophos. At the chapter’s
end, I show the ways in which Plato’s works mirror Xenophon’s in this way. If
these claims are borne out, the Anaxagoras– Socrates nexus stitches together
the two parts of Heraclides’s history of philosophia: the content, concerning Pythagoras and Empedocles, namely Presocratic philosophy; and the
form, a dialogue reflecting on the discipline of its author, namely Academic
philosophy.

Distancing Socrates from Anaxagoras

Demetrius of Phalerum, according to Diogenes Laertius, wrote that a twenty-
year- old Anaxagoras “started to philosophize” (ἤρξατο δὲ φιλοσοφεῖν) in

Athens at the time of the archon Callias (456 BCE).5 That is, he was the first

4 Riedweg 2004 tells a similar story for associating Socrates and Pythagoras, giving par tic -
ular attention to Aristophanes’s Clouds; the pre sent story allows for Anaxagorean intermediation in that association.

5 DL 2.7. Demetrius had other occasions to write about Anaxagoras and related topics:

Anaxagoras’s burying of his own children (Demetr. On Old Age, in DL 2.13, 9.20); his nearly

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 159

Athenian (according to later histories of the practice) said to philosophize

(what ever they took that precisely to mean).6 Chapter 3 presented a kind of corroborating evidence: Iamblichus quotes Aristotle’s appeal to Pythagoras and Anaxagoras for views about philosophizing, presumably appealing
to the first so- called phi los o pher and the first Athenian philosophos.7 Demetrius seems also to say that great envy nearly brought great peril upon

Anaxagoras. Post- Hellenistic authors rec ord an accusation of impiety. Plu-
tarch says that a fifth- century BCE Athenian seer named Diopeithes sought
to criminalize the teaching of heaven- theory and the non- recognition of the
gods; he specifically targeted Anaxagoras, and did so to implicate his friend

Pericles; Pericles sent Anaxagoras away from Athens for his own safety

(Plut. Per. 32). The reliability of Plutarch’s account of this episode has come
under considerable question,8 yet utter skepticism about Plutarch’s account
losing his life from the envy of others ( Apology of Socrates, in DL 9.57); details about Democritus’s absence from Athens (DL 9.37); the failures of Pericles (who was an associate of Anaxagoras) (Cic. Off. 2.17.60); and exact dates of Socrates’s life (DL 2.44).

6 I take ἤρξατο δὲ φιλοσοφεῖν as “started philosophizing,” i.e., was the first to philosophize in Athens, with Curd 2007, 78, 131 (cf. Pl. Cra. 402b7), against the familiar Loeb translation

“began to study philosophy at Athens” (Hicks 1925). The latter would imply that others in Athens taught Anaxagoras to philosophize; Diogenes cannot believe that, since he believes that Anaximenes of Miletus, who did not live in Athens, taught Anaxagoras (DL 2.6, cf. 9.57; the connection is perhaps unlikely; see Anaxim. A1, A2/D3, A3/P8, A7/D1). Further, Diogenes
notes that Archelaus, from “Athens or Miletus, [was] student of Anaxagoras and teacher of Socrates. He was the first to bring natu ral philosophy from Ionia to Athens (οὖτος πρῶτος ἐκ
τῆς Ἰωνίας τὴν φυσικὴν φιλοσοφίαν μετήγαγεν Ἀθήναζε).” Grammatically, the οὖτος refers
to Archelaus; but Diogenes must have meant to refer to Anaxagoras. Diogenes’s con temporary Clement of Alexandria writes that Anaximenes preceded “Anaxagoras [who] brought his pastime from Ionia to Athens (οὗτος μετήγαγεν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰωνίας Ἁθήναζε τὴν διατριβήν)” ( Strom.

1.63). A late summary of another source con temporary to Diogenes asserts that Anaxagoras left Miletus for Athens and inspired Archelaus, the first Athenian to become a phi los o pher (ps- Gal.

Hist. phil. 3, following Aëtius).

7 Iambl. Pro. 51,8–15.

8 For doubt, given the lack of fifth- century BCE evidence, confusion in later centuries, and the suspicious similarity to Socrates’s trial: Dover 1976; Filonik 2013, 26–36. Diogenes Laertius rec ords four conflicting accounts (2.12–14). Sotion says: Cleon indicts Anaxagoras for the impious belief that the sun is a burning metal; Pericles’s legal defense saves Anaxagoras at the cost of a heavy fine and exile. Hieronymus says: Pericles does little more than bring an illness- stricken Anaxagoras into court for pity to acquit his client. Satyrus says: Pericles’s opponent Thucydides (not the historian) indicts Anaxagoras for both impiety and Persian sympathies; a jury sentences him to death. Hermippus says: while Anaxagoras awaits execution, Pericles proves to his audience’s satisfaction that the good feelings they get from him depend on his tutelage from Anaxagoras, getting Anaxagoras released, but then a despondent Anaxagoras commits suicide anyway. Diodorus has it that people brought evidence of impiety against Anaxagoras the teacher of Pericles (DS 12.39); Suda α 1981 incoherently notes some legal trou ble for Anaxagoras; see also Joseph. Ap. 2.265; Olymp. In Mete. 17.19.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 159

9/18/19 1:20 PM

160 CH A PTER 6
seems misplaced.9 Socrates’s contemporaries presented wildly dissimilar
accounts of his trial, but this does not undermine our belief in the trial’s ex-
istence or basic purport.

Anaxagoras is said to have been the first philosophizer in Athens—
that is, again, perhaps the first explic itly to be associated with the practice philosophein— and to have been exiled in connection with impiety and Pericles. There are also hints of a link to Socrates. Admittedly we have no evidence
that Socrates ever met or spent time with Anaxagoras, despite the possibility.10

But Theophrastus and later authors state that Socrates studied with Archelaus,
who is best known as Anaxagoras’s principal student.11 Ion of Chios (490–21

BCE) specifies that a young Socrates traveled with Archelaus to Samos, the ex-
istence of which report suggests the con temporary public relevance of Socrates
and his association with an Anaxagorean.12 Similarly, Socrates seems ac-
quainted with Damon, the notorious theorist of music, education, and politics
in Pericles’s and thus in Anaxagoras’s orbit.13 A thicker indirect connection is
implied by Plato and Xenophon, both of whom defend Socrates against the im-
pression that he was Anaxagoras’s doppelgänger or follower. In what follows, I
will show how those defenses describe that impression. Along the way we will
see that the two defenses reveal surprising features of Anaxagoras’s views,
which most commentators have overlooked in their focus on his metaphysical
and physical system.14 These features help explain Anaxagoras’s carry ing the
philosophia torch across the Aegean Sea.

9 Curd 2007, 129, 136. For debate about the proliferation of stories about accused intellectuals, including Protagoras, Diagoras of Melos, and even Prodicus, see Dover 1976; L. O’ Sullivan 2008; Filonik 2013.

10 Curd 2007, 134–36. Anaxagoras’s dates in Athens are a matter of contention; some believe he lived about 500 BCE to 428 BCE and came to Athens in 456 (Mansfeld 1979–80; Curd 2007, 131). BNP s.v. “Anaxagoras [2]” gives an arrival of 461. Some believe he came rather earlier to Athens, in 480, at the time of the Persian invasion, and accordingly have him leaving Athens by mid-century (O’Brien 1968; Woodbury 1981; Sider 2005; Graham 2006). Plato may have had literary reasons to avoid dramatizing a conversation between Socrates and Anaxagoras, even had they met.

One dialogue of Socrates’s youthful encounters with internationally known thinkers might suffice (the Parmenides); he does not give Socrates a dialogue with Archelaus, or Diogenes of Apollonia, or Diagoras, or any other naturalist alive in Athens; Anaxagoras may not have the corrective role of Parmenides and Zeno or the danger of sophistic teaching of Hippias, Gorgias, and Protagoras; and, as we will see, Plato appears to want to control the Socrates– Anaxagoras relationship.

11 Theophrastus in Simpl. In Phys. 27,23; DL 2.16, 10.12; Sext. Emp. Math. 9.360. In general see Betegh 2016, 20–21; Betegh 2013 (for Aristophanes’s attribution of Archelaus’s views to the Socrates of the Clouds).

12 DL 2.23; see Graham 2008. For Ion’s dates, see Jennings and Katsaros 2007, 1–2, sum-
marizing the lit er a ture.

13 Pl. Alc. 118c; R. 3.400b– c, 4.424c; see Wallace 2015, 3–75.

14 E.g., McKirahan 2010, 197: Anaxagoras “had a reputation for single- mindedly pursuing
intellectual inquiry to the extent that . . . he had no concern with politics or worldly affairs.”

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 161

In Plato’s Apology, Meletus claims that Socrates believes in no gods. Socrates
queries this: does he not agree with every one in believing that the sun and the
moon are gods? Meletus says no: Socrates, he asserts, claims the sun to be a
stone, the moon to be earth. Socrates retorts that this is Anaxagoras’s view,
whose books are full of these statements. He adds that the Anaxagorean prov-
enance of the claims is so well known that, were he to claim them for his own,
even young people would ridicule him. Besides, Socrates concludes, this view
of the sun and moon is really bizarre (οὕτως ἄτοπα ὄντα, Pl. Ap. 26c7– e2).15

In the Phaedo, the dramatically later dialogue, Socrates clarifies his relation to Anaxagoras. He tells Cebes that when he was young he desired the sophia that
people call research into nature (περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίαν). He used to investigate
the causes of being and perishing, and appealed for explanatory resources to
the four ele ments and vari ous kinds of opposites. Socrates’s par tic u lar interest
concerned the causes of thought. Socrates wondered, for example, whether
we think by means of blood, or by air, or by fire. Though he does not cite his
sources, Socrates’s hypotheses apparently come from Empedocles and those
of his ilk, perhaps Diogenes of Apollonia and Heraclitus.16 Socrates soon
discovered the view that the brain explains cognitive activity, in par tic u lar
the pro cesses from perception to memory to opinion and stable knowledge.

This encephalocentrism suggests the work of Alcmaeon (Pl. Phd. 96a6– b8).

Socrates repeats that he finds this cognitive inquiry part of the same inquiry
that studies “the heavens and earth” (96c1). Yet the “method” he followed to
understand change and growth— and thus, presumably, all activity— led him
into relentless paradoxes (96c1–97b7).

One day, however, he heard a man reading from a book he claimed to be

Anaxagoras’s, with the thesis that “mind is the or ga nizer and cause of every-
thing” (Pl. Phd. 97c1–2). This is exactly what Socrates wanted to hear. Yet if

Anaxagoras accepted Socrates’s assumption that mind organizes all for the
best, Anaxagoras would have to go on to explain how all is or ga nized for
the best, including, for example, the shape of the earth and its position among
the other bodies in the solar system (97c5–98b3).17 So Socrates read Anax-
agoras’s books (τὰς βίβλους, 98b4) to learn the details.18 Having investigated

15 Burnet 1930, 193, observes that Socrates again calls Anaxagoras’s views atopa in Pl. Phd.

98c2, and supposes it means “so strange, so singular,” and thus memorable (not absurd?). Burnet also attributes to Anaxagoras belief in a flat world, to con temporary educated Athenians an outdated view.

16 Socrates later describes the “vortex” (δίνη) and “kneading- trough” (κάρποδος) views of cosmology (Pl. Phd. 99b6– c1).

17 On the significance of debates about the earth’s shape, see Couprie 2011.

18 For the plural, cf. Pl. Ap. 26e. Anaxagoras is thought to have written only one book, per DL

1.16; this may mean Socrates read multiple chapters or volumes.

162 CH A PTER 6
them, Socrates felt himself sorely disappointed: Anaxagoras appealed to the
usual sorts of causes for the order of things, such as air, ether, and water,
seeming to give no thought to decisions about what is good (ἔδοξε βέλτιον,

98e2–3). Thus Socrates took a wholly dif fer ent direction.

The explicit differentiation from Anaxagoras that we find in Plato we find
again in Xenophon. When explaining Socrates’s curricular ideas in Memora-
bilia Book 4, Xenophon describes Socrates’s warnings against studying the

“heavens” (τῶν οὐρανίων, Xen. Mem. 4.7.6),19 with Anaxagoras as Socrates’s
sole case study. Socrates thinks that Anaxagoras held implausible views and
sort of lost his mind (παρεφρόνησεν) thinking so highly of his explanation
of divine celestial mechanisms. Xenophon then lends his own voice to a cri-
tique of Anaxagoras: it is paradoxical to hold that sun is fire or a fiery stone;
cosmological discoveries exceed human grasp; and seeking them displeases
the gods.20 Xenophon had anticipated these charges in Memorabilia Book 1,
when, explaining Socrates’s innocence of the charges of impiety, he denies
that Socrates jumped on the investigatory bandwagon. Unlike many others, he
did not talk about “the nature of every thing.” Nor did he investigate the state
of what the sophistai call the “kosmos,” nor even by what laws each thing in

“the heavens” comes about.21 Xenophon commends Socrates’s investigative
reticence: human matters should not be neglected, and the reach of cosmic
inquiry assures that neglect.22

Plato’s and Xenophon’s defenses of Socrates trace the shape of Anaxago-
ras’s reputation. His fame appears to have ridden on the reduction of sun to
stone and moon to dirt. Even Meletus, no intellectuel engagé, has heard the
thesis, even if not as Anaxagoras’s intellectual property. Xenophon has two
formulations of it ready to hand. Its fame prob ably comes from its condescen-
sion to our two principal celestial bodies, and the realization that, because their
hold on divinity was shaky to begin with, other presumed divinities may face
similar demotion.23 It also has a jingling polar quality— “the sun is fire, the
moon is earth”— akin to the “ things in the sky and below the earth” tag we

19 On the Socratic curriculum according to Xenophon, see Moore 2018c.

20 Xen. Mem. 4.7.7 and 4.7.6. Aristotle remonstrates Xenophon’s position at M. A 982b29–

983a11.

21 Xen. Mem. 1.1.11: οὐδὲ γὰρ περὶ τῆς τῶν πάντων φύσεως, ᾗπερ τῶν ἄλλων οἱ πλεῖστοι
διελέγετο σκοπῶν ὅπως ὁ καλούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν κόσμος ἔχει καὶ τίσιν ἀνάγκαις
ἕκαστα γίγνεται τῶν οὐρανίων.

22 Xen. Mem. 1.1.11.

23 Burnet 1930, 191, claims that “it is essential to the argument that Helios and Selene were not regular objects of worship in the public religion of Athens,” arguing that they were not yet identified with Apollo and Artemis; nevertheless, Athenians could “ ‘think them to be gods,’

since Helios was the great god of Rhodes, and Selene was worshipped at Elis and elsewhere.”

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 163
studied in chapter 5; it could become shorthand for his purported atheism.24

Interestingly, however, in the Phaedo Socrates never mentions it. Apparently
the external and internal views of Anaxagoras come apart.

For Xenophon, Anaxagoras belongs to a category of people who concern
themselves with the nature of every thing, especially its organ ization ( kosmos), pro cesses, and origins. For Plato, Anaxagoras continues the naturalistic tradition but also distinguishes himself from it.25 While Xenophon speaks of
naturalism as concerned about “every thing” (τῶν πάντων), he glosses this as
a concern for the divine realm, the kosmos, the heavens: in short, astronomy
or cosmology. Plato clarifies that within “every thing” also goes biology, psy-
chol ogy, and the science of cognition. After all, in these debates Socrates ex-
plored questions about the physiological basis of thought. The current dialec-
tic seemed to him inadequate. That is why he put his hopes in a theory that
emphasizes “mind,” Anaxagoras’s unique contribution.

We might think that Socrates would look to Anaxagoras first for a theory
of mind, moral psy chol ogy, or epistemology. Surprisingly, he instead says that
he would begin with the shape and position of the earth, the movements of the
heavenly bodies, and explanations for both. It is unclear whether Socrates is
saying that Anaxagoras dealt only with macro- level topics or that he also dealt
with micro- level topics.26 I assume the latter, since Socrates does not say that

Anaxagoras sidestepped the concerns of his pre de ces sors, who did deal with
mental phenomena.27 Anaxagoras’s elemental stuffs seem tailored to explain
living organisms.28 And, by speaking of “mind” as a basic constituent of the

24 Harp. s.v. Ἀναξαγόρας pre sents only the claim about the sun and one other as Anaxago-
ras’s relevant legacy; similarly, Suda α 1981, which adds biographical material. Earlier, Favo-rinus’s Miscellaneous Histories (DL 9.35) pre sents Democritus’s derision of the sun and moon doctrines as predating Anaxagoras. Plin. NH 2.149 links the sun thesis to the famous anecdote that Anaxagoras predicted a meteor fall, and so too, it seems, Plut. Lys. 12. Plut. Nic. 23 even suggests that Anaxagoras embargoed his views about the phases of the moon to avoid people’s intolerance for his naturalistic ideas.

25 So too Arist. M. A 984b15.

26 Socrates’s ensuing remarks leave these questions open. He likens Anaxagoras to somebody who explains (μοι ἔδοξεν ὁμοιότατον πεπονθέναι ὥσπερ ἂν εἴ τις λέγων ὅτι, Pl. Phd.

98c2–3) Socrates’s presence in jail by appeal to the position of his muscles and bones rather than to the judgments by the Athenian jurors and by Socrates himself. He formulates in the optative an Anaxagorean explanation for talking, in terms of “sounds, air, and hearables” (98d6– e1).

Neither indicates whether Socrates actually saw in Anaxagoras’s work an explanation for human be hav ior, thought, or conversation.

27 On Anaxagoras’s pos si ble interests in biology and medicine, see Jaeger 1947, 156–57; Vlastos 1950; Longrigg 1963, 158–67 (perhaps overly confident); Kucharski 1964; Müller 1965, 69–72, 126–37; Barnes 1982, 332. Advising caution, and arguing that our fragments that attribute such interests to Anaxagoras come through Aristotle and Theophrastus, is Schofield 1975.

28 As the following fragments and testimonia suggest: B10/D21 (mentioning hair and flesh, in the context of reproduction; the larger context, apparently paraphrasing, includes hair, nails,

164 CH A PTER 6
world distinct from other princi ples, Anaxagoras may have presented himself
as at least attentive to consciousness, human purpose, the nature of the divine,
and the normative.29 In any event, Socrates judged Anaxagoras’s explana-
tions of the solar system to be somehow relevant to his human and po liti cal
questions; he seems to have seen a power ful integration of cosmology and
anthropology.

Both Xenophon and Plato discuss Anaxagoras specifically and at some
length. For Xenophon, he is the only physicist mentioned in the whole of the

Memorabilia. For Plato, he is the main physicist explic itly named in the Apology and the Phaedo. This suggests that Anaxagoras must have been the domi-nant thinker from whom one might distinguish Socrates, perhaps more even
than Gorgias, Prodicus, or Protagoras.30 This suggests that Socrates might have
easily been confused with Anaxagoras and that both Xenophon and Plato wor-
ried about the muddling effects of such confusion. Socrates expressed interest
in natu ral philosophy.31 Even if he never contributed novel theses to natu ral
philosophy, he certainly reflected on the nature of mind and human action;
and it looks as though Anaxagoras did as well. Anaxagoras left Athens in
fumes of suspicion. No mere head- in- the- clouds theorist, he must have been
seen as a menace to society. His pernicious world theory challenged religious
views, and he had the ear of leading politicians. We can hardly forget that Aris-
tophanes had already attributed what seem to be Anaxagoras’s doctrines to

Socrates in the Clouds.32

Having shown the plausibility of a popu lar association between Anaxago-
ras and Socrates, and an effort to distinguish the latter from the former, I
want now to suggest that Socrates came to be called philosophos for reasons
connected to the appellation of philosophos in the case of Anaxagoras or the

Anaxagoreans.

veins, arteries, muscles, bones); A41 (blood); A43/R15 (flesh, bone); A45 (genesis of “flesh bones veins muscles hair nails” from bread, and from water [for trees], “wood and bark and fruit”); A46/R14 (bone, flesh, marrow); and A52 (flesh, bone).

29 See, for example, Drozdek 2005, 32–35; Drozdek 2011, 145–50. Yet Betegh 2016, 10,
interpreting B4a/D12, believes that Anaxagoras has no account of agency or normative reasons, and thus about the origins of ethics, politics, and society.

30 At the beginning of the Platonic Rival Lovers (132b9), the young men, who seem to Socrates to be talking about Anaxagoras or his ilk, are said by an uncultured onlooker to philosophein.

31 Argued most forcefully in Taylor 1911.

32 Ar. Nub. 225 (speculation about the sun [περιφρονῶ τὸν ἥλιον]; cf. DL 2.12), 227–30

(mixing mind with every thing [κρεμάσας τὸ νόημα]), 372 (the whirl [Δίνος]; cf. DL 2.12

[περιδινήσει]), and the ever- present atheism.

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 165

Distancing Socrates from Philosophia

Early in Plato’s Apology, before addressing the pre sent accusations, Socrates
says that he will address his prosecutors’ pre de ces sors, the “old accusers.” They
supposedly said that “ there is some Socrates, a wise man, a thinker about the
things in the sky and investigator of every thing below the earth, who makes
the worse claim better” (ἔστι τις Σωκράτης σοφὸς ἀνήρ, τά τε μετέωρα
φροντιστὴς καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ γῆς ἅπαντα ἀνεψητηκὼς καὶ τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω
ποιῶν, Pl. Ap. 18b8–10). These accusers classify him as a type of investigator.

Socrates adds that such investigators are thought not to believe in gods (18c3–

4). A short while later he repeats a modified version of the accusation, replac-
ing “a wise man” with “ doing injustice and meddling with things” (ἀδικεὶ καὶ
περιεργάζεται, 19b5). He does not say whether wrongdoing and interference
is a consequence of investigation and dialectical practice, but that seems im-
plied; he appears to hear in the charge “wise man” (σοφὸς ἀνήρ) a pejorative
gloss on the concrete accusations of investigation and dialectical practice, the
negative evaluation of which he spells out as an imputation of wrongdoing and
meddling. “Wise men,” Socrates’s rejection of the name suggests, give advice
and expect it to be taken. Giving compelling advice counts as meddling; and
if the advice is bad, or self- interested, or other wise non- traditional, it counts
as unjust as well.

Socrates denies the charge of being a “wise man,” treating it as an imputa-
tion of injustice when used for him. He says the real “wise man” is Callias of

Alopece, his neighbor and Athens’s wealthiest man (and grand son of the Callias
who was archon in 456 BCE).33 Socrates does not impute injustice to Callias,
saying only that Callias exceeds every one else in his tuition payments to the
most famous teachers: Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias. Should anyone count
as wise and as desirous of being wise, accumulating and displaying wisdom, it
is this Callias. Socrates lacks sophia in lacking knowledge about “the greatest
matters” ( ta megista), a divine knowledge that would presumably guide him
in all action, even as he may possess sophia in recognizing that he lacks this
knowledge.

Making sense of the attributions of sophos required that Socrates ex-
amine his fellow citizens. This lowered his already low approval ratings.

At least it did among the adults he tested, those who thought themselves
wise. The young, among them the children of the supposedly wise or their

33 For Callias and the relationship to his grand father, see Nails 2002, 68–74, 334, and below, pp. 182–87, 228–29.

166 CH A PTER 6
children’s friends, loved his examinations and his stock grew for them.

But this caused him further trou ble. The tenor of the accusations turned
harsh. Now people say that Socrates is “a terrible person and corrupts the
youth” (Pl. Ap. 23d2). Yet they can point to no specific teaching or action
that would account for his wreaking terror or corruption. Presumably this is
because Socrates has done no more than refuted them in conversation and
inspired others to do so too. Wanting nevertheless to justify their asper-
sions, Socrates says that “they say the things ready at hand against all those
who philosophize” (τὰ κατὰ πάντων τῶν φιλοσοφούντων πρόχειρα ταῦτα
λέγουσιν); these include the catchphrases “ta meteôra and the things below
the earth,” “not believing in gods,” and “making the worse claim better”

(23d5–7). They are catchphrases: the first lacks a verb, leaving uncertain
what unholy action those who philosophize are supposed to take toward the
high and the low; the second fails the test of religious specificity; the third is
notoriously mired in ambiguity.

Thus by 399 BCE, according to Plato, some people in Athens were said to

“philosophize.” Popu lar understanding of these people was weak, vague, and
condemnatory. Philosophizers were at once defined and abused by their com-
mitments to cosmology and tactical rhe toric, as well as to a resulting hetero-
dox theology. These commitments were taken as corrosively influential on the
children of the most highly reputed Athenian citizens— and thus on the up-
coming leadership class. They were taken as po liti cally poisonous. Of course,
neither specific purposes and methods of the philosophoi as they saw them,
nor their precise extent, registered much on the public mind. The Athenians
had, as Plato’s Socrates tells it, just those three points of reference, enough to
draw a plane figure but too few for a solid body.

We have reason now to won der whether this conception of philosophoi finds
its archetype and realization in the person of Anaxagoras, with the causes of
his exile, and with the associated thinkers, including Archelaus and the Peri-
clean circle, who remained in Athens. Before answering this question, we
should notice that as Plato does, Xenophon too pre sents Athenian ignorance
about Socrates, ignorance about philosophoi, animosity toward both, and the
resulting assimilation of Socrates to so- called philosophoi. Fuller discussion
of Xenophon’s attitude toward Socrates, philosophia, and the relation between

Socrates and philosophia will come later in the chapter. Here I mention only
one telling story. Xenophon recalls that, feeling insulted by Socrates, Critias
retaliated: “He proscribed the teaching of the art of words, taking contuma-
cious aim at him [Socrates] and, lacking any other way to take him down, at-
tacked him with this disparagement commonly used by the masses against
the philosophoi and slandering him before the masses” ( Mem. 1.2.31). Thus

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 167

Xenophon too posits a group of people called philosophoi whom the masses
disparage. Xenophon also pre sents the Athenians as uncertain about the num-
ber or identity of these philosophoi and thus about Socrates’s position relative to them. Unlike Plato, at this point he limits their dubious trait to “teaching
the art of words.”

Linking Anaxagoras to Philosophia

The evidence from Xenophon, and even from Plato, might seem to require that
we deny that the Athenian conception of the philosophoi originated around

Anaxagoras. Philosophia is associated by Xenophon solely with teaching the
art of words; he does not mention naturalist investigation or atheism. Similarly,

Plato emphasizes “making the weaker claim stronger.” The evidence reviewed
above does not associate Anaxagoras with teaching the art of words. There
might even seem to be opposed evidence. In Plato’s Hippias Major, Socrates
says that all or most of the sophoi down to Anaxagoras refrained from po liti-
cal activity (πολιτικῶν πράξεων, Hp. mai. 281c7). This claim is not decisive,
however, since Socrates wants, tendentiously, to contrast Hippias, who does
extensive ambassadorial work for Elis, with the sophoi into whose com pany he
would like to include himself (281a3– c2).34 Socrates does not deny that sophoi
gave po liti cal advice and lessons, and bore considerable influence over civic
affairs; he denies only that they held formal po liti cal office. Similarly opposed
evidence might seem to come from Aristotle, who reports that people have said
that Anaxagoras, as well as Thales and others, are sophous but not phronimous (“prudent”), given that they are ignorant about their advantage, and that while
they know amazing, wondrous, difficult, and divine matters, they are useless,
failing to seek (ζητοῦσιν) human goods (Arist. Eth. Nic. 1141b2–8).35 This is
again not decisive, since Aristotle simply articulates popu lar and latter- day
opinion, in a way that heedlessly conflates men more than a century apart;
he pre sents an idea of a type rather than reliable biographical information. It
would be better to conclude that our sources report a tradition that prioritizes

Anaxagoras’s theoretical importance over what ever practical importance he
may have had. Yet a combination of two pieces of evidence, from Thucydides
and from Plato’s Phaedrus, gives support for the ascription of philosophia to Anaxagoras (as “art of words,” according to Xenophon).

34 For more on Hippias, see chapter 9, pp. 262–67.

35 Cf. DL 2.6–7 for a similar tradition— Anaxagoras’s neglecting his house hold and
homeland— that seems, actually, to show that people were inclined to consider Anaxagoras politi cally or managerially competent.

168 CH A PTER 6

As we saw in chapter 5, in the Funeral Oration, Pericles acknowledges that Athenians “philosophize” (φιλοσοφοῦμεν), just as they “aspire to grandeur”

(φιλοκαλοῦμεν), but the one without weakness, the other without prodigality.

Pericles uses these words, other wise absent from the History of Thucydides,
only to qualify and then to gloss or redeem them. This suggests that Pericles
is defending the Athenians—or himself, or those around him— against an ac-
cusation of detrimental “grandeur- aspiring” and “philosophizing.” I have ar-
gued that Pericles re- explains the pejorative “philosophizing” to mean getting
clear about the relevant background for making po liti cally salient decisions in
the face of emergencies. He continually emphasizes that, far from compris-
ing sessions of aimless jabbering that yield only impractical abstractions, this
kind of discussion, however eccentric or abstruse it may seem, prepares the
citizenry to act well when it is called on to do so. This defense of Athenian

“philosophizing” as a source of insightful civic courage implies that the word
does connote lots of talking. For Pericles, specifically, it means persuasive talk.

Throughout his speech Pericles lauds Athenian freedom of speech and embod-
ies its strength in rhetorical ingenuity.

We can put this observation alongside the point in Plato’s Phaedrus, where

Socrates claims that Pericles studied with Anaxagoras.36 He joins Anaxago-
ras’s research interests to Pericles’s po liti cal goals. Socrates starts by treating

Pericles as a person who understands the nature of the art of rhe toric, and thus
the content of the lessons for knowledgeable rhetoricians (Pl. Phdr. 269a6–
c5). Indeed, he says, Pericles may be “the most perfect in rhe toric of anyone”

(269e1–2). For evidence, Socrates points not to Pericles’s oratorical or legisla-
tive and strategic successes but to his ongoing preparation and education. Each
skill has its own content, but greatness in any skill requires “freewheeling”

and “cosmological talk about nature (ἀδολεσχίας καὶ μετεωρολογίας φύσεως
πέρι)” (270a1). Anaxagoras filled Pericles up with that cosmological talk and
taught him the nature of mind37 and its absence (φύσιν νοῦ τε καὶ ἀνοίας,

270a5).38 From this Pericles drew what applies to the art of speech (ἐντεῦτεν

36 Other fourth- century BCE evidence for Pericles’s tutelage from Anaxagoras: Pl. Alc. 118c; Ep. 2.311a; Isoc. Antid. 235. Later evidence: Cic. De or. 3.138; DS 12.39; Plut. Per. 4.4–6.4, 16.5–7 (τῆς πολιτείας σύμβουλος, “counselor in government”); Olymp. In Alc. 136.1 (who says Pericles learned philosophia from Anaxagoras); see also Wallace 2015, 16–17. A po liti cal tenor to his relationship with Pericles prob ably explains Anaxagoras’s eventual accession to (some formulations of) the Seven Sophoi (DL 1.42).

37 Yunis 2011, 136, thinks the Phaedrus makes another allusion to Anaxagorean nous, since the dialogue’s argument for immortality (Pl. Phdr. 245c5–246a2) shares structure and register with Anaxagoras B12/D27 (esp. lines 11–12), simply replacing nous with psuchê, a similar concept (cf. Curd 2011, §3.3, §5).

38 The Greek word ἀνοίας is a crux; Burnet 1901 follows manuscript V and Aristides and
prints διανοίας (“reason”); other manuscripts print ἐννοίας (“intention”). Yunis 2011 (with

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 169
εἵλκυσεν ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν λόγων τέχνην τὸ πρόσφορον αὐτῇ, 270a7). The relevance
of cosmology to rhe toric Socrates describes through an analogy to medicine.

In medicine, one sorts through a nature (διελέσθαι φύσιν, 270b4), namely of
a body, to bring about health. So too in rhe toric, in which one sorts through
the nature of a soul, to bring about beneficial belief and virtue. And just as
in medicine, knowing the nature of the body takes knowing the nature of the
whole, to understand the world’s effect on it (as we see in On Ancient Medi-
cine), so too knowing the nature of the soul takes knowing the nature of the
whole, to understand the ways it is persuaded (270b4–71c4).39

Socrates’s remarks suggest two constructions of Anaxagorean rhetorical
pedagogy.40 Anaxagoras may have taught Pericles about ta meteôra and nous
and anoia. Together his curriculum comprises the world of nature and the world
of human belief. The successful persuader knows every thing natu ral and con-
ventional. Anaxagoras might include the nature of the weather, engineering,
navigation, and geology— all topics of great moment for po liti cal decision-
making then as now— and of human intention, emotion, and necessity. Even
instruction in meteorology would be useful for the prolific Peloponnesian War–
era debates about mantic forecasting. Plutarch, for one, puts Anaxagoras’s
skills here. He writes that Anaxagoras vanquished superstition from Pericles’s
mind, especially about meteorological phenomena. Public speakers could have
trou ble convincing doom- and- gloomers. Plutarch also writes that when Peri-
cles received a ram’s head with a single horn, his friend Lampon interpreted it
as a portent about the leadership of Athens, but Anaxagoras opened it up and
gave a physical rather than po liti cal explanation for the ovine abnormality.41

A tradition in de pen dent of Plutarch calls Anaxagoras a prognosticator, surely
referring to his successful meteorological and climatological predictions.42

De Vries and Heindorf) accepts ἀνοίας and translates “lack of mind,” which does not make
sense to me. Ryan 2012 does not decide, but translates ἀνοίας as “what is not mind,” wondering whether it is a pre- Socratic coinage, yet this is a strange interpretation and completely speculative. Verdenius 1955 takes a route similar to Ryan, glossing “that part of real ity which does not consist of νοῦς.” At Pl. Hp. mai. 283a6, Hippias deems Anaxagoras to “cogitate mindlessly”

(ἀνόητα σοφίζεσθαι).

39 Yunis 2011, 208, 212, suggests that Socrates’s argument here may be deceptive, equivocating on the meaning of phusis across the inferential steps; this is very plausible (on which see Moore 2013a, 2014a, and 2014c), but irrelevant to this paper’s claim about Anaxagoras.

40 Cf. Gemin 2017. Contrast this charitable account with the deflationary one in Stadter

1991, 121–22, who argues that Pericles at most learned abstractions and other pomposities to sprinkle in his speeches. Yet Aristotle found Anaxagoras’s writings “sober” compared to his pre de ces sors ( M. Α 984b18), and Diogenes Laertius reports that Anaxagoras’s book was “pleasantly and grandly written” (DL 2.6).

41 Plut. Per. 4.4–6.3; cf. N. O’ Sullivan 1995, 16–18.

42 Philostr. V A 1.2.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 169

9/18/19 1:20 PM

170 CH A PTER 6

Fi nally, and distinctively, Diogenes Laertius rec ords a tradition whereby

Anaxagoras dipped into Homeric interpretation and gnomic wisdom, and was
helpful to Euripides (DL 2.10–11), which suggests incisive moral reflection.

Alternatively, Anaxagoras may have shown Pericles a method of inquiry
freed of traditional strictures. Thus the importance of adoleschia— freewheeling
conversation— and the study both of mind and its absence. Pericles may have
learned or inferred that he ought not restrict himself to learning tropes, study-
ing set texts, or absorbing policy briefings, the familiar content of the rhetori-
cal art. He should think about his audiences in their cosmic situation. They are
active and passive, physical and noetic, imperfect but improvable. Here Anax-
agoras helps Pericles ascend the ranks of rhe toric not by telling him how the
world works but by getting him to value thinking about how the world works.

Which mode of pedagogy we choose hardly matters. Xenophon’s Athe-
nians connect philosophoi with those whom they vaguely suspect of teaching
the art of words. Plato’s Athenians connect philosophoi with those who both
investigate the world and make weaker arguments stronger. Plato’s Socrates
claims that Anaxagoras, who investigates the world, in a roundabout way also
teaches the art of words. This suggests that Anaxagoras was called philoso-
phos in the years before Socrates’s death.

The Thucydidean passage now has additional relevance. Pericles is said
to have been spokesman for Anaxagoras in his defense against a charge of
impiety. Prob ably such a defense would have occurred in the early to mid-

430s BCE, only a few years before the Funeral Oration. Indeed, some suppose
that Anaxagoras was indicted as a proxy for Pericles, as Damon was, who
might seem similarly scientific in his (musical) interests.43 However that may
be, had Anaxagoras and perhaps others in his and Pericles’s circle been called
philosophoi, we could explain Pericles’s hearing of his neighbors or himself
accused of “philosophizing.” This would give Pericles a reason to defend them

(or himself) from that imputation, by accepting and reframing the claim.

We might qualify the above argument by suggesting, as I did with Pythago-
ras and the Pythagoreans, that the term philosophoi may have applied initially,
or as much, to so- called Anaxagoreans and others in his orbit rather than Anax-
agoras himself. We know that they had serious cosmological interests. In Plato’s

Cratylus, Socrates has the Anaxagoreans explain moonlight.44 Aristotle argues

43 See Wallace 2015.

44 Pl. Cra. 409b6. The reference to Anaxagoreans may suggest that Socrates takes this view to improve upon Anaxagoras’s view, the novelty of which Socrates just claimed to undermine etymologically (409a7– b3). That he does not name the Anaxagoreans prob ably means both that they were not famous in their own right and that multiple people, each connected to Anaxagoras, held this view; see also Schofield 1980, 29.

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 171
at some length against the Anaxagoreans’ view that the gallbladder causes
acute disease, and identifies insight into the true nature of things as their overall
orientation.45 Others named as affiliates of Anaxagoras had literary interests,
including Metrodorus of Lampsacus and potentially including the author of the

Derveni papyrus.46 According to Diogenes Laertius, Socrates’s teacher Arche-
laus discussed ethics, law, justice, and goodness (DL 5.8). Some think the ora-
tor Polus of Acragas (best known from Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus) was an Anaxagorean.47 This ring of associates around Anaxagoras gives a larger target
for the name philosophos to hit and to hold firm, to be picked up in the next
round and hurled at the widening circle around him— now to include Socrates.

Xenophon’s Non- Inclusion of Socrates among the Philosophoi

Xenophon provides good evidence that Socrates was included in this category
of philosophoi but that this ascription was not universally laudatory. After all, Xenophon has no trou ble presenting Socrates as a profound intellectual cultivator, someone who loves thinking, such that had the term philosophos been
positive or even merely descriptive, we would expect Xenophon to use the
word. Andrea Nightingale has already noticed that Xenophon does not call

Socrates a “phi los o pher,” in her Genres of Dialogue.48 I expand on her ob-
servation, and take the opportunity to study Xenophon’s conception of phi-
losophia, which has not really been done;49 doing it reveals a view of the
career of the term philosophos consistent with our earlier studies. In not call-
ing Socrates a philosophos, Xenophon seems to continue to hear the term as
something other than a laudatory one and as referring to groups with which
it would be better not to mix Socrates. I will start with four passages from the

Memorabilia. In Memorabilia 4.2.24, philosophein philosophia (“philosophizing/practicing a philosophy”) means following a program of po liti cal self-
improvement through the accumulation and study of scholarship. In Memora-
bilia 1.2.19, those who philosophize crisply debate abstract views about the

45 Arist. Part. an. 677a6–12; Iambl. DCMS 26.79,14 (= Protrepticus fr. 5 Ross). Aristotle cites Anaxagoreans in only these two places, which might suggest they have been eclipsed by the mid- fourth century BCE.

46 On Anaxagorean allegoresis, see Morgan 2000, 98.

47 See Pl. Phdr. 267b and Grg. 465d (τὸ τοῦ Ἀναξαγόρου ἂν πολὺ ἦν, ὦ φίλε Πῶλε— σὺ γὰρ
τούτων ἔμπειρος) (discussion in Fowler 1997, 29; Cambiano 2012, 26). Aristotle in the Metaphysics quotes Polus on the nature of experience ( M. Α 981a3); cf. Pl. Grg. 448b5–7.

48 Nightingale 1995, 16–17. See now Rossetti 2018, 288–92, and Peterson forthcoming for
alternative views concerning Xenophon’s use of philosophia group words.

49 Moore 2018b contains a longer version of my discussion here.

172 CH A PTER 6
nature of virtues (a use with parallels at Anabasis 2.2.12 and Cyropaedia

6.1.41). In Memorabilia 1.2.31, the clearest instance of philosophos as a term of abuse, philosophoi are understood to teach the art of words, which
means, in effect, how to speak on fundamental po liti cal values. In Mem-
orabilia 1.6.2–3, philosophoi are thought to charge tuition for instruction about the flourishing life. Then I turn to the Symposium, in which philosophia is instruction in speech about impor tant topics (Xen. Symp. 1.5), and is preparation for legislation (8.39). Fi nally, in the Oeconomicus those who are

“philosophoi men” proverbially enjoy learning things in the proper order.

Philosophia is the explicit and concerted study of the topics appropriate for
po liti cal success: justice and the other virtues, laws and government, and
human well- being. In some contexts, people practice philosophia actually to
attain these goods; in others, to talk about them; and in yet others, for spec-
tacular display of such attainment. Thus philosophia has practical, theoreti-
cal, and rhetorical modes. As much as these modes differ in form, however,
they share much in content. Xenophon emphasizes maturation toward civic
success, not cosmological abstraction, meteorological speculation, diverse
research and systemization, or delving deep into oneself. Thus Xenophon
continues only one strand of the diffusion from a sixth- century BCE coin-
age of philosophos. He pre sents it from the outside, as a label for certain
groups of people and their characteristic practices. What is impor tant is that
he does not see them as evidently laudatory or as a compliment to Socrates
in including him among them, even as his idea of philosophia seems rather
more Socratic than, say, Anaximandrian.

“Philosophizing a Philosophy”: Efforts at a Po liti cal Education

Memorabilia 4.2 illustrates Socrates’s teaching to those self- confident about
their education and wisdom. An other wise unknown Euthydemus has col-
lected books from poets and wise people, and assumes that private posses-
sion or study of them suffices for po liti cal and rhetorical expertise. By asking
a sequence of questions, Socrates undermines Euthydemus’s assumption. He
reminds Euthydemus that all the wisest politicians and experts had teach-
ers, and shows him that to what ever use he has put his library, he remains
ignorant about statesmanship’s basic knowledge, what conforms with jus-
tice and what does not.50 By undermining Euthydemus’s confidence in his
po liti cal preparations and competence, Socrates brings him to a salutary
self- discovery:

50 Xen. Mem. 4.2.1 (what is illustrated), 4.2.11 (collected books), 4.2.2–6, 12–19 (ignorance).

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 173

But by the gods, Socrates, [Euthydemus] says, I really thought I was philoso-
phizing a philosophy (φιλοσοφεῖν φιλοσοφίαν), what I thought was the best way
for a man striving to be a gentleman to get an appropriate education; but now
what do you think of spiritless me, seeing that despite my earlier efforts I can’t
even answer questions on the most obligatory topics, and have no other route to
improvement? (Xen. Mem. 4.2.23)

Euthydemus understands “philosophizing a philosophy” to be an effortful and
deliberately chosen intellectual route to improvement, where that improvement
would allow him to become a gentleman and thus also to answer questions
about the most impor tant po liti cal topics.

For Euthydemus, the route to becoming a gentleman, the route he calls

“philosophizing a philosophy,” has something to do with collecting books.51

Neither Socrates nor Euthydemus state what the latter has done or means to
do with those books. Consistent with Euthydemus’s rejection of tutelage, he
prob ably has not acquired them to discuss them with others (cf. 1.6.14), but to
read alone, and, as he acquires ideas from them, to incorporate them as his
own ideas. Some books that he has read must be about justice; he admits that
he has reflected (κατανενοήκας) a lot on the relationship between justice and
goodness, and can explain (ἐξηγήσασθαι) what is and is not just. We might even
guess that Socrates uses, in his examination of Euthydemus’s views about in-
tentional injustice, the example of deliberate versus accidental misreading to
draw attention to Euthydemus’s self- education through reading.52

Euthydemus couches his autodidactic sentiment in a comically earnest,
grammatically noteworthy construction. He uses a cognate accusative pleo-
nasm, “philosophizing a philosophy” (equivalent to “practicing a philosophy”),
to intensify and draw attention to the action; this par tic u lar pleonasm is re-
corded only twice in Greek lit er a ture before the Christian period. Opening
his speech with this remark reveals the terms in which he thinks about his
practice of collecting books; it also expresses his surprise at the practice’s
failure. He had conceived of his activity as philosophein and philosophia, very much in these marked terms, and had intended to reap philosophia’s great
benefit, the development into a man of action, but nevertheless had failed to
reach his goal. We may be inclined to believe that his course of study had
been justified to him as philosophia and had promised wonderful results at
its completion, and here he is finding that “philosophizing a philosophy” can

51 Xen. Mem. 4.2.1: γράμματα πολλὰ συνειλεγμένον; 4.2.8: ἔτι γε συνάγω, ἕως ἂν κτήσωμαι
ὡς ἂν δύνωμαι πλεῖστα; 4.2.9: κεκτημένους; 4.2.10: συλλέγεις.

52 Xen. Mem. 4.2.12 (what Euthydemus thinks he can do), 4.2.20 (drawing attention to self- education).

174 CH A PTER 6
fail to produce those results. That “philosophizing a philosophy” has some
unity as a course of instruction and involves adopting a specific lifestyle—
such as collecting and reading books about justice and politics—is suggested
by a use of the same pleonasm a couple generations later. In Philemon’s (ca.

363–262 BCE) play Philosophoi, somebody explains the odd traits of a main
character: “For he philosophizes a new philosophy; he teaches hunger and takes
students; one loaf, a fig for dessert, water for a drink.”53 The play appears to
treat “philosophizing a philosophy” as following a coherent and planned ap-
proach to self- improvement; the subject of the joke has developed a new ap-
proach, apparently based on autarcheia or desire- reduction. This dramatic
fragment includes no reference to philosophy’s expected reliance on dialecti-
cal exchange, critical defense of one’s reasoning, or mentorship. It suggests
instead a way of life that is unusual (teaching hunger!), seemingly indirect

(one fig!), but prob ably reasoned out (it’s a three- course meal!). Euthydemus’s
procedure is similarly unusual (Alcibiades, Critias, Pericles, and the other am-
bitious statesmen in the Memorabilia are not said to have read a lot of books),
indirect (management of a house hold, perfecting speeches, or fighting in war
would seem more direct routes), and yet reasoned out (the books are from the
authors purported to be wisest).

When Socrates replies to Euthydemus’s consternation, he does not say that

Euthydemus was right to philosophize a philosophy and yet should from now
on philosophize a dif fer ent and better philosophy. Nor does he say that Eu-
thydemus thought he was philosophizing a philosophy but failed to, misled as
he was by mistaken authors. He goes on instead to encourage knowing him-
self, distinguishing good from bad things, and figuring out whom he means
to govern once he is a statesman.54 These are presumably the most impor tant
topics, those that a gentleman should know and about which he should be able
to answer questions. None of this Socrates calls “philosophy,” neither here
nor anywhere else in Xenophon’s Socratic works. (Euthydemus might on re-
flection come to think that Socratic conversation proves a better activity for
someone desiring the goal at which philosophizing a philosophy aims than the
activity he settled on.)

Since Xenophon does not pre sent Socrates as speaking of his own or rec-
ommended actions as “philosophizing a philosophy,” we might won der why

Euthydemus does. Euthydemus overhears the brief conversations Socrates uses
specifically to draw him in;55 but if Socrates uses the unusual phrase “phi-

53 Fr. 88 PCG: Φιλοσοφίαν καινὴν γὰρ οὗτος φιλοσοφεῖ· | πεινῆν διδάσκει καὶ μαθητὰς
λαμβάνει. | εἷς ἄρτος, ὄψον ἰσχάς, ἐπιπιεῖν ὕδωρ.

54 Xen. Mem. 4.2.24–30, 31–35, 36–39.

55 Xen. Mem. 4.2.2–8.

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 175
losophize a philosophy” there, we would expect Xenophon to have had him
use it elsewhere, and more importantly, we would expect Euthydemus, in the
passage quoted above at 4.2.23, to say something like, “I thought I was— as
you put it— ‘philosophizing a philosophy,’ ” and then to forego the gloss on that term, given that Socrates would obviously know exactly what it means. Euthydemus’s motivation to collect and study books, and to call that activity “phi-
losophizing a philosophy,” must have come, therefore, from someone besides

Socrates. Hippias, who becomes Socrates’s interlocutor two chapters hence

(4.4), advocates becoming polumathês for the sake of one’s po liti cal educa-
tion.56 He or someone like him could have been one of the wise authors whose
books Euthydemus had collected (σοφιστῶν, 4.2.1; τῶν σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν, 4.2.9).

“Philosophizing (a philosophy)” thus would likely be a name, within a social
circle of intellectual- political aspirants, for the studious preparation for a po-
liti cal career.57

Xenophon pre sents Socrates as helpful for people seeking a po liti cal career;
indeed, the entire Book 4 of the Memorabilia shows a course of education apt
for the po liti cal aspirant (even if it would benefit others as well). Yet Memora-
bilia 4.2 shows the Socratic education to comprise, at least in part, tough ques-
tions and indirect answers. Certainly it shows Socrates as more or other than
simply a dispenser of sage bromides, etiological myth, allegorical thought ex-
periments, and realist analyses of public institutions. These are the ele ments
that we know to be in the writings of the fifth- century BCE writers called “wise
men” or “sophists,” including Hippias (cf. Xen. Symp. 1.5, 4.62), Protagoras

( Symp. 1.5), and Prodicus ( Mem. 2.1.21–34; Symp. 4.62). Those writings addressed prob lems of ethics, economy, and politics, and provided arguments or
illustrations of views. From the uses of “philosophy” by Thucydides and Aris-
tophanes (in chapter 5), it seems likely that sampling this written work could be called “philosophizing.”

Socrates diagnoses the failures in Euthydemus’s education. Euthydemus
does not know himself (4.2.24–30); he seems persuaded by theological doubts

(4.3.3–17); he does not understand justice (4.2.11–19), conceivably because Hip-
pias, who could have been a favorite author of his, also does not understand
justice (4.4.5–25);58 he does not recognize the importance of enkrateia (“self-
control”) to the acquisition of plea sure (4.5.9); and he lacks precise understanding

56 Cf. Pl. Prt. 318e1–319a2; Hp. mai. 281a1–283b4; BNJ 6. See further chapter 9, pp. 262–67.

57 Cf. Dorion 2011, 83.

58 I conjecture Hippias’s influence on Euthydemus as an explanation for the odd incursion of an exchange between Socrates and Hippias into a sequence of four conversations between Socrates and Euthydemus.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 175

9/18/19 1:20 PM

176 CH A PTER 6
of the moral concepts he so seeks to learn (4.6.2–12). These failures are not
necessarily failures of philosophia itself. But they are failures that follow not studying with other people, in par tic u lar, not studying with Socrates. Philosophia must have had cultural capital with Euthydemus and those he admired.

The high esteem given to philosophia, to the extent that it was a methodical
study of the matters of highest import, is reasonable. But Xenophon shows that
it is Socrates and conversation with him that is most useful, even essential;
and he leads one to doubt whether philosophia as Euthydemus understands it
gives an essential role to Socrates.

Xenophon’s desire to laud Socrates rather than to link him to a novel ped-
agogical trend seems to explain Xenophon’s insouciance about defining

Socrates vis- à- vis philosophia. This could be parsed as Xenophon’s lack of concern about philosophia and the jargon of the day. It could also be parsed as

Socrates’s concern to help Euthydemus in general rather than to correct his
ideas about philosophia.

Self- Styled Phi los o phers

The first two chapters of the first book of the Memorabilia defend Socrates
against the diverse charges historically levied against him. In chapter 2, Xenophon vindicates Socrates’s association with Alcibiades and Critias. In sec-
tion 19 of chapter 2, Xenophon responds to the claim that because that pair of men were bad at the end of their lives, Socrates must never have made them
good in the first place:

Now perhaps many of those claiming to philosophize (πολλοὶ τῶν φασκόντων
φιλοσοφεῖν) might say that a just person never becomes unjust or a disci-
plined person hubristic or a person who has learned anything of which there
is learning ignorant. But I do not acknowledge such things to be this way.

(Xen. Mem. 1.2.19)

Xenophon epitomizes a common position among those who say of themselves
that they “philosophize.” Xenophon takes these claimants to philosophia to
argue about justice, discipline, knowledge, and the permanence of virtue,
and perhaps to form these arguments from abstract claims and deductions,
for example, from the nature of opposites or from the relation of attributes to
substances. Xenophon makes no charges against these topics or methods of ar-
gument. He even allows that other claimants to philosophia would, like himself,
accept the impermanence of virtue. But Xenophon clearly distinguishes him-
self and Socrates from this group of “ those who claim to philosophize.” He does

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 177
not speak of “we who claim to philosophize” or of “ those who philosophize as
opposed to those who have no grounds for their claims about virtue.” There is a
distinctive group of people who understand or pre sent themselves as “philoso-
phizing,” and he is addressing something distinctive about them.

It is tempting to read Xenophon to be saying “ those claiming (i.e., falsely)

to philosophize,” with the implication that he or Socrates might be among a
dif fer ent but related group, those who truly philosophize. But he seems really to be saying “ those who pride themselves to philosophize,” who actively consider themselves philosophoi.59 Xenophon thus acknowledges the existence of
a group of people who say of themselves that they philosophize. He does not
say whether he thinks that they do so wrongly. As a consequence, he does not
say whether he thinks that there are people who are actually philosophoi but
do not claim, boast, or pretend to philosophize. But Xenophon seems not to
think there are. He seems to think of phi los o phers as having an articulated,
projected identity.

Twice in his non- Socratic writings Xenophon describes philosophoi as using
abstract, deductive reasoning. I will mention one here (the other is at Cyro-
paedia 6.1.41). Early in the Anabasis, Xenophon’s narrative of his mercenary campaign through present- day Turkey, an Athenian responds to Phalinus, who
had encouraged the outnumbered Greeks to lay down their arms:

— Phalinus, now, as you see, there is nothing good (ἀγαθόν) for us except our
arms and our virtue (ἀρετή). Having our arms we imagine that we could also
use our virtue; but surrendering them, that we would be deprived of our bodies

(τῶν σωμάτων). Do not imagine, then, that we will surrender to you our only
goods: we will fight with them even over your goods.

— Hearing these things, Phalinus laughed and said, You seem a philosophos

(φιλοσόφῳ . . . ἔοικας), young man, and you speak not without charm (λέγεις
οὐκ ἀχάριστα); know, however, that you are foolish (ἀνόητος), if you imagine
that your virtue would trump the power of the king. (Xen. An. 2.1.12–13)

A philosophos speaks of “goods” and “virtue,” and draws connections between
them and the “body,” that is to say, being alive. Perhaps it is an additional point
contributing to Phalinus’s judgment of the Athenian’s philosophos- like speech
that he “speaks with charm”— with clarity, witty concision, and deductive rea-
soning, using an exhaustive disjunction. Phalinus also thinks that the Athe-
nian is foolish. This need not mean that while the Athenian “seems” (ἔοικας)

59 With Dorion 2003, 1.13; and Moore 2018b, against, e.g., Smith 1903, 22; Santoni 1989, 92n24.

178 CH A PTER 6
a philosophos, he in fact is not because he is in fact foolish. The Athenian is
obviously not a (characteristic) philosophos, given that he is in fact a soldier.

Phalinus’s point is only that his speech mimics that of philosophoi; and young
men are prone to study with and thus mimic philosophoi. Since being like a
philosophos is speaking in certain argumentatively precise ways and about
the topics surrounding—at least in this case— fundamental questions of life,
including virtue, death, and value, this must be what philosophoi do. This is
more than intellectual cultivation, because it is the Athenian’s specific way of
talking that incites Phalinus’s remark. It is not clear whether philosophoi are
expected to have the right answers to these questions; but it might be assumed
that they are not always eminently pragmatic.

A Disparagement Commonly Used against the Phi los o phers

Later in Memorabilia Book 1, Xenophon pre sents a case similar to that found
in Plato’s Apology, where Socrates says that people used the criticisms that
were handy against phi los o phers (Pl. Ap. 23d2–6); he puts the claim in his own voice. He reports that Critias, the erstwhile associate of Socrates, avenged an
insult from Socrates by using his legal powers as member of the Thirty against
him. (Socrates insulted him by trying to discourage Euthydemus, the young
man whom Xenophon discusses in Book 4, from associating with Critias: Xen.

Mem. 1.2.29–30.) Xenophon explains:

And in the laws he proscribed the teaching of the art of words (λόγων τέχνην
μὴ διδάσκειν), taking contumacious aim at him [sc. Socrates] and, lacking any
other way to bring him down, attacked him with this disparagement commonly

(τὸ κοινῇ) used by the masses against the philosophoi and slandering him before
the masses. But for myself, neither did I myself ever hear Socrates do this, nor
was I aware of another claiming to have heard him do this. (Xen. Mem. 1.2.31)

We learn from this passage that by 404 BCE, the period of Critias’s powers,
there were so- called philosophoi. Presumably Xenophon does not say what
people thought about philosophoi in general. He notes only that they were often
disparaged (ἐπιτιμώμενον) and thus slandered (διαβάλλων) as teachers of the
art of words. Apparently the masses despised this teaching and often (if not
always) identified philosophoi as teachers of it.

Xenophon does not say that Socrates ought to be considered a philosophos.

It is not even clear whether Critias judged Socrates a philosophos, as he un-
derstood the term. He seems to have been opportunistic instead, seeking out
an accusation that would stick. He must have seen that the masses thought that

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 179

Socrates was a philosophos, and thus that the accusation was apt, or while not
a philosophos himself, a teacher of the art of words, which was a role itself
worthy of scorn.

In the following section, Socrates does not address the topic of philosophia
head-on. Instead he interrogates the meaning of the obscure proscription.60

The responses provide data on his interlocutors’ vision of (at least a part of)

philosophia. Socrates asks Critias (or Charicles, to whom he soon ends up
talking) whether the edict prohibits correct or incorrect reasoning. Though

Socrates may simply be trying to be provocative, he might rightly think that
teachers of the art of words would teach people to use their words correctly.

This is certainly what Xenophon thinks Socrates does in fact try to do (see

Mem. 4.6); and he never calls the correct use of words philosophia. Charicles ignores Socrates’s suggestion and says that the edict forbids Socrates only
from having conversations with the youth. This hardly glosses the prohibition
of teaching an art of words, since it would also prohibit talking with young
merchants (which is not a form of teaching), and since many besides philos-
ophoi have such conversations (which are not objectionable). Nevertheless,

Charicles means to specify teaching by means of discussion (that is, by phi-
losophoi) those who are still intellectually immature (οὔπω φρονίμοις), who
may aspire to public and deliberative participation. He then makes his worries
more explicit: it is the “asking of questions to which you know the answer”

to which he objects, an obviously Socratic practice. But Socrates shows that
this is still not objectionable as it stands. So Critias, taking a turn, reduces it
to talking about “cobblers, builders, metal workers . . . cowherds,” Socrates’s
familiar examples. Socrates loses patience with Critias’s circumlocutions and
tells him that what Critias wants to forbid is his talking (with the young) about
that for which these are humdrum examples: justice, holiness, and similar top-
ics, themselves presumably perfectly respectable topics. So Critias realizes,
or admits, that what he really wants to forbid is Socrates’s asking the youth
the leading questions about ethical, po liti cal, and theological matters, matters
they would need to think about before becoming public men.

“Teaching the art of words” may be euphemistic for this pedagogical activ-
ity that is supposedly typical of philosophoi. It might also be so general as to
capture a broad range of activities— Anaxagoras’s, Gorgias’s, and Empedoclean
doctors’ activities. So general, it captures Socrates’s activities too; neither he
nor Xenophon would deny that he talks to ambitious youth about moral and po-
liti cal questions. Then why does Xenophon not admit that Socrates is fairly
called a philosophos but not one worth vilifying? Xenophon presumably

60 Xen. Mem. 1.2.34–37. Cf. Dorion 2003, 98–100.

180 CH A PTER 6
believes that nothing good would come either from defending Socrates’s sta-
tus as philosophos or from showing that he distinguishes himself from the
disparagement- worthy philosophoi. Doing either would associate Socrates on

Xenophon’s authority with an often disreputable crowd. It would also add an
unnecessary term from which Socrates would have to be cautiously differenti-
ated. Neither task would advance Xenophon’s desire to demonstrate Socrates’s
exceptional life and goodness. The more impor tant point is that, as we have
already seen and will continue to see, for Xenophon philosophos is not a term
of praise. It is a label of group membership, and not evidently a laudatory one.

Phi los o phers and Happiness

Whereas Critias treated philosophoi as teachers to outlaw Socrates’s conver-
sations, Antiphon treats philosophoi as teachers to deride Socrates’s failure
at teaching. Xenophon pre sents a set piece in which Antiphon aims to poach

Socrates’s associates. Antiphon addresses Socrates with the intention that their
conversation be overheard by those around them. His gambit opens with two
references to philosophia:

Socrates, I thought that those philosophizing had to end up flourishing more

(τοὺς φιλοσοφοῦντας εὐδαιμονεστέρους χρῆναι γίγνεσθαι). But you seem to
me to have won the opposite from philosophia. [. . . After all, you are poor and do not charge tuition . . . ] Now if just as the teachers of other practices show
their students to be imitators of themselves, you too were to treat your associ-
ates in such a way, consider yourself to be a teacher of misery (κακοδαιμονίας).

(Xen. Mem. 1.6.2–3)

Antiphon has a commercial view of philosophia.61 He thinks that philosophiz-
ing amounts to teaching students and associates (cf. 1.6.12) and is thus a peda-
gogical profession (cf. Xen. Poroi 5.3). Antiphon also thinks that philosophiz-
ing, ideally practiced, makes one flourish. This view, that philosophia leads
not merely to discoveries or mental diversion but actually to a more flourish-
ing happy life, is familiar from Isocrates and Plato, as we will see. But An-
tiphon takes an instrumental approach to the connection between pedagogy
and flourishing. He implies that philosophizing makes one flourish because

61 Thus Smith 1903, 61, is misleading to gloss τοὺς φιλοσοφοῦντας as “lovers of knowledge”

and to derive from Pl. R. 2.376b that this just means φιλομαθεῖς; Antiphon addresses Socrates not because Socrates loves wisdom or learning, but because although he has the trappings of a certain kind of teacher, he is not making any money from it. Santoni 1989, 321, has “engaged in a philosophy,” which is better.

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 181
it brings tuition payments from one’s students. Antiphon takes a fee from
his students; they are glad to pay him because they believe that if they imi-
tate him they will themselves mature into moneymaking and thus successful
philosophoi.

Xenophon goes on to report a conversation in which Antiphon jokes that

Socrates is just but not wise: because he charges no fees to those who spend
time with him, his knowledge and wisdom must be empty; but at least he
does not greedily mislead people about its value!62 The joke reveals three
things about Antiphon’s view of philosophia. First, philosophia involves
spending time with people in knowledge- based discussion, in which wis-
dom counts for the most. Second, since these people might be willing to
pay a fee, they are prob ably young people looking to improve their chances
in the world. Third, though here Antiphon speaks explic itly of commercial
justice, his joke would be really apt only if (certain) philosophoi aimed (or
pretended to aim) for justice as well as for wisdom. Plato’s Republic Book 2
and the Platonic Clitophon show that understanding justice had popu lar ap-
peal, po liti cal relevance, and an intellectual imprimatur.63 We might guess
that Socrates exemplified this commitment to conversations about justice.

All the same, Antiphon acts as though he appreciates Socrates’s commitment
to justice only as a fiduciary responsibility to potentially naïve or enthralled
associates. He need not be dissembling or unusual in so acting. The contem-
poraneous discussions about justice we know about emphasized the external
or instrumental benefits of being just; Antiphon perhaps believes that all phi-
losophoi, given that they are paid teachers foremost, think about justice in a
way that pays for them and would pay for their students, who after all need to
justify paying their teachers. Thus Antiphon sees philosophoi as constituting
a class of teachers on the basis of whose wisdom students will pay to learn
about justice (potentially among other topics). This would be an unsurpris-
ing consequence, since the wise people that Euthydemus read (Xen. Mem.

4.2), the familiar topics of philosophoi (Xen. Mem. 1.2.16), and the content of Socrates’s teaching when teaching the art of words (1.2.37) all include justice
as the primary matter.

Again, Xenophon does not in his own words or through Socrates explic-
itly deny the implication that Socrates is a philosophos. But he does not
explic itly accept or qualify the implication either. Instead Xenophon has

Socrates explain what actually typifies him. In the midst of Socrates’s dis-
cussion with Antiphon he gives a good example. Regarding the “trea sures

62 Xen. Mem. 1.6.11–12.

63 Cf. Moore 2012.

182 CH A PTER 6
of the wise men of old, which they left behind in the books they wrote,
opening them up with my friends I [Socrates] go through them, and should
we see anything good, we focus on it, and we consider it a great advantage
should we become useful to one another” (Xen. Mem. 1.6.14). Xenophon
says that from this practice he judges Socrates to be blessed (μακάριος)

and prepared to lead his listeners to excellence (καλοκἀγαθία). We see the
contrast with Euthydemus’s practice discussed in Memorabilia 4.2. Looking
at books is valuable only when exercising judgment in conversation about
their best and useful ele ments, and applying one’s discoveries to oneself and
others. In the previous conversation with Antiphon, Socrates says that di-
vinity comes through minimizing one’s desires, which he practices (1.6.10).

So Socrates reads carefully with friends, seeks the good, minimizes desire,
and thinks about becoming more divine. For Xenophon, these traits are emi-
nently useful.

In the Memorabilia, then, both Critias and Antiphon see Socrates as near
enough to the group called philosophoi to charge him with the abuse thrown
at philosophoi or to make fun of his failure to meet philosophia’s monetary ideals. In either case, the association of Socrates with this group of philosophoi makes sense. Socrates talks with others about the careful use of language
and about justice and the other virtues. But Xenophon does not affirm the title
of philosophos for Socrates. In the context of Socrates’s encounter with Cri-
tias, Xenophon recognizes that much of the populace despises philosophoi.

In Socrates’s encounter with Antiphon, Xenophon knows that much of the
populace, construing happiness in material terms, thinks philosophoi desire
profit. Under neither perception does it help Socrates’s case to associate him
with philosophoi.

Callias the Philosophical Impresario

Xenophon’s Symposium opens with Callias’s planning to host a party for his
beloved, a champion fighter named Autolycus. The three uses of philosophos-
group words in the dialogue are directed toward Callias. This suggests that

Xenophon deploys the words only to draw a portrait of Callias’s reputation as
an intellectual impresario.64

The dialogue’s drama opens when Callias spots Socrates, Critobulus, Her-
mogenes, Antisthenes, and Charmides, and bids them come home with him.

He exhorts them by telling Socrates that he and his friends’ “purified souls”

64 On Callias, Pl. Ap. 20c; Tht. 65a; Alc. 119a; Freeman 1938; Woldinga 1938, 20–23; Wolfsdorf 1998, 127–29; Bowen 1998, 13; Nails 2002, 68–74.

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 183

(ἐκκεκαθαρμένοις τὰς ψυχάς) would make his dinner brighter than military
and po liti cal people would (Xen. Symp. 1.4). Socrates responds:

You are always playing us for a joke and trivializing us, since you (σὺ μὲν)

have given much money to Protagoras for wisdom (σοφίᾳ), and to Gorgias
and Prodicus and to many others, but you regard us by contrast (ἡμᾶς δ’)

as being some sort of lay phi los o phers (αὐτουργούς τινας τῆς φιλοσοφίας).

(Xen. Symp. 1.5)

Callias ignores the claims that he insults Socrates and his friends. He agrees
with the middle claim, that he has paid much tuition to these sellers of wisdom.

He says that until now he has hidden his ability to speak fluently and wisely

(πολλὰ καὶ σοφὰ λέγειν), but that this party will allow him to show its attend-
ees that he is worthy of much serious esteem (1.6).65

In this passage Socrates implies that Callias has an idea about the nature
of philosophia. A practitioner of it has a purified soul and the capacity for
wise speech. This is the only time Xenophon uses the verb for “to purify thor-
oughly” (ἐκκαθαίρω). In Plato or his imitators, “thorough purification” is con-
nected three times to philosophy and once to politics, and means an expung-
ing of any foreign matter or imperfection.66 Presumably his Callias would
think, even if implicitly, that prac ti tion ers of philosophia have under gone
a purging, perhaps of confusion and of everyday concerns, through repeated
and challenging effort.67 This is not too esoteric an idea; it is what any refined
practitioner does to attain his mastery. Callias’s idea of the philosophos also
includes oratorical excellence, an idea we have already connected to Euthyde-
mus’s and Critias’s idea of the philosophos.

Socrates neither accepts nor rejects the imputation that he is a “lay” phi-
los o pher, the term “lay” usually being applied to a self- employed farmer, ben-

65 On the importance of this passage, see Rettig 1879, 273; Woldinga 1938, 48–49; Gray

1992, 61.

66 In the Euthyphro (3a1), Socrates says that Meletus wishes to “purify thoroughly” the city of corrupting influences; this leads him to prosecute even Socrates. In Republic Book 2 (2.361d5), Socrates calls Glaucon’s hy po thet i cal men, the just man stripped of all appearance of justice and the unjust man stripped of all appearance of injustice, “purified thoroughly,” like statues, of all irregularities and foreign matter whatsoever. In Republic Book 6 (6.527d8), Socrates advocates for a long education in geometry and astronomy on the grounds that these studies purify the soul’s organs and eliminate the blindness caused by everyday pursuits. In the dubious Second Letter (314a7), “Plato” tells Dionysius that his lessons are learned only through repeated hear-ings, “just as gold is purified thoroughly,” the ore purged a little more with each pass.

67 Woldinga 1938, 206–8, discusses other philosophical and mystical overtones.

184 CH A PTER 6
efited by no assistants.68 Socrates simply notes that Callias’s claim that he and
his friends are purified of soul, and are good dining companions, means that

Callias takes them for incomplete—or, worse, ersatz— philosophoi. Neither

Socrates nor Callias explic itly identifies the professional phi los o pher against
whom Socrates stands in contrast. Nightingale thinks it is Callias, because
he, like a professional farmer, employs others and is himself employed by no-
body.69 Socrates, too poor to contract out his philosophical labor, must do it
all himself. This is a plausible view, and it is one that may track the Greek
terms of contrast (μέν . . . δέ . . . ). But contrary to the view of Nightingale,
a professional phi los o pher could be the one with an expansive business, who
works for others (for payment) and not just by himself; this would mean that

Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus, teachers of wisdom all, are the professional
phi los o phers. Antiphon thought that phi los o phers worked for others. Others have thought that phi los o phers teach; and Callias seems rather to be a student.

We can leave aside the question concerning the professional phi los o pher,
however, because the relevant point is that Socrates asserts that Callias sees
him and his associates, including Critobulus, as lay but not full- blooded
phi los o phers; and Callias does not disagree with this assertion. The joke
is prob ably that Callias esteems only those to whom he is willing to pay
cash rather than merely feed and entertain. The ensuing conversation vindi-
cates Callias’s assumption that Socrates and his friends have great fa cil i ty
in speaking cleverly. But Socrates remains distinct from Callias, Protagoras,
and the others.

The word philosophia arises again when, in Symposium 4, Socrates re-
turns to talk of Callias’s studies. Explaining how Antisthenes acts as ama-
tory intermediary, Socrates says to Antisthenes that he “intermediated with
wise (σοφῷ) Prodicus, when you saw that [Callias] loved (ἐρῶντα) philoso-
phia and the other one needed money” (Xen. Symp. 4.62). Antisthenes did
the same with Hippias, from whom Callias learned mnemonic devices. We
do not know whether Socrates considers Hippias a purveyor of philosophia

68 See Xen. Oec. 5.4; Cyr. 7.5.67. Winans 1881, 48, gives an overly derisive translation, “ ‘a sort of quacks,’ ‘in de pen dent dabblers,’ ‘ amateurs.’ ” Bartlett 1996, 134, translates “self- taught”

(similarly Ollier 1961, 38, “autodidactes”) but no other uses of the adjective support this view.

Bowen 1998, 27, gives “do- it- yourself,” rightly emphasizing the amateur aspect, but implying that Callias, who does not do it himself, is the real phi los o pher (cf. Watson 1857, 151, “workers for ourselves in the pursuit of wisdom”). See also Woldinga 1938, 213–15; Huß 1999, 86.

69 Nightingale 1995, 16. Bartlett 1996, 134n7, classes Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus
as “Sophists or rhetoricians”; this implies that Callias, who is not self- taught, is the “phi loso pher.” Higgins 1977, 15, also calls those three men Sophists, but Callias a “supporter” of them, and Socrates the “phi los o pher.” Winans 1881, 48, judges Protagoras and the rest to be the phi los o phers.

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 185
as Callias understands it. Still, we know with certainty that Callias consid-
ers Prodicus a philosophos, that some philosophoi wish to work for money, and that the love of philosophia may lead one to study with a teacher of
philosophia.70

The explicit idea of “philosophy” arises for a final time in the Symposium in
the encomium to psychic love and self- improvement that Socrates addresses
to Callias. Should he, Callias, wish to be a good partner to Autolycus,
you should look into what kind of knowledge (ἐπιστάμενος) made Themisto-
cles sufficient to free the Greeks, you should look into what Pericles could have
known (εἰδώς) to be reputed the most power ful advisor among his people, you
should observe how Solon, having philosophized (φιλοσοφήσας), could have es-
tablished the most power ful laws in the city, and you should also seek out by
what practices (ἀσκοῦντες) the Lacedaemonians are reputed to be the most
power ful commanders. (Xen. Symp. 8.39)

Socrates puts four verbs in parallel: “having the knowledge to,” “knowing how,”

“philosophizing,” and “practicing.” The first and second mean “an ability based
in thought”; the fourth prob ably means something like the “purifying thor-
oughly” from Symposium 1.4 discussed above. The parallel construction im-
plies that “philosophizing” also refers to a source of ability based in thought
and its patient development. The reference to Solon’s philosophizing recalls

Herodotus’s story about Croesus’s meeting with Solon discussed in the previ-
ous chapter. Xenophon seems to be thinking of the account on which Herodo-
tus drew, but he has modified it, putting the philosophizing ahead of law-
making. This treats philosophizing as working up the po liti cal acuity or moral
insight appropriate for effective laws.

Taking these three references to philosophia into account, we see that in
the Symposium Xenophon treats philosophia as something Callias has a taste for and identifies some of the major intellectual players of the Socratic era as
exemplars of philosophia. In Callias’s view, at least as Socrates puts it, philosophia is the study of the skill highly valued in sympotic settings— public
display of clever and novel speech, an ability prepared through much concerted
effort. But Callias also accepts that it has a realization in legislation. Socrates
supposes that Callias thinks of him, Socrates, as a sort of second- string or un-
affiliated phi los o pher. Because we have little reason to believe that Callias has

70 Bowen 1998, 63, obscures this in glossing Callias’s love of philosophia as “passionate for learning.” Huß 1999, 312–13, takes this use of “philosophy” to have an ironic coloring; this assumes the availability of a distinct non- ironic use.

186 CH A PTER 6
an unusual view of philosophia, we may believe that his view is Xenophon’s
view. In other words, Xenophon may also think that philosophia is a rhetorical
skill that has its realization in po liti cal action. Socrates is a marginal case of
this sort of practitioner.

Socrates’s Sole Self- Attribution as “Philosophos”:

As a Potential Cereals Grower

The word philosophos arises once in the Oeconomicus, when Ischomachus is
teaching Socrates about agriculture. As Ischomachus offers to tell him more,

Socrates compares his desires to those that a philosophical man would have:

— So Socrates, [Ischomachus] said, from where do you wish (βούλει) we might
begin reminding you about farming? For I know that I will say quite a lot that
you already know about the necessities in farming.

— Ischomachus, I said, it seems to me first pleas ur able to learn (πρῶτον ἂν
ἡδέως μανθάνειν)— for this is most of all [par tic u lar to] a philosophical
man (φιλοσόφου γὰρ μάλιστά ἐστιν ἀνδρός)— how I might, should I wish to

(βουλοίμην), get the most wheat and most barley from working the earth. (Xen.

Oec. 16.9)

Socrates likens himself to a philosophical man but it is not clear why. The
explanatory interjection could point either backwards or forwards, focusing
on, as I see it, any of five points. (i) A focus on the order of instruction (πρῶτον . . . μανθάνειν). A philosophical man finds it pleas ur able to learn
things in a specific order, first things first, or at least to set things out in a specific order. It would be inefficient to go willy- nilly or in the wrong order.

(ii) A focus on the “first.” A philosophical man likes to learn the most fun-
damental matters first, in this case doing the most obvious thing farmers do,
which is growing cereals. In either of these first two cases, the philosophical
man would be the one who does not prefer to learn only what ever is easiest,
lies most readily at hand, is most popu lar, or is most coolly sophisticated.

(iii) A focus on “should I wish to.” Socrates repeats Ischomachus’s word “wish”

(βούλομαι), now in the optative. A philosophical man gets plea sure from learn-
ing first how to do what he “might wish” to do. He learns in preparation, acquir-
ing the knowledge on which likely future actions will have to be based.71 This

71 This is akin to what seems to be the view of Strauss 1970, 185, who gives three pos si ble interpretations of the special characteristic of the phi los o pher in this passage, accepting only the third: the phi los o pher is the one who (i) wishes to get the richest harvest of crops, (ii) wishes

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 187
contrasts with learning only once necessity intervenes or bungling through
something with no knowledge at all. The philosophical man recognizes that
he is ignorant but also that he may later wish to act, so he learns what does
not have immediate or self- evident importance. (iv) A focus on “pleas ur able
to learn.” The philosophical man gets plea sure from learning. (v) A focus on

“learn.” The philosophical man is characteristically one who learns.72

While none of these five possibilities seems uniquely or even characteristi-
cally “philosophical,” the third is compatible with the use of philosophia in

Memorabilia 4.2. Euthydemus’s philosophizing amounted to studying books
for the sake of becoming an effective gentleman (which is what Socrates says
he wants to know about in the Oeconomicus, e.g., 6.13–17, 11.5–6). Euthyde-
mus did not admit to enjoying learning per se, but to learning what he would
have to learn in order to succeed in the speeches and actions appropriate to
po liti cal life. He seems to have understood the importance of a curriculum,
even if he did not understand the prerequisites for it, such as knowing oneself
first. The uses in Memorabilia Book 1, which have phi los o phers talking of
justice and other virtue terms, might be compatible with any of the first three
possibilities: learning what is fundamental, learning what needs to be talked
about first (for example, before policy matters), or learning about topics that
might arise in exigent circumstances. In the Symposium, Callias’s love of philosophia means wanting to be able to talk cleverly and with apparent insight;
and Solon’s philosophizing means thinking incisively about law and public ar-
rangements. Though neither is inconsistent with the fourth or fifth possibility,
the enjoyment or characteristic practice of learning, neither is explained by it.

Both are better approximated by the first three possibilities.

What “philosophical” means does not, of course, explain why Socrates
makes this offhand remark. He is as suredly not just announcing, in the
middle of another thought and sentence, that he is a philosophos man. He
seems to be giving a defense of a somewhat peculiar kind of question, per-
haps especially peculiar for the urban talker Socrates. “Philosophical men”

to know how to get the richest harvest of crops, or (iii) wishes to know in case he should wish to get the richest harvest of crops.

72 Pomeroy 1994, 185, emphasizes the “desire to learn,” translating “first I think I should like to learn (for it is very characteristic of a phi los o pher to want to learn)” (my italics); see also Nightingale 1995, 16n8, and Chantraine 1949, 95, who translates “cette curiosité est d’un vrai philosophe,” and comments that philosophy amounts to searching for truth, and calls this a Socratic notion. Audring 1992, 99, by contrast, emphasizes the learning itself, “— den das Lernen steht einem Philosophen am meiste an—.” Watson 1857, 129, leaves it indeterminate. Gabriel Danzig suggests to me that the philosophical man might be interested in making money, hence agriculture, given that Antiphon is interested in money.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 187

9/18/19 1:20 PM

188 CH A PTER 6
pursue unexpected lines of investigation, and yet if Ischomachus approves
of their way of life, then he will tolerate them. Socrates has been speak-
ing in a mannered way throughout his conversation with Ischomachus, ar-
ticulating with marked formality the moral precepts under lying his pupil-
age. A remark from the previous chapter shows this well. Socrates says to

Ischomachus:

Your opening remarks are admirable and not the sort to turn a listener away from
his desire. And given that it is easy to learn— especially because of this—go
through the matter for me. While it is not shameful for you to teach the easier
matters, it is very shameful for me not to understand them, and especially if they
happen to be useful. (Xen. Oec. 15.13)

Socrates appears to want to show that his learning is morally appropriate and,
by mentioning at 16.9 those engaging in higher thought, that it has an intel-
lectual provenance admissible to his interlocutor.

All this leaves the question whether Socrates is saying of himself that he
is a philosophical man and that it is because he is one that he asks these ques-
tions, or, by contrast, that he is asking a kind of question made legitimate
by the habit philosophical men have of asking it. He has made a provoca-
tive claim relevant to this point five chapters earlier in the Oeconomicus.

Socrates has just asked Ischomachus to teach him about the activities of a
gentleman. Ischomachus says that he will, with the hope of getting correc-
tion (μεταρρυθμίσῃς) from Socrates where he needs it. Socrates demurs;
he has gained the reputation for being a man who prattles on, beats about
in airy meditation, and is called poor (ἀδολεσχεῖν . . . καὶ ἀερομετρεῖν . . .

πένης καλοῦμαι).73 Socrates must be referring to the claims made against
him in Aristophanes’s Clouds and in Eupolis’s work (Eup. fr. 386, 388

PCG), and that Plato reprises in his Apology.74 In Aristophanes’s play,

Socrates is not called philosophos; we do not know about Eupolis’s play.

In Plato’s dialogue, as well as in Memorabilia 1.2.31, he is accused of talk-
ing and investigating the sky as people think all so- called philosophizers
do. In the Oeconomicus, Socrates is admitting to having the reputation he
has elsewhere, of a silly, impractical, not- very- gentlemanly person. But he

73 Xen. Oec. 1–3. Interestingly, ἀερομετρεῖν is found in Greek lit er a ture only here. Perhaps Xenophon misremembered ἀεροβατεῖν (Ar. Nub. 225; Pl. Ap. 19c4); more prob ably he recalled or coined a derivative joke made about Socrates.

74 Cf. Pomeroy 1994, 309.

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 189
says this without reference to philosophia, and none of his pos si ble mean-
ings of “philosophical man”— about the plea sure in learning in sequence,
or in preparation, or for no reason at all— overlap with the accusations re-
ported at 11.3 that supposedly disqualify him as a judge of Ischomachus’s
gentlemanliness.

In light of these considerations, I think that Socrates is saying that he is a

“philosophical man” to the extent (at least) that he knows the value of pursuing
certain kinds of questions (for one of the five reasons listed above). Whether

Socrates is to be considered a philosophos in the more precise ways described
elsewhere does not arise.

Having now looked at all of Xenophon’s Socratic writings, ought we say
that Xenophon’s Socrates is a philosophos or “philosophizes a philosophy”?

Doing so would be fine, in one re spect. Socrates wants to learn about justice
and the other virtues through methodical conversation; he wants to be success-
ful on the basis of that learning, which is to be prioritized over other topics
of learning (perhaps excluding the Oeconomicus, where he claims to want to
learn about farming); he applies himself vigorously to his proj ects; and he does
something like teaching. But the fact that we may call Socrates a phi los o pher
stands in a remarkable relation with the fact that Xenophon does not, in his
own voice, call him philosophos. As we have seen, the name has a power ful
rhetorical function. The Critias and Antiphon examples show it to be involved
in disparagement. The Symposium examples show it to be concerned with the
production of clever speeches. When Euthydemus situates himself within the
intellectual life as someone “philosophizing,” he reveals his self- blinding po-
liti cal aspirations. Xenophon never denies that Socrates is a philosophos. But
whereas many others seemed quite ready to associate Socrates with philoso-
phia, he appears to have been diffident, even consciously diffident, about the
matter.

Xenophon discusses philosophoi infrequently but with a sort of realism, rec-
ognizing that a self- styled or oft- lambasted group of so- called philosophoi is part of Athenian society and provides an ideal of practice or pedagogy among
a subset of that society. Socrates spends time within or alongside this subset.

He shares many of its habits or aspirations: accumulating knowledge, talking
well, toilsome self- improvement, and confidence in the importance of disciple-
ship. But there is something marked about membership among philosophoi,
who are subject to po liti cally or culturally motivated criticism. Xenophon had
enough work defending Socrates from criticism. It seems likely to me that Xe-
nophon intends to avoid linking Socrates too expressly with that current of
con temporary intellectual association.

190 CH A PTER 6

Conclusion: Plato’s Reasons Not to Call Socrates Philosophos

Historians of ancient philosophy often take Plato to have transformed the term
philosophos from something quite general, referring to the person who cares
about intellectual cultivation or wisdom broadly conceived, to something quite
precise, referring to the person who contemplates the eternal verities. In doing
so Plato is thought to have spearheaded the formation of philosophy as a disci-
pline, one with self- consciously philosophical and disciplinary prac ti tion ers.

As adjunct, instrument, or central component of this effort, with all but one of
his dialogues featuring Socrates, Plato advanced Socrates as an ideal. An ideal
of what? The answer looks obvious: “an ideal of the philosophos.” It would be
perverse to separate Plato’s admiration for philosophy and his admiration for

Socrates (though some readers do believe that Plato eventually admires certain
non- Socratic phi los o phers above Socrates). All the same, close attention to the
relationship between philosophoi and Socrates in Plato’s dialogues requires we
wedge apart that admiration, even if just a little. Plato takes a cautious line
in attributing to Socrates the self- appellation philosophos.75 Presumably he
does so given its pejorative aspect in fifth- century BCE Athens.

It is clear that Plato controls his use of philosophos- group words, doling them
out only when the situation demands them. Many of his dialogues do not men-
tion philosophia or philosophoi or philosophein at all. Among the trial- and-death dialogues these include Euthyphro and Crito. Among others, these include Meno, Laches, Ion, Menexenus, Hippias Major, Alcibiades, Clitophon, and Republic Books 1–2. Many scholars think that Plato wrote most or all of
these dialogues after the Apology, so he could have used the term philosophos to refer to Socrates had he wanted to. He seems uninterested in establishing

Socrates as a philosophos. The example of Socrates as a practitioner of the
way of life admired or analyzed by Plato counts for more than Socrates as a
model of philosophia. It also seems clear that Plato does not aim to vindicate

Socrates by transferring the positive evaluation of philosophia to the man.

We saw above, in the summary of Plato’s Apology, that Socrates pre sents
himself as harmed thanks to the term philosophein. Having gotten a bad repu-
tation for himself by interrogating those in the city most reputed as sophoi, he recognizes that people think he is evil and corrupts the youth; but when they
are asked by doing what and by teaching what, “they can say nothing, and are
ignorant, but in order that they not seem at a loss, they say the things ready
at hand against all those who philosophize, namely that they study the things

75 See Peterson 2011 and 2019 for views sympathetic to my remarks in this section.

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 191
in the sky and the things below the earth, and do not believe in the gods, and
make the worse argument the better” (Pl. Ap. 23d1–7). Socrates denies this
charge and reaffirms his accusers’ ignorance (23d10). He does not here say
whether they are wrong to class him among philosophoi or wrong to assume
a unity of philosophical practice. Yet some pages later he relents and admits
to philosophizing, albeit in a dif fer ent fashion. The god stationed him, as he

“thinks and understands it, to live philosophizing and examining [him]self
and others” (28e9–10). He obviously does not mean philosophizing in the
way others mean it, as studying the things in the sky and so forth. Thus “ex-
amining himself and others” must be his gloss of “philosophizing.” Socrates
does not seem to be boasting that he philosophizes. Either he must think that

“philosophizing,” properly understood, does name his activity, or rather than
dispute with his accusers that he philosophizes, he accepts the name with a
qualification, as Thucydides’s Pericles did. Socrates soon imagines that the ju-
rors might wish to acquit him, as long as he stops, as he imagines their words,

“spending time in this search (ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ ζητήσει διατρίβειν) and philoso-
phizing” (29c9–10). He imagines them accepting, if provisionally or dubiously,
his reinterpretation of “philosophizing.” In his response to this imagined plea
bargain, he reinforces this reinterpretation: “I shall not stop philosophizing and
urging you and showing you” that they should care for virtue, etc., by means
of cross- examining them (29d5–30a2). Again, Socrates ensures that “philoso-
phizing,” which apparently will be attributed to him whether he likes it or not,
is to be understood as he understands it. Thus his use is primarily capitulative;
and neither the original understanding nor his accommodated understanding
of the term is explic itly or even approximately interpreted as “loving wisdom.”

From the perspective of Plato’s writing this work, fictional as it may be, we
can see the beginning of the redemptive proj ect, but one that has, as yet, no
putative etymological dependence.

In the Theaetetus, which purports to take place just before the Euthyphro, Socrates refers to himself as a philosophos only once. As Theaetetus and he
dispute Protagoras’s man- is- the- measure thesis, he worries that they are act-
ing contentiously (ἀντιλογικῶς) or as competitors (ἀγωνισταί) rather than as
the philosophoi they claim (φάσκοντες) to be (Pl. Tht. 164c7–10).76 Philosophoi must engage in conversation with a goal of agreement and mutual under-
standing rather than with a goal of personal glory or victory. But even here, as

76 Socrates pre sents this self- criticism as from the perspective of Protagoras, who says that you should not be unfair to your interlocutors— you should instead help them to see their own errors and thereby take refuge in the practice of philosophia. Doing so allows your interlocutors to escape their former selves. Protagoras observes that most teachers cause their students to hate philosophia (Pl. Tht. 167d–168c).

192 CH A PTER 6

Plato continues his redemptive proj ect, Socrates speaks of philosophoi in the
first- person plural; he appeals to Theaetetus’s esteem of philosophia and thus
desire to be a philosophos. He tells him that Theaetetus’s won der shows him
to be a philosophoi, since philosophia begins in won der (155d1). His esteem for philosophia was prob ably instilled by his teacher, Theodorus. Theodorus
seems to consider geometry the whole or part of philosophia (143d1–4),77 and
the description of the philosophos of the Digression, which famously seems not
to describe Socrates, instead formalizes Theodorus’s idea of the philosophos.78

In neither the Sophist nor the Statesman, the two dialogues dramatically
most closely linked to the Theaetetus, does Socrates call himself a philoso-
phos. In the former, he does express interest in the nature of philosophoi, and the visitor has views, but there is not even the suggestion that Socrates is asking about himself.79 In the Phaedo, dramatically the last of this dialogue-
sequence, Socrates twice says he does philosophia. At its beginning, he says
that he had for a long time obeyed a dream that he should strive to practice
music (μουσικὴν ποίει καὶ ἐργάζου) by philosophizing; but now, near death,
he is trying to take it literally, by versifying (Pl. Phd. 61a5). Late in the dialogue, he worries, as he did in the Theaetetus, that in wanting to win an argu-
ment he fails to be philosophical (91a). Elsewhere in the dialogue Socrates
talks about philosophia—as the preparation for death— without expressly iden-
tifying himself as a practitioner.80

In this span of dialogues, Plato gives considerable attention to philosophia;
and in others, he gives even more. So there is no doubt that Plato is interested
in philosophia, and values it. He is also interested in Socrates, and values him.

Elsewhere he links him to philanthrôpia (Pl. Euthphr. 3d7), being philomathês (Pl. Phdr. 230d3), and even being philologos (Pl. Phdr. 236e5). But it is remarkable the degree to which Plato foregoes to call Socrates a philosophos or
to have Socrates call himself philosophos. Perhaps Plato thinks that Socrates
was inadequately good to deserve the name philosophos. But were philoso-
phos a human practical ideal, it would be odd to have Socrates featured in all

77 Socrates says that, were he polite, he would ask Theodorus whether any young men from Cyrene are studying geometry “or any other/the rest of/general philosophia” (ἢ τινα ἄλλην
φιλοσοφίαν). On the translation, see above, p. 114n39.

78 The digression (starting at Pl. Tht. 172c) appeals to Theodorus’s view of philosophia: see 175d10– e2, with Peterson 2011, 59–89, and Soph. 216a1–c1, where Theodorus takes the Eleatic visitor to be quite the philosophos, and the whole class of philosophoi as θεῖος.

79 Socrates’s questions are at Pl. Soph. 216c; the Stranger’s views are expressed most clearly at 253b–254a, 259e–260a, 268b.

80 E.g., Pl. Phd. 61c5 (“if Evenus is the philosophos I thought he was, he would do as I say”); 63e10 (about the courage of “ those who truly spend time in philosophia”); 82d (being a philosophos as a prerequisite for communing with gods); 95c1 (the proof of the philosophos’s serenity); 102a1 (if Cebes is a philosophos, he will do as Socrates suggests). See Peterson 2011, 166–95.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 192

9/18/19 1:20 PM

SOCR ATES’S PROSECUTION AS PHILOSOPHOS 193
but one Platonic dialogue and not count as the ideal. Indeed, when describing
philosophia (see chapter 8), Socrates comes out as its exemplary practitioner.

Or perhaps Plato’s use of the term philosophos has become so technical that it
no longer applies to Socrates. But in many places in which Plato does not call

Socrates a philosophos, we have no evidence that Plato also has a technical
meaning of the term he wants to keep separate and unsullied. Indeed, as we
will see two chapters hence, I am doubtful about claims of the word’s tech-
nicality in Plato. The best explanation, I think, is the one adumbrated in the

Apology: that Socrates died because he was deemed a philosophos.

7

Non- Academic Philosophia

Va ri e ties of Philosophical Experience in the Fourth Century

In subsequent chapters, we will study Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and ultimately

Heraclides’s visions of philosophoi and philosophia. Though these Aca-
demic visions differ among themselves, and in Aristotle in par tic u lar we
observe great internal variety, they represent only one form those visions
might have taken. How philosophia looked to other Socratics, such as An-
tisthenes, Phaedo, and Aristippus, and to non- Socratics, such as Alcidamas
and Isocrates, is quite dif fer ent. Yet all these groups took themselves to be
using the words in the philosophos group plausibly and comprehensibly,
either directly following their linguistic forebears or spinning the idea in
a reasonable though increasingly positive direction. Because philosophia
became a discipline in the Acad emy, however, as I will argue in chapter 9, phi los o phers (so called because of their disciplinary association) share the

Academic vision rather than that of, say, Antisthenes or Isocrates. This does
not directly vindicate Plato’s rhetorical or argumentative skill. Plato’s vision
did not win the battle against his rhetorical competitors because his was
evidently more appealing, conducive to happiness, or historically plausible.

Rather, he founded a long- lived school and research center, one that relied
on concerted discussion rather than charismatic speeches, and his competi-
tors did not.

This chapter opens the way to understanding Heraclides’s picture of phi-
losophy, and perhaps our own, by studying the alternatives. I begin with the
fragmentary Socratic material, where modification of desire appears to be the
leading consideration, focusing on the work of Phaedo and Antisthenes. I then
turn to the Dissoi Logoi, a kind of technical manual for “philosophoi” that gives content to the practice mentioned by Gorgias. Then I turn to Alcidamas
and Isocrates, for both of whom philosophia means a kind of teaching through
speeches conducive to living well; by contrast with the Academic model of phi-
losophia, with which it shares the basic idea, it mostly ignores (self-)examina-
tion and the pursuit of non- political issues.

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 195

Phaedo of Elis and Therapeutic Self- Improvement

Many readers of ancient philosophy know Phaedo of Elis as the Pythagorean-
izing friend of Socrates whom Plato has narrate Socrates’s final day on earth.

What honor this represents or what dialectic point it makes, especially in a
dialogue saturated with talk about “philosophy” and “real phi los o phers,” we
cannot know. At a minimum, however, it suggests the plausibility that the his-
torical Phaedo would in fact talk about Socrates and the nature of philosophy.

As it turns out, we know that Phaedo did write about Socrates and the nature
of philosophy, in a dialogue called the Zopyrus; he may have done so again
in another dialogue, called the Simon, the same cobbler we met in chapter 5.1

Zopyrus treats of a visiting physiognomist who judges of Socrates’s visage,
a topic apparently also broached by the Socratic we will study next, Anti-
sthenes (DL 6.16). On the basis of Socrates’s bull neck, Zopyrus diagnoses
him as stupid and obtuse; his bulging eyes testify to his cupidity for women.

Alexander of Aphrodisias (a late second- century CE Peripatetic), one of our
sources for the content of this dialogue, provides the story:

When Zopyrus the physiognomist said something outlandish regarding Socrates
the phi los o pher, something far off from his actual way of life, and these things
were ridiculed by Socrates’s associates, Socrates rejoined that actually Zopyrus
wasn’t at all mistaken, for he would indeed have been that way, by nature, as

[Zopyrus diagnosed him], had he not become better than his nature through the
practice of philosophia (ἐκ φιλοσοφίας ἄσκησιν). (Alex. Aphrod. De fato 6 =

Euseb. Praep. evang. 6.9.22)

If Alexander of Aphrodisias is quoting Phaedo at the end, then Socrates
says that philosophia contributed to the improvement of himself beyond the
allotments of nature. Either he rids himself of his cognitive weakness and
passionate exacerbation, or he suppresses them. The exact contribution pro-
vided by philosophia itself is unclear. Some kind of askêsis (“exercise,” “endeavor”) does the rehabilitative work; philosophia somehow generates that

1 For the dialogue names: DL 2.105. Simon in the Simon prob ably represented a life of sophia and sôphrosunê less austere and self- depriving than the ideal propounded by Antisthenes ( Soc.

Ep. 12–13). For all fragments relevant to Zopyrus, see Rossetti 1980; his 2015b, at 83–84, 93–96, is also helpful, suggesting that the dialogue is a protreptic to philosophy. Boys- Stones 2004, except at 10, focuses on the nature of the soul presupposed by the claim here. See Di Lanzo 2018
for an effective overview of Phaedo’s life and writings.

196 CH A PTER 7
askêsis.2 If philosophia is a sort of conversation, as the context of Socrates as practitioner might suggest, then the askêsis might be the result of practical
syllogisms. If philosophia is instead a sort of ac cep tance of new norms, for
which conversation is only useful preparation, then the askêsis might be gov-
erned or motivated by those norms. In either case, philosophia underwrites a
practice that transforms one’s desires in radical ways. It is hardly a matter of
mere self- cultivation; it is a remaking of one’s self.

Another key testimony to Zopyrus, from Julian the Apostate (fourth-
century CE Roman Emperor), provides further insight into Phaedo’s picture of
philosophia:

Phaedo of Elis . . . judged there to be nothing incurable by philosophia; and
by it every body is to be purified in all their manners of life, their habits, their
desires—of absolutely every thing of that sort. For if it nurtured only those of
good birth and excellent upbringing, there would be nothing so remarkable
about philosophia; but if it can lead up to the light people in such a state [as Phaedo, i.e., a bad one], then it seems to me supremely remarkable. (Julian Ep.

82, 445a, trans. Wright)

Julian implies that Phaedo wrote explic itly about philosophia, treating it as a
sort of panacea.3 It cures and purifies (cf. Xen. Symp. 1.4), targeting a person’s way of life no matter what it happens to be. The passage does not specify a
relationship between philosophia and thoughts, beliefs, theories, or reason-
ing. It only praises its power; it does not articulate its structure. What we see,
however, is a completely laudatory notion of a philosophia that is genera-
tive, through exercise, of the improvement of one’s competences, dispositions,
and quasi- or non- rational desires. This parts from views focused on debate
and politics of Thucydides and Gorgias, or the view focused on cosmology and
theory of the author of On Ancient Medicine. It seems to develop a distinct
line of influence from our hypothesized Pythagorean tradition (a tradition in
which Phaedo seems to have seen himself): regimens connected to ethical and
spiritual self- improvement. We saw this in Empedocles’s writings on “purifi-
cation,” with hints in Lysias’s remarks about a “philosophizing” to get oneself
out of trou ble. Spiritual regimens may well require speech or discussion for

2 The translation of Boys- Stones 2004, 8 (“through the practice of philosophy”), preempts asking questions about the relationship between philosophy and askêsis; that of Rossetti 2015b, 84 (“askesis that comes from philosophy”), does not answer the questions but at least allows them. See Smyth 1920 §1688c for ἐκ as “generated from, sourced in.”

3 The contrast might be with Isocrates, who claimed effectiveness for philosophia only among the already well- off (Isoc. C. soph. 17, 21).

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 197
their delineation and encouragement, and so we may expect that, for Phaedo,

Socrates’s philosophia does have a communicative component. The impor-
tant point is that Phaedo’s vision of philosophy seems to treat any mode of
communication— debate skills, definition, systematization, etc.—as second-
ary relative to the overcoming of one’s defective nature. Antisthenes and read-
ers seem to have had a similar view.

Antisthenes of Athens and Heroic Self- Mastery

Whereas Plato gives to Phaedo the retelling of their master’s final conver-
sation, about a philosophos’s purification at death into an immortal rational
soul, Plato famously writes nothing about Antisthenes (ca. 445–365 BCE),
among Socrates’s first impor tant followers.4 But we know about him from a
range of other con temporary and later sources. In Xenophon’s Symposium, An-
tisthenes argues for typically Socratic positions: against the desire for money;
in favor of self- reliance as a source of plea sure; and about the benefit of gen-
erosity and congeniality over jealousy and irascibility.5 A biographical sketch
of Socrates prob ably by Antisthenes or an immediate follower, found in a
recently published papyrus, disvalues luxury and urges the restraint of base
desires (μοχθηρῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν) not through reason (τοῦ λόγου) but through
training (τῶν ἐθισμῶν).6

These sources do not use philosophos- group words. Though possibly a re-
sult simply of having lost all but a fraction of his written work, this lexical si-
lence could mean that Antisthenes spoke rather little of philosophia explic itly; after all, as we saw in the last chapter, many of Plato’s dialogues include no
reference to it, and many others have the word only on a few occasions. Still,
a contemporaneous source that appears to depend on Antisthenes talks of phi-
losophein and philosophia, and late gnomological lit er a ture attributes several sayings about philosophia to Antisthenes; together this prob ably means that

Antisthenes discussed philosophia and that we can recover something of his
use of the term.

Diogenes Laertius sums up Antisthenes’s conception of the good life by ob-
serving that happiness requires only virtue combined with Socratic strength

(Σωκρατικῆς ἰσχύος), and that it manifests itself in deeds, needing neither much
talk nor much learning (μήτε λόγων πλείστων δεομένην μήτε μαθημάτων).

4 See V A 12–21 SSR.

5 Xen. Symp. 4.33–44.

6 PHib. 2.182, frr. a (col. ii.) and f (col. x); text and attribution from McOsker 2017; see also Dorandi 2018, 788–91.

198 CH A PTER 7

Antisthenes uses martial language to describe this view, calling virtue “an irre-
movable armor” (ἀναφαίρετον ὅπλον ἡ ἀρετή), reasoning (φρόνησις) “a stron-
gest wall” (τεῖχος ἀσφαλέστατον), and calculation (λογισμός) “an indissoluble
wall we must prepare” (τείχη κατασκευαστέον ἐν τοῖς αὑτῶν ἀναλώτοις).7 A
passage from a papyrus held at the university library of Erlangen- Nuremberg
recently attributed to Antisthenes (in 2014) corroborates this martial lan-
guage: a character uses the meta phor of a sword- blade (ξίφους ἀκμή) unable to
puncture something “more solid” (στερεωτέρωι) to represent a self- inflicted

“ bitter” (πικρά) cure of the “hubristic and wicked.”8 Diogenes tells us that

Antisthenes uses the example of Heracles, a steadfast warrior, to prove that
hardship (πόνος) is a good thing, to take strong anti- hedonist line, and to ex-
hort a “life in accordance with virtue”— and from a list of his books, we know
that Antisthenes wrote one or several books about Heracles. Trudging miles
daily to visit Socrates, Antisthenes learned to be steadfast and imperturbable

(τὸ καρτερικὸν . . . καὶ τὸ ἀπαθές). He thought that virtue could be acquired,
and, as he says in the Heracles, persists inalienably.9 Other authors empha-
size Antisthenes’s arguments against sexual plea sure and lauding of discipline
above all other virtues.10

This background allows us to see the plausibility of a philosophia- related
influence on an early fourth- century BCE historian. This is Herodorus of Hera-
clea, a con temporary of Heraclides’s father. An omnivorous reader of mythog-
raphy, geography, Pythagorean lit er a ture, and sophistic pamphlets, we know
him especially for having written a long and famous rationalizing treatise on

Heracles, one in which he both addresses the increasingly intellectualized ac-
counts found in fifth- century BCE authors and apportions the prolific stories of
his exploits among homonymous men. One passage in par tic u lar, paraphrased
or quoted by a Byzantine compiler, John Malalas (491–578 CE), includes sev-
eral uses of philosophos- group words, and these uses seem to be Antisthenic.

7 DL 6.11–13. On logismos in Antisthenes see Decleva Caizza 1966, 110, and Prince 2014, 394. On “walls”: Alcidamas seems to have called philosophia the “bulwark [lit. ‘walls- against’]

of the laws” (ἐπιτείχισμα τῶν νόμων, Arist. Rh. 1406b). The precise meaning is unclear: an epi-teichisma is a defensive fort placed at the enemy’s frontier (Thuc. 8.95; Xen. Hell. 5.1.2); with a genitive it means “commanding [over]” (Dem. 4.5); so as LSJ s.v. A.2 admits, Alcidamas means that philosophy is either “a barrier against, or a bulwark in defense of, the laws”: that is, taking laws as its enemy or the thing it protects. Aristotle’s probable quotation of Alcidamas in the Rhe toric (see p. 115 above), where he says that Solon’s laws and Theban philosophoi helped their respective cities flourish, suggests but does not prove that philosophia supports laws.

8 PErl. 4.41–46 (first published 1942), attribution by Luz 2014, 187–89.

9 DL 6.2, 3, 104, 2, 10, 105.

10 Clem. Strom. 2.20.107.2–3; Theod. Cur. graec. aff. 3.53 (τὴν σωφροσύνη περὶ πλείστου
ποιούμενος); cf. DL 6.103, ascribing to Antisthenes the view that disciplined people will forgo reading from the fear of distraction by others.

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 199

And Zeus brought about another son, Heracles by name, with Alcmene of

Thebes, who was called “three- evening.” This Heracles showed how to do the
following: to philosophize in the eve ning places, or, really, the sun- setting

[sc. western] ones. Those kin of his who apotheosized him after his end
called a constellation “the star- clad Heracles,” using his name. They depict
it wearing, instead of a chiton, a lion’s hide and bearing a club and seizing
three apples. These three apples he grabbed, they relate, once he slew the
dragon with the club, that is, triumphing over the impoverished and varie-
gated calculation of sharp desire through the club of philosophy (νικήσαντα
τὸν πονηρὸν καὶ ποικίλον τῆς πικρᾶς ἐπιθυμίας λογισμὸν διὰ τοῦ ῥοπάλου
τῆς φιλοσοφίας), having as wrapping a noble mind (γενναῖον φρόνημα), like
the lion’s hide. And thus he grabbed the three apples, which are three vir-
tues: not getting angry, not being avaricious, and not being indulgent (τὸ μὴ
ὀργίζεσθαι, τὸ μὴ φιλαργυρεῖν, τὸ μὴ φιληδονεῖν). For, through the club of a
steadfast soul (καρτερικῆς ψυχῆς) and the hide of the boldest disciplined cal-
culation (θρασυτάτου καὶ σώφρονος λογισμοῦ), he triumphed in the earthly
contest of base desire (γήϊον τῆς φαύλης ἐπιθυμίας ἀγῶνα), philosophizing
until death (φιλοσοφήσας μέχρι θανάτου), as wisest Herodorus wrote down,
who also reveals there to have been seven other Heracleses. (Joh. Mal. Chro-
nographia 1.14)

Elsewhere I have argued that the material in the latter half of this excerpt prob-
ably represents Herodorus’s original account well.11 For Herodorus, philoso-
phizing is characterized by a steadfast soul, which in Heracles’s case is peace-
fulness and patience, indifference to the accumulation of money, and restraint
of an other wise prodigious sexual appetite. Success in life comes from his
wholehearted and stable possession of these virtues. Philosophizing also in-
volves, though apparently only as a failsafe mea sure, the ability to reflect ac-
tively on one’s desires and convince oneself not to accept one’s (base) desires
as reasons for action. Heracles’s completion of this labor, and his valorization
and purported apotheosis thereafter, testifies to the heroism of philosophy.

The connection to Antisthenes is apparent. Antisthenes treats Heracles
as exemplar of the good life. He uses the language of “armor” and “walls”

in relation with logismos and phronêsis. He speaks of bad desires to be put down, prioritizing training in virtue over calculating ratiocination. His key
virtues are discipline ( sôphrosunê), steadfastness ( karteria), and the concomitant freedom from a passionate attachment to anger, money, and plea-
sure. Furthermore, Herodorus had to get his material from somewhere, and

11 Moore 2017.

200 CH A PTER 7
we know no other fifth- or early fourth- century BCE source on Heracles to
have treated Heracles in this fashion. I conclude that we can take Herodorus’s
picture of philosophein as that of Antisthenes. In that case, for Antisthenes,
philosophy is the training of oneself toward desire- control, and the posses-
sion of such virtue explains the apotheosis— divinization—of someone like

Heracles. Talk, argumentation, or even demonstrative reasoning play at best
subsidiary, occasional, or defensive roles, as the example of Heracles em-
phasizes. Antisthenes appears to have been more impressed by Socrates’s
military heroism, hardiness of body and spirit, general imperturbability, and
continued care for his soul than by his nattering with friends. In this way,

Antisthenes’s view may even seem consonant with Phaedo’s: treating the
modification of desires as supreme, and the route to desire- modification as of
only secondary importance.

That this is Antisthenes’s view of the philosophos gets some support by
the three late attributions of philosophos- group terms to his name. The sixth-
century CE anthologist Stobaeus tells the following story: asked by someone
what he will teach his son, Antisthenes replies, “if he is to live with the gods,

[to be] a philosophos, if with men, a rhêtor” (εἰ μὲν θεοῖς μέλλει συμβιοῦν, φιλόσοφον, εἰ δὲ ἀνθρώποις, ῥήτορα).12 This remark is challengingly ambiguous. Antisthenes could be seen as praising the practical value of rhe toric, deni-
grating philosophia as suitable only for those undergoing apotheosis, who are
fleeing their natu ral environment.13 A Hellenistic tradition associated Antis-
thenes with rhe toric, both directly and through the tutelage of Gorgias, and
with a distaste for theoretical pursuits.14 Later florilegia also attribute this ri-
poste to De mos the nes, who presumably stood more than anyone for the value
of rhe toric.15 Yet a Hellenistic tradition had Antisthenes abandoning rhe toric
for an association with Socrates,16 which would allow Antisthenes to mean
quite the opposite here: whereas rhe toric has no better than mundane and
instrumental value, philosophia elevates, allowing one to live more like the
un perturbed gods.17 Some might hear the immortalizing effects of philoso-

12 Stob. 2.31.76. A similar response is found at Gnom. Vat. 7.

13 Cf. Dodds 1959, 4: Athenian democracy is dangerous; you need rhe toric to defend
yourself!

14 Rhe toric: DL 6.2; Jer. Adv. Iovinian. 2.14; Gnom. Vat. 4; Suda α 2723. Gorgias: DL 6.1.

See Prince 2014, 41–48.

15 Flor. Monac. 182.

16 DL 6.2, Gnom. Vat. 4.

17 Goulet- Cazé 1996, 69, takes this line, glossing Antisthenes as saying that “only philosophy enables a man to surpass the human level and reach that of the divine,” and linking the divine and philosophy with (normatively excellent) unity and nature. This reasoning follows Pl.

Phdr. 274a1–2.

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 201
phia as distinctly Platonic, presented most vividly in the Theaetetus and eventually treated as core Platonic doctrine by later interpreters. This gives too
much credit to Plato; the relationship between philosophia and becoming like
a god—as a purified immortal soul— goes back to the self- understanding of
its earliest prac ti tion ers, most notably Empedocles, and prob ably Pythagoras,
too. Further, a central ele ment of the Heracles hero- journey is that Heracles
underwent (putative) apotheosis, and there is no reason to think Antisthenes,
in discussing his acquisition of virtue, would have ignored that part. So if he
attributed philosophein to Heracles as Herodorus did, we would expect him
to say that philosophoi intend to live with the gods, and that orators prepare
themselves rather to deal with people.

Diogenes Laertius relates another anecdote about Antisthenes and phi-
losophia. When Antisthenes “was asked what he gained from philosophia,
he said that it was the ability to converse with himself (τὸ δύνασθαι ἑαυτῷ
ὁμιλεῖν).”18 This evidently recalls Socrates’s description of thought in Plato’s

Theaetetus as “talk that the soul has with itself” (λόγον ὃν αὐτὴ πρὸς αὑτὴν
ἡ ψυχὴ διεξέρχεται), which includes conversing, questioning, answering, af-
firming, deciding, agreeing, and holding an opinion with itself.19 Both Plato
and Antisthenes could have gotten the idea from Socrates, and could have taken
it in their own directions, Plato toward the idea of internal coherence (cf. 190a8–
e4), Antisthenes toward the idea of self- sufficiency.20 We might take this as
consistent with the riposte in Stobaeus: rhe toric involves convincing others
and being convinced by them; but only when one thinks for oneself does one
qualify to live divinely. Herodorus’s psychologizing internal battle, with the
soul’s steadfastness and its backup logismos defeating the “impoverished and
variegated” logismos of sharp desire, might have been treated discursively by

Antisthenes as a sort of internal debate. At any rate, Antisthenes is not said to
have gained from philosophia any knowledge of the world, or wisdom of the
cognitive sort, or a love for abstractions (any of which we might expect were
philosophia to mean “intellectual cultivation”), but only a better orientation
toward himself.

A final piece of (potential) evidence for Antisthenes’s view of philoso-
phia comes from an ostracon— a potsherd— found in the sands of Egyptian

18 DL 6.6. Answers to this question, “what is gained from philosophy,” are also attributed to Plato (Gnom. Vat. 430), Diogenes of Sinope (DL 6.63: “to be prepared for anything”), Aristotle (DL 5.20: “to live without the force of law”), and Aristippus (see below, p. 203n25).

19 Pl. Tht. 189e6–7, 189e8–190a6.

20 For this anecdote as concerned with self- sufficiency, see Prince 2014, 334–35. For a contemporary reflection, see Moran 2018, ch. 10.

202 CH A PTER 7

Oxyrhynchus, and now in Cologne.21 Stobaeus had already attributed to

Antisthenes the following slogan: “ those intending to become good men
must exercise their body with gymnastics and their soul with education

(παιδεύσει).”22 The ostracon, prob ably the work of a student exercise, prints:

“While the farmer tames (ἐξημεροῖ) his land, the philosophos tames his nature

(φύσιν). Those intending to become good men must exercise their body with
gymnastics and their soul with talk (λόγοις).” The first sentence had already
been known anonymously in a Florentine florilegium; its juxtaposition with
the line that Stobaeus attributes to Antisthenes and its language suggests
that it could also be of Antisthenes.23 Of par tic u lar note is the first verb,
ἐξημερόω. In its only other Athenian usage, in Euripides’s Heracles, it twice
refers to Heracles’s labors (πόνους) as a whole, the removal of savage beasts
from the world.24 For Herodorus’s “philosophizing” Heracles, the task is pre-
cisely the taming of one’s wild beasts in the improvement of one’s nature.

Thus the many pieces of evidence about Antisthenes’s view of philosophia fit
together, and even resonate with Phaedo’s, as a laborious and serious pro cess
of desire- modification in the interest of self- control and orientation toward what is actually valuable. While treating it as a kind of discipline, with a goal
of self- mastery or self- sufficiency, it does not assume a foundation in theoreti-
cal contemplation, dialectical testing, the increase in knowledge of the world,
or more rigorous analytical methods.

It is plausible that Phaedo’s and Antisthenes’s usage has Pythagorean
provenance tempered through several generations of reapplication. The Py-
thagorean regimen appears to have emphasized emotion control. This emotion
control may have been completely distinct from argumentative skill, love for
wisdom, concern for the abstract, or other modes of mental development. That
for the Pythagoreans emotion control might be only one ingredient in a com-
plete life of philosophia does not mean that for Phaedo and Antisthenes phi-
losophia must be so expansive. After all, the passage about Heracles mentions
neither knowledge nor truth, learning nor wisdom, debating nor studying. It
treats philosophizing instead as attainment of the virtues of restraint, an at-
tainment that involves training primarily in steadfastness and secondarily in
the self- directed calculation appropriate for withstanding the siren call of one’s
desires. A more complicated view, but one basically consistent with these ones,

21 Cologne inv. no. 04.

22 Stob. 2.31.68.

23 Henrichs 1967; Decleva Caizzi 1966, 110; Prince 2014, 547–49.

24 Eur. Heracl. 20: ἐξημερῶσαι γαῖαν; 851–52: ἄβατον δὲ χώραν καὶ θάλασσαν ἀγρίαν |
ἐξημερώσας. At Hdt. 1.26.1, it refers to the clearing of a “thorny” (ἀκανθώδης) tract of land; in Theophr. Hist. pl. 2.2.12, in the passive, it means to be domesticated.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 202

9/18/19 1:20 PM

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 203
is found in another first- generation Socratic, Aristippus (ca. 425 BCE–ca. 350

BCE), to whom Diogenes Laertius attributes six distinct answers to the ques-
tion about the nature of philosophia. The answers are too heterogenous and
insecure in their ascription to risk reconstructing a unitary view; but they do
show what sorts of views of philosophia are conceivable for a Socratic, and the
frequency with which such views are attributed to Aristippus may reflect the
frequency with which he discussed philosophia explic itly.25

The Dissoi Logoi and Debate about Fundamental Norms

The fragments of Phaedo and Antisthenes do not treat philosophoi as members
of a distinctive group, but we know that Gorgias and Xenophon did (chapters 5
and 6). Gorgias, in par tic u lar, spoke of debates of philosophical speeches, implying that participants in these debates were identifiable as such in the way
meteôrologoi or po liti cal or forensic speakers were. These participants make
their appearance in an anonymous text conventionally called Dissoi Logoi,
from its opening words, often dated to around 400 BCE, in the generation of

Gorgias’s students.26 The Dissoi Logoi gives us much more detail about the
nature of these groups than Gorgias’s incidental remark did.

25 Asked what is “gained from” (περιγέγονεν ἐκ) philosophia, Aristippus answers, “the ability to speak confidently with every one” (τὸ δύνασθαι πᾶσι θαρρούντως ὁμιλεῖν) (DL 2.68).

What advantage do philosophoi have? “Should all the laws ever be repealed, we would keep living as we do” (2.68). Why do philosophoi go to the doors of the rich, but the rich no longer go to their doors? “The [ philosophoi] know what they need; the others do not” (2.69). Why are philosophoi always seen at the doors of the rich? “And doctors at those of the sick; but nobody would wish to be sick rather than a doctor” (2.70). Once, sailing to Corinth, they hit a storm and he lost his composure; asked why philosophoi are scared when common people (oἱ ἰδιῶται) are not, he said: “the souls of each are not comparable” (2.71). Fi nally, he said that those who got a general education but not philosophy were like the suitors of Penelope; they get her maids but are not able to marry the lady herself (2.79; this answer is also attributed to Gorgias, Gnom. Vat.

743 n. 166 (= B29/P22)). Plutarch pre sents Aristippus’s relation with Socrates in a passage that scholars attribute to yet another first- generation Socratic, Aeschines ( De curios. 516c; attributed potentially to his Telauges at VI A 90–91 SSR; see also Hershbell 1988, 367, for the Miltiades): learning of Socrates’s power ful effect on others, Aristippus went to Athens to study the man, his words, and his philosophia, “the latter of which involved coming to recognize one’s vices and to expunge them” (ἧς ἦν τέλος ἐπιγνῶναι τὰ ἑαυτοῦ κακὰ καὶ ἀπαλλαγῆναι); this view stands closest to those found in Phaedo and Antisthenes.

26 See Wolfsdorf forthcoming a for the dating. Robinson 1979, 34–41, conjectures ca. 403–

395 BCE ( earlier scholarship discussed at 41–50); similarly, Levi 1940; Ramage 1961. Schiappa 2005, 146, 148, dates the work earlier, given the absence of the terms rhetorikê and dialektikê.

Silvermintz 2008, 147, puts it as late as mid- fourth century BCE, thinking it “directly responds to some Platonic dialogues,” but the opposing direction of influence seems just as plausible.

Conley 1985 and Burnyeat 1998 consider it could be much later; in this they follow scholarship from Stephanus to Gruppe.

204 CH A PTER 7

The text opens with this striking statement: “Opposed arguments are
given in Greece by those philosophizing about the good and bad” ( Diss. Log.

1.1).27 Only its first nine chapters exist; the final chapter, quite fragmentary,
begins with this statement: “The greatest and most excellent discovery for life
is found in memory, useful for every thing, both for philosophy and for wis-
dom, . . . for when you go with it [sc. your memory], your mind gets a better
and more unified picture of what it has learned” (9.1–2).28 These two uses of
philosophos- group words certify the text’s overall concern with “philosophiz-
ing.” As we read between them, the text pre sents “philosophizing” as the activ-
ity of debating, in the abstract, the nature of value, judgment, morality, truth,
learning, demo cratic procedure, and the sophistic ideal. The text repeatedly
juxtaposes the objective and the relativist perspectives on some of these issues,
and collates examples meant to support or refute either side. No meteorological
or public policy topics arise.29 These look exactly like the philosophoi logoi
spoken of by Gorgias and the philosophoi referred to by Xenophon.

The content of the text is at once disappointing and intriguing. It wallows in
the eristic paradoxes familiar from Plato’s Euthydemus. For example, it tells us
that some argue that the “the wise” (τοὶ σοφοί) and the “ignorant” (τοὶ ἀμαθεῖς)

are the same because, among other things, they use the same words for com-
mon objects: “earth,” “ human,” “horse,” “fire.” It then pre sents the other side,
which claims that those who argue this are wrong, and would end up admitting
as much, “if someone were to ask whether wisdom differs from ignorance; [for]

they would say: ‘yes’ ” ( Diss. Log. 5.1–8). The concern is not with common-
sense plausibility but the sort of debaters’ arguments that require cleverness
and quickness of judgment to rebut. But this yoke of arguments is intriguing
because it shows both the range of cross- domain analogizing that those who are

“philosophizing” use and the abstractness of the questions that are taken as fa-
miliar: first, in addressing the difference between the wise and the ignorant, the
text appeals to phonological differences in words, arithmetic, and the nature of
relativizing or qualifying phrases (5.10–15); and second, the first chapter of the
text claims that some who philosophize “say that the good is one thing, the bad

27 Diss. Log. 1.1: δισσοὶ λόγοι λέγονται ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι ὑπὸ τῶν φιλοσοφούντων περὶ τῶ
ἀγαθῶ καὶ τῶ κακῶ. Silvermintz 2008, 147, translates φιλοσοφούτων as “profess philosophy,”

despite the lack of evidence that the author refers to teachers.

28 Diss. Log. 9.1–2: μέγιστον δὲ καὶ κάλλιστον ἐξεύρημα εὕρηται ἐς τὸν βίον μνάμα καὶ ἐς
πάντα χρήσιμον, ἐς φιλοσοφίαν τε καὶ σοφίαν . . . διὰ τούτω παρελθοῦσα <ἁ> γνώμα μᾶλλον
αἰσθησεῖται σύνολον ὃ ἔμαθες. Wilamowitz emended the text to read ἐς τὰν σοφίαν τε καὶ ἐς
τὸν βίον, having wrongly taken philosophia to be the same as sophia.

29 Contra Wolfsdorf forthcoming a, which offers that philosophia in 9.1 has a cosmological implication.

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 205
another,” and others say that “they are the same thing, the things that are good
and the things that are bad” (1.1).30

The text’s fragmentary end links sophia to philosophia. Both rely on mem-
ory, which presumably means on mnemonic or autodidactic techniques ( Diss.

Log. 9.1–5). Sophia requires comprehensive learning and recalling; earlier passages corroborate this— the sophoi say the right thing at the right moment

(5.9–10). Speech that is better at some moments than others is prob ably advice-
speech. In the next chapter, the author says that sophia and virtue are taught
by sophoi sophistai (“wise sophists”), just as competent writing and music
teachers teach writing and music, and the Anaxagoreans and Pythagoreans are
broadly acknowledged to have been successful at teaching sophia (6.8). The
content of their sophia he does not identify, except to align it with virtue; we
might suppose that it has po liti cal, social, and personal relevance.

It is against this background that we can infer, for the Dissoi Logoi, who
philosophoi are. Thomas Robinson’s views, in the fullest commentary on the
text, have been influential— but they are not decisive. Robinson thought that
because professional “phi los o phers” could have no special need for memory,
philosophia ( Diss. Log. 9.1) must refer instead to “general education,” with sophia as “the practical wisdom of the sophist- rhetor.”31 He takes a related view
about the opening sentence of the text: philosophoi must refer to “thinking
people” in general, since related arguments about the good and the bad are also
made by Herodotus and Euripides, and it would be worthless for the author to
discuss prob lems that concern only “professional” philosophoi.32 I disagree.

Dedicated philosophoi certainly would need memory, as we saw from Gorgias
and in more detail from Dissoi Logoi itself, to store and recall the pieces of
evidence and counter- evidence for their broad- ranging debates. As we have
already mentioned, the Dissoi Logoi says that philosophoi give endless examples about the objectivity or relativity of goodness, the admirable, the just,
and the true, and unspool long sequences of arguments about virtue, teaching,
po liti cal constitution, and epistemology. Memory, especially hierarchical, or-
ga nized, and rationalized memory, will be essential for the philosophos, in
his quick- minded debates with others.33 Also, Robinson assumes too strict a
contrast between philosophia as a professional pursuit and as general educa-
tion. Not all self- organizing groups of people, such as philosophoi, need be
considered “professionals,” which implies formal or informal credentials, a

30 On the nature of these arguments, see Gera 2000; Scholz 2003 (and similarly in 2004); Bailey 2008.

31 Robinson 1979, 238.

32 Robinson 1979, 147–48.

33 Cf. Aristotle’s comments about Gorgias’s educational system at Soph. el. 183b37–184a1.

206 CH A PTER 7
source of income and livelihood, and quasi- legal or at least power ful social
status in a polity.

The category of philosophoi, for the Dissoi Logoi, comprises people who
practice and carry out debates about the abstract nature of fundamental norms
of life, both privately and publicly. They recognize themselves as philosophoi,
as Diss. Log. 1.1 and 9.1 recognize. They may or may not teach philosophia
to others— though if they do they count as sophistai— and the benefit of their
philosophein seems to be in their victory in contests; at any rate, no other ben-
efit is cited or implied. But obviously they are not debating simply for the sake
of debating, for this would not explain their topic. To explain the topic we
might appeal to Plato’s Protagoras, where Socrates contends that every body
in a demo cratic society is simply assumed to be ready for discussions about
virtue and life, given that goodness and justice and so forth are not technical
topics suitable for analy sis only by professionals ( Prt. 319b5– d6). Thus fa cil-i ty in philosophical debate begins not in a deep well of esoteric knowledge,
even if it goes in that direction, but in something shared; excellence in the sport
thus represents insight and commitment, not a lucky background. We might
also appeal, to explain the specific topic of philosophical debates, to a feeling
of significance in these debates, that even if the explicit purpose of the debate
is victory, a nice subsidiary outcome is improved understanding of basic life-
guiding princi ples.

But we must also ask about the source of the name philosophoi for the
people in these debates. The author of Dissoi Logoi never treats philosophein as the pursuit of sophia, even if some prac ti tion ers treat it as an offshoot of the activity. Even less does he treat it as the lack of sophia, or a fascination
with the nature of the kosmos, or an inquiry into ta meteôra and the things beneath the earth. The best explanation, as I see it, is the historically contingent one traced in chapter 5, from the rhetorical- political notoriety of the Pythagoreans through Empedocles to Gorgias and to here, where for each
practitioner his canniness in speech was paired with a brightly manifested
curiosity about fundamental questions concerning the direction and practice
of one’s life.

Alcidamas and the Educational Foundation for

Extemporaneous Po liti cal Practice

Whereas for the Dissoi Logoi, which appears to manifest a Gorgianic image
of philosophoi, I said that philosophia is not mere education, for Alcidamas of

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 207

Elaia, an actual student of Gorgias, it may be.34 (We ought not be surprised by
this difference, especially since Alcidamas, who seems to have lived in Athens,
might never have met the author of the Dissoi Logoi, which is written in an
mixed Doric dialectic.) Alcidamas serves our history of philosophia in several
ways. He provides one of the earliest extant doxographies of fifth- century

BCE philosophoi, as we have already seen in the discussion of Empedocles in
chapter 5 and will see again in chapter 9. He also followed Gorgias in writing paradoxical encomia, which may have represented a certain early route for
philosophy.35 He may have described philosophia as the “bulwark [lit. ‘walls-
against’] of the laws,” but, as we have seen (p. 198n7), it is unclear whether
this means “a barrier against, or a bulwark in defense of, the laws.” His most
impor tant contribution comes from his use of philosophos- words in his one
intact work, written around 390 BCE, at the time of Isocrates’s Against the

Sophists (discussed below), known as On the Sophists or On Those Who Write Written Speeches.36 In this several- page- long speech, he promotes extemporaneous address over reading from memorized scripts.

The speech begins with an impor tant background claim: “Some (τινες)

of those being called (τῶν καλουμένων) sophists neglect research (ἱστορίας)

and study (παιδείας) and have as little experience speaking as private people
do. All the same, they think highly of themselves and mistake a part of the
skill [i.e., writing] for the whole of it” ( Soph. 1). Alcidamas treats “soph-
ist” as a laudatory name given to people by those who esteem them, as he
does again at the end of the next paragraph ( Soph. 2). He says that a sophist
should care about investigation and enculturation. But some sophists care
only about clever textual assemblages, creating which requires the following:

spending a long time, correcting at leisure, bringing together the ideas and
works of the earlier sophists (τῶν προγεγονότων σοφιστῶν), cribbing clever
expressions, and revising in the light of the attention of others and one’s own

34 Student of Gorgias: Suda α 1283, γ 388, δ 454. N. O’ Sullivan 2005, 15, suggests that Alcidamas might have met Gorgias in 427 BCE during the latter’s embassy, as Alcidamas sought out teachers (or students) for himself.

35 The works of Alcidamas: Encomium on Death (Cic. Tusc. 1.48.116), On Proteus the Dog and On Poverty (Men. Rhet. Division of Epideictic Speeches 3.346.9–18; possibly the same work), and On Nais (Ath. 13.592c). See Barney 2016 for Gorgianic paradoxology and early philosophy.

36 For this dating, see Milne 1924, 21–53 (who seems [9–20] to judge rightly that Plato read Alcidamas before writing the Phaedrus); Muir 2001, xv (who believes [xiv, 61] the reading went the other way); Mariss 2002, 55; Edwards 2007, 47. N. O’ Sullivan 2005, 15–16, expresses skepticism about any specific dating. Van Hook 1919, 89–91, addresses the conflict with Isocrates; Liebersohn 1999 and McCoy 2009, 46–53, interpret the work but with no attention to philosophia.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 207

9/18/19 1:20 PM

208 CH A PTER 7
attentions ( Soph. 4). This is not enough to deserve such a grand name, and
those who forego historia and paideia should be called “makers” or “pro-
ducers” (προσαγορεύεσθαι ποιηταί) rather than “sophists.” More specifically,
they “have left out much of rhetorikê and philosophia” ( Soph. 2). Learning those two things allows a sophist to speak well spontaneously, appropriately
at any moment, with a resourceful swiftness (ταχείᾳ . . . εὐπορίᾳ) of argument
and vocabulary ( Soph. 3). The Gorgianic language from Helen 13 is evident: philosophia is knowing how to respond, without hesitation or the leisure of a
composer, to any argumentative proposition and rejoinder. Rhe toric appears
to be the verbal or articulating counterpart to philosophia. Research and study
must be the way, put abstractly, that one acquires rhe toric and philosophia.37

Midway through the speech, Alcidamas repeats his critique in similar
words, bemoaning the “one laying claim to (τὸν ἀντιποιούμενον) philoso-
phia and promising to educate others, who can demonstrate his sophia only if he has his writing tablet or book but cannot if he lacks them” ( Soph. 15).

Philosophy provides the (teachable) education necessary for excellent speak-
ing, in par tic u lar the flexibility, creativity, and insight required for many of
the most impor tant speech contexts, as we saw in Herodotus and Thucydides.

Impressively written documents may appear to reflect the rumination of a
philosophical speaker or teacher, but they may rather reflect a laborious and
workaday construction. In Alcidamas’s verb “lay claim to,” he reveals that
people by his time referred to themselves as possessors or prac ti tion ers of
philosophia, and in doing so celebrated themselves for their speechmaking
and talking ability.

Near the end of the speech, Alcidamas responds to a hy po thet i cal objection,
explaining why someone who gives himself over to (διατρίβοντα) philosophia
would vaunt spontaneous speeches (αὐτοσχεδιαστικοὺς λόγους) over those
composed with forethought and care ( Soph. 29)— which must be the presumed
virtues of philosophy. His answer is simple: he of course recommends prepar-
ing ideas and arrangement in advance of a speech, but extemporaneous verbal
expression has the virtue of timeliness, a virtue that outweighs the lesser vir-
tue of technical polish ( Soph. 33).

37 Mirhady 2004, 332, won ders, plausibly, whether we are to associate historia (which appears contrasted with writing [ graphein], and perhaps to be equated with thought) with rhêtorikê (which is concerned with invention), and paideia with philosophia (concerned with education and culture generally, and perhaps with language), where “enquiry and education” seem to constitute the art as a whole. I do not understand the putative modesty of Muir 2001, 42, when he writes:

“Alcidamas prob ably meant no more than good background knowledge allied to the capacity to use it for practical purposes— not so far from Isocrates’s usage” (which Muir has as: “both the methodical treatment of a subject . . . , and the human activity involved in pursuing it”).

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 209

This speech of Alcidamas points, only somewhat more hazily than the Dis-
soi Logoi does, to a nascent sense of a group of philosophoi. Sophists constitute an easily acknowledged group. Philosophia is a topic that some of them
study, but it is also a study that others lay claim to as well. Philosophoi then would be a sort of secondary group, concerned more for self- improvement
connected to understanding and demonstration than with the run-of-the-mill
sophists, who focus on the technicalities of pedagogy or elocution.

There is another speech historically attributed to Alcidamas, called the

Odysseus. It has sometimes but not always been judged inauthentic;38 its
uses of philosophos- group words prob ably supports athetizing. Odysseus
says that Palamedes and he have never quarreled heretofore; but now Odys-
seus will have to accuse him, and unfortunately “the man [Palamedes] is
clever and philosophical” (ὁ δὲ ἀνήρ ἐστι φιλόσοφός τε καὶ δεινός, Odyss.

4). This means argumentative cunning to the point of devious insincerity.

Odysseus returns to this theme, calling Palamedes a sophist and drawing
attention to his notable powers of reason and insight; “he happens to make
use of his philosophizing (φιλοσοφῶν) on the things he ought least to do”

( Odyss. 12)— that is, his cognitive and argumentative capacities for dubious
purposes. Fi nally, Odysseus says he will recount “what he tried even to phi-
losophize, that is, deceiving and cajoling the youth about” (ἃ καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν
ἐπικεχείρηκεν ἐξαπατῶν τοὺς νέους καὶ παραπείθων, Odyss. 22), namely
his self- proclaimed invention of military formations, letters, numbers, mea-
sures, weights, checkers, dice, the arts, currency, and fire- beacons. Once
again, philosophizing represents tricky talking. This use of “philosophiz-
ing” is not current at the end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth centu-
ries, and is found again only in the late pseudo- Lysias 8. The theme of the
speech is familiar to that period (as Gorgias’s Palamedes proves). But the
use of philosophos- group words is not the one we see in Alcidamas’s On
the Sophists; and whereas On the Sophists employed only the abstract noun philosophia, Odysseus never employs it. To be sure, Alcidamas could have
shifted his patterns of use over the de cades between these two speeches, and
philosophia as “valuable education” and as “devious argument” might be
thought to share some under lying features; all the same, we can add to the
other difficulties in attributing Odysseus to Alcidamas this one concerning
philosophos- group words.

38 Muir 2001, xvii– xviii, is disposed to accept it, followed by Edwards 2007, 49–51, and Knudsen 2012, 43–48, but N. O’ Sullivan 2008 argues persuasively that two grammatical constructions tell against classical authorship.

210 CH A PTER 7

Isocrates and a Pedagogy for Po liti cal Speech- Making

The speech with which Alcidamas’s On the Sophists seems in conversation is

Isocrates’s taxonomic Against the Sophists (390 BCE). The two authors use the
term philosophoi (and cognates) in a similar way: to refer to groups of people
distinctively and with a concerted focus on the deep and wide- ranging study of
ethical, cultural, and po liti cal matters for the sake of effective po liti cal speech-
making. In Against the Sophists, Isocrates distinguishes two basic groups of
sophistai, “intellectuals,” that he finds frequently conflated: the philosophoi and the logographoi. The latter group, teachers of po liti cal speechwriting, he
disdains; while they look fancy with their technical vocabulary and apparent
public- spiritedness, they cannot really hide their cynical instruction in “med-
dling and grasping” (πολυπραγμοσύνης καὶ πλεονεξίας).39 All philosophoi,
by contrast, at least aim to teach virtue, discipline, and wisdom— that is, what
is true rather than what is merely appealing. But a range of people go under the
name philosophoi, and Isocrates has to subdivide this category, since some,
unfortunately, have given the whole class of prac ti tion ers a bad reputation.

Many philosophoi, in seeking students, claim unreasonably to teach what is
unteachable, such as knowledge of the future and justice, and once they have
students they put them through pointless exercises. They promise to teach stu-
dents the knowledge they need for deciding how to live, and thereby to be-
come happy, but subsequently train them only to find inconsistencies in words
rather than actions, what Isocrates calls “freewheeling and hairsplitting” talk

(ἀδολεσχίαν καὶ μικρολογίαν). Some even use eristic, captious and mislead-
ing quasi- logical maneuvers (λογίδια). For students to be able to care for their
souls, which is their goal, Isocrates asserts that they must learn instead about
the pre sent and to appraise their own beliefs. The subdivision of philosophoi

Isocrates himself represents fits somewhere between the small- minded speech
writers and the overpromising philosophoi. He teaches his students to learn
speech composition with precision, study the people who speak well, adjust
their speech arrangement to the circumstances, deploy enthumêmata (“argu-
mentation”), speak rhythmically and musically, and have a brave and imagi-
native soul. The focus is not on rhêtoreia (“oratoricality”), he says, but on
epieikeia (“reasonableness”).40

39 Isoc. C. soph. 9, 19–20; cf. Antid. 226–28.

40 Isoc. C. soph. 1, 6–7, 20 (what philosophoi claim to teach); 11 (issue of bad reputation); 1–2 (pointless exercises); 3 (promises about happiness); 7–8 (freewheeling, etc., talk); 8 (learn about the pre sent), 16–18 (brave soul, etc.), 21 (the focus). For further discussion, see McCoy 2009, 54–58.

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 211

External evidence that Isocrates takes this self- constructed middle way
comes from Plato’s Euthydemus. Late in the dialogue, Socrates quotes Pro-
dicus as describing a class of men “who straddle the fence (μεθόρια) be-
tween philosophos and politikos” (Pl. Euthyd. 305c7). Context suggests that Socrates takes Prodicus’s straddling class to include Isocrates and that Prodicus’s characteristic distinction between words— his three- way division
of “politicians,” philosophoi (as presented in Socrates’s protreptic speeches
in the Euthydemus), and an unnamed middle class— maps onto Isocrates’s
three- way division of intellectual prac ti tion ers. Isocrates acknowledges a
large group of people called philosophoi who share an interest in teaching
virtue and knowledge, with the goal of happiness, by means of certain types
of talking, where the internal variation concerns the type of talking this goal
calls for. At this point Isocrates does not say that philosophoi comprise a
professional class; many, he says, have remained private citizens. But some
have become skilled speakers, and others focus primarily on the improve-
ment of their students’ abilities (Isoc. C. soph. 14, 21). Thus, for Isocrates,
philosophoi constitute at least a distinctive social group and a subset of
sophistai.

The subdivisions within philosophia get rehearsed again in Isocrates’s

Helen, which perhaps takes inspiration from Gorgias’s speech of the same
name (studied in chapter 5). Some people, Isocrates says, practice philosophia in the fashion of the earlier sophistai, among whose number he men-
tions Protagoras, Gorgias, Zeno, and Melissus. Such thinkers defended
crazy paradoxes, including the impossibility of false or contradictory
speech, or the unity, teachabiliy, and epistemization of virtue (Isoc. Hel.

1–3, 6). This disputatious hairsplitting and apparent refutation is easy for
its prac ti tion ers, insofar as it takes on unfamiliar topics, where there is
less risk of common sense rebuttal; and it is fun, since the fantasy- oriented
youth, prone to excess, like it; but it is also useless, conducive neither to
public nor private good ( Hel. 4, 7–8). Isocrates’s mode of philosophizing,
by contrast, actually pursues truth, educates students about civic affairs,
develops their po liti cal experience, deploys reasonable conjecture about
what is impor tant rather than seeking exact knowledge about what is triv-
ial, and strives for small but valuable improvements rather than expansive
but superficial improvements ( Hel. 4). As he did in Against the Sophists, Isocrates portrays philosophia as a large tent, in which some prac ti tioners succeed and some do not, and warns listeners not to judge philoso-
phy harshly on the errors of the latter ( Hel. 66–67). But the tent does
not cover the historical past: he treats these philosophoi as con temporary
with himself, calling Protagoras and the other fifth- century BCE thinkers

212 CH A PTER 7

“sophists,” aiming to avoid linguistic anachronism but desirous to track
intellectual trends nonetheless.41

The defense of philosophia against resentment and attack recurs in the

Busiris (quoted in chapter 4 as a testimony for Pythagoras). Isocrates treats this speech as a critique of Polycrates, who, like Isocrates, is trying to make a
living teaching and practicing philosophia, but unlike Isocrates risks making
a worse name for it (Isoc. Bus. 1, 42, 49). Isocrates claims that philosophoi who discuss po liti cal matters discuss Egypt ( Bus. 17), and so he goes on to laud

Egyptian philosophy as the precursor to Greek philosophy, given its concern
for people’s souls, orientation toward legislation, and investigation of real ity.

That investigation, which includes astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry, aids
in the tasks of civilization and the development of virtue ( Bus. 22, 30).

Isocrates’s other speeches reiterate these themes. In To Demonicus, De-
monicus’s eagerness for education overlaps with his preparedness for phi-
losophia, which Isocrates will teach him (Isoc. Ad Dem. 3). This education in philosophia comprises both encouraging students into speechmaking and
showing them how to become renowned as serious about the virtuous consti-
tution of their character, knowing what to strive for, what to avoid, with whom
to spend time, how to manage their lives, and, in the pedagogical arena, how
to love learning, guard what one knows, listen to discussions, accumulate les-
sons, and travel to study with others ( Ad Dem. 4–5, 7–8, 18–19). Philosophia teaches one to foresee what is advantageous ( Ad Dem. 40). In To Nicocles, philosophia shows one the path to the precise knowledge for rulership and the
cultivation of one’s soul, even if its prac ti tion ers disagree about the path itself

(Isoc. Ad Nic. 35, 50–52). Similarly, in the later Nicocles, Isocrates notes that while people often reinterpret the claim made by philosophoi, that they pursue
virtue and skill in speaking, as a marketing ploy to yield for themselves tuition
payments and social status, in fact philosophoi in general do help one pursue
piety, justice, and virtue; it is just that, like any other possession, philosophia
can be misused, and the practitioner himself, not the practice, is to be blamed.

Indeed, philosophia, which involves persuasion and clarification, refutation and
praise, debate and investigation, in public and in private, is education at its core

( Ad Nic. 1–9). Isocrates says virtually the same thing in the Evagoras, emphasizing the importance of emulating models of living well (Isoc. Evag. 8–10,

76–81). And in the Areopagiticus, Isocrates puts philosophia on a parallel with horse- training, gymnastics, and hunting as parts of an education at which

41 Isoc. Bus. 2–3. Philosophoi are again later than ancient sophistai (who use logical tricks) at Antid. 283–85.

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 213
some become preeminent but thanks to which the rest at least avoid dissipa-
tion (Isoc. Areopag. 45).

Isocrates’s grandest statement on philosophia comes in the Antidosis of the late 350s BCE, in which he imagines his defense against the charges made
against Socrates: making weaker arguments stronger and corrupting the
youth.42 For the most part, in that speech Isocrates elaborates on claims about
philosophia he made in earlier speeches; and because it coincides with Plato’s
late and Aristotle’s early work, it describes a period that we document later
in this book. But in his protreptic to philosophia he makes three points worth
noting. First, he acknowledges four distinct outcomes of a philosophical edu-
cation: remaining a private citizen, though with an improved soul; becoming
a competitor, apparently in the debates described by Gorgias and featured in
the Dissoi Logoi; becoming a teacher, recapitulating one’s own teacher; and
becoming a judge and advisor, by which Isocrates apparently means being po-
liti cally engaged (Isoc. Antid. 201). Second, he describes his own pedagogy
in more detail. He teaches philosophy by giving his students knowledge and
experience in schemata (“moves”), just as a wrestling teacher teaches holds and
drops, and requiring laborious practice in them, which yields their synthesis
and the ability to deploy them when the time is right. While he cannot con-
vey perfectly precise knowledge, he can at least encourage close attention to
and a sensitive understanding of the consequences of action ( Antid. 183).43

Third, Isocrates tempers his views about the other prac ti tion ers of philosophia
he adumbrated in Against the Sophists and Helen while engaging in somewhat more jealous guarding of the term itself. He claims that some of “ those serious
about eristic” (τῶν περὶ τὰς ἔριδας σπουδαζόντων, Antid. 258) impugn him,
but that he does not want to respond in kind. He admits that when they teach er-
istic, and when others teach astrology, geometry, and other mathêmata, though
this looks to many like “freewheeling and hairsplitting” talk (ἀδολεσχίαν καὶ
μικρολογίαν, Antid. 262), useless and readily forgotten, they do benefit stu-
dents, even if less than they promise ( Antid. 261). True, once students have
mastered these subject matters, they do them little good unless they are in turn
to become teachers of them, but while learning them they develop in cogni-
tive ability, especially precision, per sis tence, and comprehension ( Antid. 265).

42 Isoc. Antid. 15, 30. Like Socrates (Pl. Ap. 17b– d), he denies the general suitability of his “wide- ranging discussions and expositions about philosophia and its power” for law- court disputes (9, cf. 2).

43 Wersdörfer 1940 and Wilcox 1943 study the normative terminology associated with

Isocrates’s practice. Jebb 1893, 2.34–50, and Merlan 1954, 62–75, remain good sources on

Isocratean philosophia; see also, more recently, Nightingale 1995, 26–41; Wareh 2012, 30–54; and Collins 2015, 171–81.

214 CH A PTER 7

Thus doing the mental gymnastics of studying the “older sophists” like Em-
pedocles, Ion, Alcmaeon, Melissus, Gorgias, and Anaxagoras, who debated
the number of fundamental ele ments of the world, suits young people, and pre-
pares them for philosophia, but this should not really be called philosophia at all ( Antid. 266–70).

This third remark deserves the most commentary. In the Antidosis, Isocrates
expands his prosopography of sophistry- philosophy from his four- entry list
in Helen to this list of six thinkers. He displaces the charge of “freewheeling
and hairsplitting” talk from himself, in his nearly four- decade- old Against the

Sophists, onto unnamed critics and admits to seeing some benefit in their teaching, not just the right goal incorrectly pursued. But he seems now also
to clarify to himself the proper referent of philosophia. It had never explic itly included the practice of the fussily paradoxical “older sophists,” despite the
copying of their theses and research programs by some philosophoi. Yet in

Against the Sophists, philosophy amounted to (i) teaching (ii) the truth to (iii) improve lives, especially by conducing to (iv) virtue and wisdom. Isocrates
thought he practiced philosophia better than many others, who overpromised
and underperformed, waylaid by fictions of omniscience, the corrosive charm
of eristic, and the crutch of externally imposed notions. Yet he took his com-
petitors, even if they were giving philosophy a bad name, and thus too the
practice he shared with them, genuinely to be sharing the practice. Now in the

Antidosis, however, he retracts that broader notion, a retraction the prepara-
tion for which we saw in his Helen. In the 350s BCE, he thinks that a benefit
to one’s life is not criterion enough for some practice to count as philosophia;
geometry improves one’s mind, and thus one’s access to truth, but counts only
as a propaedeutic. Philosophia has become, in his late years, to stand for his own brand of teaching toward a resolutely public life, one of speechmaking and audience cultivation, in which one aims to become sophos (“totally competent”)

with the best doxai (“views,” “beliefs”) by means of a maximally efficient course of study ( Antid. 271). This efficiency condition erases the “philosophy”

label from his competitors, as does the full- bore commitment to a demo cra-
tically active vocation.

We come to see strong opposition to Isocrates’s view of philosophia— that
is, of the best means of education—in Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s Socratic dia-
logues depict the benefit of nit- picking, argument- following, and refutation-
currying conversations; they are necessary for jolting people out of their
false conceits of knowledge and complacency. Aristotle argues for the intrin-
sic value, plea sure, and self- realization of so- called paradox- mongering. Of
course they are all talking about philosophia. But there are differences besides these three judgments about the benefit any sort of philosophia must and can

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 215
have. They differ in what sort of enterprise they take philosophia to be. For

Isocrates, it is a kind of teaching. For Plato, as I argue in the next chapter,
it is a kind of conversation. For Aristotle, and thus too for Heraclides, it is a
discipline. All three views have roots, it would seem, in the early period of phi-
losophoi, where power ful teaching, earnest and prolonged conversation, and
emulation and study of one’s pre de ces sors prob ably stuck out as characteristic
of Pythagorean or quasi- Pythagorean activity.

Still, even if it comes from a shared background, we might won der about
the source of Isocrates’s apparently distinct view of philosophia. Gorgias’s
view of philosophia, as we studied it in chapter 5, looks too far from that of Isocrates, even if they do both pre sent philosophoi as members of a broadly
dispersed club or pastime.44 A borrowing from Alcidamas, his con temporary,
seems unlikely. Socrates, as Plato and Xenophon pre sent him, emphasizes the
self- examining and other- examining aspects of philosophia, which Isocrates
notoriously elides.45 Apparently, then, the conception in the po liti cal circles
known to Thucydides and his readers as late as the 390s BCE, in which phi-
losophizing prepares one for civic exigencies and explains Athens’s military
and imperial successes, is responsible. The Panegyricus’s similarity with the

Periclean Funeral Oration strengthens this connection, especially the claim that
philosophia was taught by the Athenians to the Greeks.46 Isocrates thus draws
from (elite, policy- making, Athenian) popu lar usage. That is, not the pseudo-

Lysianic “contrivance” meaning found in colloquial dispute, or even the Aris-
tophantic “cleverness” meaning found in similar situations, but a (newly seen
as) good orientation toward demo cratic decision- making, especially in light of
frequent emergencies. We need not say, then, that Isocrates tried to “define”

philosophia, as though he wanted to posit a homonymous neologism.47 In-
stead, he would have drawn from past or common usage, and pulled out the

44 Gorgias, with Prodicus and Tisias, is said to have been one of Isocrates’s teachers (Dion.

Hal. Isoc. 1).

45 Halliwell 1997b; Morgan 2004, 146–50, emphasizes Isocrates’s inconsistent application
of his own princi ples. See Murphy 2013, 314, 316, 320, 330, for Isocrates’s distinction of himself from the eristics, to whom he assimilates the Socratics (cf. Isoc. Bus. 6).

46 Isoc. Paneg. 47–50; see further Livingstone 2007, 28–30.

47 This is the view of, among others, Timmerman 1998, 145, 149, 155–56. Cahn 1989, 128,

134, says that Isocrates used the name philosophia to deny the possibility of a technical rhetoric, but does not explain how it gained that power. Poulakos 2001 summarizes Isocratean philosophia as training in successful use of doxai; Sullivan 2001 argues that idea, another key term in Isocratean philosophia, pertains to technical rhe toric; and Livingstone 2007, 20–34, argues reluctantly for three (or four: 33) Isocratean “uses” of the term philosophia—(i) commonsense intellectual exertion and self- cultivation; (ii) formal education; and (iii) Isocrates’s own teaching— but does not explain how the word could tolerate all three uses. See further Morgan 2004, 125–36, and for bibliography, López Cruces and Fuentes Gonzalez 2000, 905–6.

216 CH A PTER 7
features he took as salient or core by the late 390s BCE. This need not in-
volve boundary- policing, which treats certain con temporary uses as simply
too distant from the archetypes to deserve sharing its name, though late in his
career Isocrates did adopt this stance on occasion. Rather, it reconstructs the
normative ele ments— that philosophia conduces to usefulness, that it depends
on logoi, that it involves teaching and learning, that it has a polis- context, and that it is not exclusively about meteorology or a forensic contest, and that it
differs in key ways from sophistry and the po liti cal art— that undergird the
main public uses of the term.

Conclusion: A Battle over the Word Philosophia?

This analy sis clarifies the familiar notion that Isocrates battled with Plato and

Aristotle over the term philosophia. No doubt they battled over students, or
more generally, the hearts and minds of a populace in which those students
might grow up. This battle concerned the term philosophia insofar as these
leaders of schools debated the properties of philosophia that make it useful.

Or rather, they debated what, if one wanted to do philosophia, one ought to
do, and why. These debates deployed a range of types of argument, includ-
ing etymology, which Isocrates does not use, and explanations for popu lar be-
liefs about philosophia, which Isocrates does use. But the conflicts between

Isocrates and Plato in par tic u lar need not manifest a jealousy about the word
philosophia, as though either wishes to make a public term a private brand name.

The purported fact that Isocrates “lost” the battle with Plato is a result, as I
have said, not of Plato’s persuasiveness but of the fact that the discipline phi-
losophia formed around Plato’s Academics and their argumentative precur-
sors and successors; thus their conception of philosophia followed Plato more than Isocrates. While Isocrates’s school may have had the best attendance
in Athens, his style of philosophia seemed relatively accessible, his mode of
higher education practically defined the liberal arts to come, yet while the core
of his training as speechmaking would have given his philosophia a practical
edge, Isocrates still failed to create a discipline. Perhaps his students went into
public rather than teaching careers,48 and the end of Athens’s civic autonomy
in 323 BCE may have devalued the leadership potential of philosophical-
political speech (as Isocrates’s Letter to Alexander and Panegyricus suggest).

48 Isocrates provides his own list of eight students ( Antid. 93–94); Zosimos’s Life of Isocrates picks out, from among his “many students,” Theopompus and Ephorus (historians); Hypereides, Isaeus, and Lycurgus (orators); and Philiskos, Isocrates, Androtion, and Python of Byzantium (not known to be philosophical researchers).

NON- ACA DEMIC PHILOSOPHIA 217

Isocrates saw himself not as a member of a self- sustaining, socio- cultural mode
of life, with shared or archived concepts and fluid participation, but as a unique
teacher with identifiable paying students, whose thought- world would quiesce
with his own death. His “competitors” presented themselves as part of a dis-
cipline, a continuous conversation with the refinement of methods and lan-
guage, one shaped largely as a shared Socratic tradition, a tradition (Socratic,

Academic, Peripatetic, and Hellenistic) from which Isocrates explic itly and
continually separated himself.

Anyway, Plato’s victory was a limited one, scorching only the disciplin-
ary terrain. Other uses of philosophos- group terms, as in Sage maxims or
anthropology, lived unscathed in the neutral territory of quotidian language

(see chapter 10). So while for philosophoi then and now, philosophia pertains (approximately, for the most part, usually) to argument, (self-)examination, and
criticism, and not toward the immediate production of po liti cal savvy but toward
the long- term expansion of knowledge of the world and our capacity to know
it, for Greek speakers as much as for En glish speakers, what we now translate

“philosophy” hearkens to a moment before or to the side of that Isocratean-

Platonic sally of precisifications.

A C A D E M Y

8

Plato’s Saving of the Appearances

Radical Revision or Explanatory Reconstruction?

A standard view about the history of philosophia, propounded by Walter Burk-
ert, Andrea Nightingale, John Cooper, and many others, is that Plato radi-
cally overhauled the term philosophos and its cognates.1 The term once
meant intellectual cultivation and could apply to anyone so moved to such
self- improvement. Then Plato reinvented it as a technical pursuit of actual
knowledge, distinguishing it from other putatively self- improving modes
by its reliance on dialectic, norms of explanatory rigor, and assumptions
about real ity. He propounded this view in the Acad emy, and, indeed, its
institutional structure, encouraging research in mathe matics and methodol-
ogy, assumed it. But this novel view of philosophia neither spoke for itself
nor settled all questions. Those who did not yet follow it needed to see it as
valuable, and those who already did needed to negotiate its relative focus on
theoretical reflection and practical application. Heraclides’s Pythagoras story
assumes the Platonic picture of philosophia as the pursuit of a comprehensive
and deep understanding of the world; the rest of On Diseases, as we can re-
construct it, suggests that philosophia has both intrinsic value and eminently
useful application.

Much of this account is impossible to deny. We see nothing like Plato’s re-
flections on philosophia in the extant writings of his contemporaries, and

Isocrates even confirms the distance between Plato’s and his own. Plato had
unique cause to found an institution of research and teaching that would not
only outlive him but also, even while he lived, produce materials in de pen dent
of his hand. He reflected on Socrates’s intellectual commitments, methods,
and results with a profound concentration and seriousness unseen elsewhere,
even in the most notable Socratics. And the fifth- century BCE attestations of
philosophos- group words hardly even hint at the ideas we see in Plato’s liter-
ary conversations about epistemology, metaphysics, or cosmology, the ideas
that accompany his vision of philosophia.

1 Cooper 2007, 23n4.

222 CH A PTER 8

A primary contention of this book is that this standard view nevertheless
still misses something. The view of philosophia presented in Plato’s dialogues
shows as much continuity as rupture with earlier views. Plato, it seems, asked
himself about the characteristics of the practices heretofore called philosophia, and to the extent that one would intentionally pursue them, about their point.

His answer, as dialogues written across his career reveal, is that philosophia
amounts to a practice of conversation that conduces to virtue, or knowledge,
or flourishing. This is consistent with much fifth- century BCE usage as well as
with early fourth- century BCE usage, even if his contemporaries emphasize
teaching or po liti cal deliberation over conversational success. Where Plato
goes beyond his contemporaries is in thinking rigorously and adventurously
about the conditions for virtue or flourishing— and thus about the conditions
for such conversations that might conduce to virtue or flourishing. On the one
side is Socrates’s vigilance about conceits of knowledge, his refutative ex-
changes si mul ta neously pursuing knowledge and avoiding error. On the other
side is the hypothesis of unchanging objects of knowledge and reflection on
the way they might be known, a solution to skepticism about finding stable
life- directing princi ples. Plato’s innovation comes, it appears, from thinking
about the prerequisites for philosophia, should the practice actually benefit its prac ti tion ers. His vision of philosophia is then largely continuous with that of his pre de ces sors; it is his vision about the source of the promise of philosophia
that differs. Granted, we cannot with complete satisfaction distinguish phi-
losophia from its conditions of success. But recognizing commonalities among
fifth- and fourth- century BCE approaches to philosophia makes better sense
of Plato’s proj ect: he is defending philosophia, not defiantly adopting a dubi-
ous name for an obscure practice. It is with a study of the early career of the
term that we understand Plato’s work, and the way his reconstruction contrib-
uted to a valorized discipline.

Plato’s dialogues do not just continue the story; they add another ele ment.

They contain the earliest extant etymologies or quasi- etymologies of philosophia.

Their existence supports the two leading claims of this book: that the meaning
of philosophos would not have been transparent or obviously positive to ancient

Greek speakers; and that because the term may have started out as something
other than a term of approbation, fourth- century BCE apologists for the philoso-
phos life sought to redeem it. Plato’s writings contain four distinct instances of linguistic attention to the word: minimally in the Phaedrus, more robustly in the Lysis, with theoretical intensity in the Symposium, and impressively, if baroquely, in the Republic. Their variety speaks to the freedom of Plato’s invention and also to the perceived value of the effort. Most of those who have thought that philosophos means “lover of wisdom” are vindicating Plato’s efforts.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 223

Accordingly, this chapter has the following structure. I begin with several
dialogues in which we see Plato presenting philosophia as continuous with a

(positive) reconstruction of its late fifth- century BCE usage, a practice of con-
centrated and semiformal conversations about matters conducing to virtue and
flourishing. I turn to the Phaedrus, traditionally considered a mature work, as
the clearest case for the combination of a familiar vision of philosophia de-
fined as a social- cultural practice with new reflections on the epistemic and
even metaphysical conditions for successful philosophizing. Philosophoi are
contrasted with sophoi but with compliments to the philosophoi. I then show that several other dialogues thought to come from late in Plato’s career continue the pattern of ac cep tance already discovered. Fi nally comes the study of

Plato’s etymological work on philosophos, culminating in Socrates’s stunning
argument about the philosophoi- kings in Republic Book 5. I conclude with a reflection on Plato’s contribution to thinking about philosophia.

Charmides: Philosophia as a Conversation for

Self- Improvement

Plato’s Charmides, a dialogue about discipline ( sôphrosunê) and self- knowledge, uses philosophos- family terms twice; both times they refer to the kinds of virtue-conducing conversation depicted in this and in other dialogues. In neither case
does Socrates state explic itly what he believes philosophia is; this means that he should be taken as using it in a familiar and uncontroversial way. The first usage
shows up in the opening scene; the second shows up during the introduction to

Charmides, the first of two respondents to Socrates’s elenchic questions.

The dialogue depicts Socrates, at some unspecified time, narrating his re-
turn in 429 BCE from a several- year campaign in northeastern Greece.2 De-
siring to visit his usual haunts (τὰς ξυνήθεις διατριβάς) and see his friends, he
goes immediately to a palaestra. He finds there a large group of people, most of
whom he knows (Pl. Chrm. 153a1– d2). After answering their questions about
the terrible siege of Potidaea, he asks two of his own. He won ders “about phi-
losophia, how it’s going now” (περὶ φιλοσoφίας ὅπως ἔχοι τὰ νῦν) and about
the young men, whether any has distinguished himself in wisdom (σοφίᾳ),
beauty, or both (153d2–4).3 He gets an answer perhaps to both at once, because

2 For the date, see Planeaux 1999; for the dialogue, see Moore and Raymond 2019.

3 It is Socrates as narrator who uses the word philosophia; he does not say what word he in fact used in 429 BCE. Prob ably he narrates this conversation close to the end of his life. But as we will see later, Plato does not quibble about attributing certain uses of the term philosophia to the late fifth century BCE.

224 CH A PTER 8
at that moment Charmides and his admirers walk in—it is he who has so dis-
tinguished himself in beauty and who we later learn has become notable as
philosophos as well (153d5–154a6).

Though the spectacle of youth leaves Socrates’s first question hanging,
its position and pairing with the other do explain its meaning. Philosophia
must refer to the activity sustained by Socrates’s group of friends, including

Chaerephon and Critias, at the palaestra among Socrates’s other accustomed
meeting places. This activity admits new participants, especially the city’s
distinguished teen agers as they mature, though it must also maintain sta-
bility over the years. The ensuing conversation must typify that activity of
philosophia, given that nobody observes that anything Socrates or any of his
interlocutors says is out of the ordinary. For their conversation they take as
a topic the definition of discipline (Pl. Chrm. 157a6– b7). Success at defining
it, the procedure for which every one seems already to know, is taken to cor-
relate with its possession (e.g., 158e7–159a4, 160d5– e1). From this we may
infer that the conversations constitutive of philosophia address virtue- terms
with a goal of learning more about the virtue and diagnosing the interlocu-
tors’ degree of virtue, urging them to become more virtuous (if the diagnosis
is only lukewarm), and modeling the be hav iors that may manifest or bring
about the virtue.

The term philosophos then arises in a subsequent scene that Socrates re-
ports in direct speech. Critias and Chaerephon have noted Charmides’s ex-
ceptional good looks. They agree that he has a beautiful face. Beneath his
robes, they say, he has a wonderful body. Yet this physical beauty, Socrates
responds, matters only if Charmides’s soul also happens to be well de-
veloped (εὖ πεφυκώς, Pl. Chrm. 154d1–5, 154e1). He suggests that they
assess its development by having Charmides lay bare his soul and letting
them look at it. “For,” Socrates says, “I suppose he is quite of the age to
be willing to join a conversation (ἐθέλει διαλέγεσθαι)” (154d5–7). Critias
heartily agrees, “since as a matter of fact he’s also philosophos and, as it
seems to others and to himself, quite expert in poetry” (ἐπεί τοι καὶ ἔστι
φιλόσοφός τε καί, ὡς δοκεῖ ἄλλοις τε καὶ ἑαυτῷ, πάνυ ποιητικός). Socrates
accepts Critias’s praise by saying that this fine trait (τὸ καλόν)— “being
philosophos and expert in poetry”— has its roots in their ancestor Solon

(154e8–155a3).

This passage tells us that being philosophos means having the ability to join
the conversations typical of Socrates, Critias, Chaerephon, and their friends,
one that can reveal the nature and quality of one’s soul, with the hope that it
matters to one’s attainment of virtue. We learn that Charmides has imbibed
the customs of the group. Most strikingly, he answers definitional questions

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 225

“in a word,” and it really is one word.4 When he fails to defend one definition,
he comes up with an alternative. He answers questions with yes or no, never
accuses Socrates of tricking him, and comes to recognize his argumentative
inadequacies. He accepts that the topic of the conversation— the nature of
sôphrosunê— demands abstractness and profound thought, neither belittling it
nor falling stunned into overawed silence.

Curiously, Critias added to his description of Charmides as philosophos that
he is “expert in poetry,” poiêtikos. Because of its collocation, this must mean
having some conversational ability related to being philosophos, which we just
found to be the ability to give, defend, and abandon definitions— and know-
ing the meaning of poiêtikos may help to establish the bound aries of philosophos. Critias’s use of poiêtikos is among the earliest extant uses of the term.5

Its con temporary uses and those in the next quarter century have a range of
meanings.6 One meaning was “productive of poetry,” emphasizing versifica-
tion, pleasure- inducement, and imitation.7 But this seems an unlikely mean-
ing in this case, for there is neither evidence of his writing nor relevance to
the dialogue.8 Isocrates used the term to refer to speaking in any genre with
creativity and panache.9 In this case, Charmides would be said to be a flu-
ent and appealing speaker; but our evidence pre sents him rather as a diffident
and even laconic type. In a third possibility, known from Plato’s Ion, poetic
expertise picks out the capacity to discuss poetry and other literary genera in

4 Pl. Chrm. 159b5, 160e4–5.

5 It would vie with Pl. Ion 532c8 and Isoc. C. soph. 12.

6 Late in that time frame, poiêtikos came to mean “productive” in general: Pl. Soph. 219b11, 219d1, 265a4–266d5; Def. 411c8, 411d4, 411d5, 413b12, 414e12, 416a29. For Aristotle, “the skill of poetry” (ἡ ποιητική τέχνη) came to mean giving a systematic account of the nature of poetry; see Ford 2002, 4–5.

7 Pl. Phdr. 245a6, 248e1, 257a5, 265b4; Grg. 502c12; R. 387b3, 387b4, 393d8 (specifically versifying), 600e5, 601a4, 606d4, 607a2, 607b6 (poetry’s quarrel with philosophia), 607c5, 607d7 (contrasted with philopoiêtai, who love and defend poetry in meterless speeches), 608b7; Phlb. 62d5; Tim. 19d5; Leg. 656c3, 660a4, 682a3, 700d4, 778d6 (“the poet”), 802b6; Minos 320e4. Relatedly, it could mean “given to riddling” ( R. 332b9, Alc. II 147b9) or describe those lacking knowledge and akin to diviners and soothsayers ( Meno 99d1).

8 This has not stopped translators from assuming it means this, e.g., Lamb 1927, 15, “quite a poet”; Dorion 2004, “tres doué pour poésie”; Nails 2002, 91, “a young poet”; Lampert 2010, 161, having “poetic capacity”; Tuozzo 2011, 110, “quite a poet” (although also “quite poetical”

[107]). Cf. Tulli 2000, who argues that Charmides and Solon are associated with the poets who write encomia for good men and hymns for gods. Critias was himself a poet, to be sure. But contra Nails 2002, 91, who cites only Pl. Chrm. 155c as evidence, no other ancient reference to Charmides mentions poetry. Hippothales (in the Lysis), by contrast, does compose poetry for his beloved Lysis (Pl. Lys. 204d7–206c8).

9 Isoc. C. soph. 12; Antid. 47. Though not citing Isocrates, this might be the idea found in Friedländer 1964, 67, and Levine 2016, 38–40.

226 CH A PTER 8
relevant ways.10 Plato’s Protagoras calls this ability— “being skilled concern-
ing verses” (περὶ ἐπῶν δεινόν)— “the greatest part of a man’s education.” It in-
cludes knowing what the poets have written correctly, how to pick those writ-
ings apart (διελεῖν), and how to answer questions about them (ἐρωτώμενον
λόγον δοῦναι). Protagoras adds that this skill concerns virtue as much as
definitional conversation does.11 As it turns out, Plato says that Charmides
followed Protagoras, and both Charmides and Critias heard Protagoras give
this speech ( Prt. 315a1, 316a7). The Charmides includes several judgments and analyses of poetic or gnomic language.12 So it must be that people judge

Charmides good at such poetic assessments. His competence here overlaps in
part with his competence in philosophia. Both consist in holding one’s own in
analytic conversations that address and conduce to virtue. They differ in the
focal point of those conversations and the strength with which they scour the
interlocutors’ settled beliefs.

Thus the dialogue’s two uses of philosophos- group words match up. The ad-
jective philosophos applies to the capacity to carry on the engagements picked
out by the noun philosophia. These social- communicative engagements pur-
port to enable moral improvement. They do so, in the weak case, because they
reveal one’s understanding of virtue in light of definitions proposed in the
conversation (in the strictly “philosophical” case) and claims made in lit er a-
ture (in the strictly “poetic” case). They do so at a theoretically richer level as
well when they encourage the per for mance of the very be hav iors symptom-
atic of the possession of those virtues: perseverance, courage, insightfulness,
listening to others and giving them their due, and appreciating the divine and
rational purpose of such exchange.13

This description of Platonic philosophia leaves two impor tant questions
open. First, do the interlocutors engaged in philosophia pursue their conver-
sations with the end of cooperation or of competition? In non- philosophical

10 In the Ion, Socrates challenges a rhapsode’s claim to be able to analyze Homer’s poetry and yet nobody else’s. “If this ability comes thanks to a technê,” Socrates reasons, “then you would be able to speak about all other poets— for the poetic one (ποιητική, sc. technê), I suppose, is a whole” (Pl. Ion 532c8–9). Ion’s poiêtikos skill at interpreting Homer turns on his understanding of Homer’s composition of his poems. Compare Ap. 28a8– c6, where, in response to Socratic questioning, poets are said to flunk self- exegesis— Socrates and his audience must assume that the poetic power, to the extent it qualifies as a skill, would have both a productive and an explanatory aspect.

11 Pl. Prt. 338e7– a6. Cf. Pl. Hp. mi. 365c10– d3, where Socrates asks Hippias to justify Homeric views about justice and deception.

12 Socrates asks whether Homer “speaks well” concerning the sense of shame (Pl. Chrm.

161a2–3); Critias glosses Hesiod’s verse concerning work (163b2– c10); and Critias glosses the sage maxim “Know yourself” (164d5–165a7).

13 Moore 2012, 7–9.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 227
speech contexts we can readily decide. Antilogical forensic pleading and er-
istic exchange aim only to win the audience to one’s side or to confute the op-
ponent; small talk and blandishments aim only to promote a shared practical
framework and comity. We cannot so readily decide in the context of philosoph-
ical conversation. Socrates repeatedly undermines the definitions that Char-
mides and Critias provide him. From this perspective, and from the perspec-
tive of a Critias hurt by such refutations, philosophia looks competitive.14 It
shares this competitiveness with the vari ous games of verbal disputation found
in con temporary Athens. But Socrates repeatedly affirms that in fact he talks
not for the sake of triumph or honor, but for his own and the group’s advan-
tage. Responding to Critias’s accusation that Socrates is trying to refute him,
he says:

What a person you make me out to be, when you suppose that if I really am re-
futing you, it is for any but the same reason I interrogate myself about my own
claims: the fear that someday I will fail to notice that I think I know something
that I don’t actually know. In fact, that’s what I claim to be doing right now—
looking into the argument mostly for my own sake, though perhaps also for the
sake of my friends. Don’t you think it is a good shared by virtually every one
whenever the way something is comes to light? (Pl. Chrm. 166c7– d6)

Conversation has a cooperative function, a coming together necessary for each
person’s own advance and to help the others with their advance. It would ap-
pear, then, that philosophia somehow combines the ambition and spirit of vig-
orous correction typical of competition with the self- criticism and marked
goodwill typical of cooperation.

This cooperative conversationality does leave one spark of competition
aflame. Socrates competes with Critias for influence on Charmides, and this
requires that Socrates does more than reveal Critias’s flaws, but less than show
his own perfection. He must get Charmides to recognize that success on his
own terms comes only by practicing a Socrates- inflected philosophia, not the
ersatz version of his cousin Critias. With this recognition Socrates wins no
prize of honor or pride, only the satisfaction that he might continue in produc-
tive philosophical conversation with a young man he thinks might be suited
for such conversations.

The description of philosophia in the Charmides leaves another harder question open. How do conversations about virtue- terms conduce to knowledge

14 Critias’s accusation of Socratic competitiveness: Pl. Chrm. 166c3–6; cf. 162c1– d4, 165a7– b3, 169c6– d1.

228 CH A PTER 8
about virtue, then to virtuous practice, and then to the good life? I mentioned
two ways: the revelation of deficiencies may prod improvement; and the per-
for mance of conversational actions themselves in accord with virtue or vice
allows small- scale modeling for virtuous action in the other departments of
life. Yet these contributions may seem inadequate for explaining the benefits
of the specific kinds of talking depicted in the Charmides. And while talking
about the nature and importance of virtue may turn interlocutors toward vir-
tue, the real work of education and self- improvement may seem to have to
come from elsewhere. A closer reading of the dialogue might begin to outline
some hypotheses; but we will now leave it for another dialogue.

Protagoras: Some Questions about Philosophical Conversation

The Protagoras provides two perspectives on philosophia discussions that
complement and deepen those provided by the Charmides: they specifically
address the role of competition and cooperation. This dialogue takes place sev-
eral years before the dramatic action of the other. Alcibiades has just come of
age, and Socrates has only now risen to prominence. The latter has brought
the zealous young Hippocrates to a donnish party at Callias’s house. There they
hope to test the wares of Hippocrates’s inamorato, Protagoras of Abdera. The
prudent Protagoras appreciates Socrates’s sensitivity to the danger of private
audiences, so the entire crowd attends as Protagoras propounds an etiological
myth that purports to illustrate the teachability of virtue, then naturalizes that
myth, then opens the floor to questions. Socrates won ders about the unity of
virtues. He and Protagoras make concerted headway, even as the elder figure
finds the arguments for the coincidence of justice and piety, and of wisdom
and discipline, hardly compelling. But their sympathies falter when Protago-
ras resists Socrates’s assimilation of wisdom to justice. He does so by defend-
ing the relativity of goodness at such length and with such a litany of examples
as to imitate a handbook of the Dissoi Logoi genre. Hearing the speech out,
and abiding the flattering applause it wins, Socrates rebukes Protagoras for fil-
ibustering. He pleads the impossibility of comprehending such diatribes. Pro-
tagoras balks at this charge. He accuses Socrates of beseeching him to sheathe
his long- form addresses, making him ill- poised to maintain his hard- won repu-
tation. Against this accusation, Socrates threatens to forfeit: should Protago-
ras not shorten his responses, Socrates will leave (Pl. Prt. 334a1–335a7).

Callias taps in to block Socrates’s departure. The party’s host forebodes a
dimming of conversational light and avows his supreme plea sure (ἥδιον) in
hearing Protagoras and Socrates talk (διαλεγομένων). This halts Socrates,

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 229
who appreciates the admission: “I have always admired your philosophia

(φιλοσοφίαν ἄγαμαι), and I praise and cherish it now” (335d10). Philosophia
can refer only to Callias’s commitment to and organ ization of conversations
of the sort that Protagoras and Socrates have pursued.15 The current example
shows orderly, publicly beneficial, and—at times guardedly, at times openly—
agonistic exchanges about matters that are universally significant to the human
experience, including culture, education, virtue, and goodness, that the inter-
locutors effect through epideictic, analytic, and refutative exchange. Thus

Callias as impresario curates the sort of philosophia discussion groups that we
saw in organic homeostasis in the Charmides. As with the conversations in
the Charmides, these too blend the competitive and cooperative. From one
angle, Socrates and Protagoras cooperate to deliberate over the virtues’ teach-
ability and to characterize their inner relations. From another angle, Socrates
competes with Protagoras for Hippocrates’s tutelage and for the broader audi-
ence’s esteem. The conversation ends with ameliorating phrases of joint effort
and mutual admiration, but only Socrates’s irrepressible march to argumenta-
tive victory brought on that end.

Callias’s guests take turns striving to integrate philosophia’s self- and other-
directed striving. Alcibiades, Critias, Prodicus, and Hippias each plead for
new conversational ground rules. On Socrates’s advice they resolve to give

Protagoras a chance to ask Socrates what ever he wishes, after which he
will resume his role as answerer. Protagoras makes the best of a less- than-
satisfactory result by dragging Socrates into his wheel house. As we discussed
earlier in the context of being poiêtikos, Protagoras believes that one’s powers
of poetic analy sis diagnose the fullness of one’s education— and these diagno-
ses serve as much as instruments of ambition as mea sures of health. So Pro-
tagoras asks Socrates to rectify an apparent contradiction in a song by Simo-
nides. Rectification requires reinterpretation. After an initial sally, Socrates
explains the song’s rhetorical situation. Because Protagoras locates the song’s
contradiction in Simonides’s takedown of the maxim attributed to Pittacus the

Sage, “Hard it is to be good,” Socrates marshals deep background on the com-
petitive use of gnomic phrases.

It is at this point that Socrates mentions philosophia for a second time with,
in the end, the same contours. “Philosophia is most ancient and most plentiful
among the Greeks in Crete and in Sparta, and the most sophists on earth are

15 On Callias’s enthusiasm for colloquia and lessons from sophists, see chapter 6, p. 182n64.

Aeschines’s Callias has Callias spend money on Prodicus and Anaxagoras (Ath. 5.220c). At the opening of the Hippias Minor, the coordinator of Hippias’s speech (at the conclusion of which the dialogue starts) asks Socrates, who heard it, to praise or refute parts of it, now that those of us who “have a share in the practice (διατριβῆς) of philosophia” are alone (Pl. Hp. mi. 363a2–6).

230 CH A PTER 8
there” (Pl. Prt. 342b8).16 “Sophists” refers to teachers, of the sort Protago-
ras styles himself.17 The Spartan citizens have meetings to study with their
sophists.18 Spartan preeminence in Greece is to be attributed to the “wis-
dom” consequent to those meetings. Socrates glosses this wisdom “education”

(παιδεύσει) and reiterates that the Spartans have “an excellent education in
philosophia and discussion (λογούς),” and that being Laconic is a matter of

“philosophizing rather than of athletic training (φιλογυμναστεῖν),” as is usu-
ally assumed (342d3, 342d5–6, 342e6). Spartan philosophia emits, through
cracks in its mute façade, perfectly debilitating zingers, clinched phrases that
stun their interlocutors into silence. Even the Seven Sages of Greece armed
themselves with these sweet little missiles, so perfectly do they fold up more
expansive fields of thought. Those Sage maxims, like “Know yourself” and

“Nothing in excess,” supervene on “ancient philosophia” (τῶν παλαιῶν τῆς
φιλοσοφίας). The competition in gnomic maxims found in Simonides poem,
the analy sis of which turns to the deepest questions of virtue, endurance, per-
sonal success, forbearance, and hope, exemplifies that period’s philosophia.19

Socrates’s account of philosophia begins an answer to Protagoras’s chal-
lenge, but remains faithful to the way he used the terms earlier in the Protago-
ras and in the Charmides. Philosophia comprises educational conversations with teachers that conduce to a communicational and mental excellence that

Socrates analogizes to gymnastics’ goal of bodily excellence. He introduces
only one novel ele ment: linking private philosophical conversation to its pub-
lic condensation. But the brachylogic volleys associated with Spartan confron-
tation and Sage posturing mean less for the nature of philosophia than for the
color of its packaging. Philosophia is a case of learning ahead of time. The
volleys are competitive. It is uncertain whether, as with Callias’s beloved phi-
losophia, the education that constitutes philosophia and that serves those volleys, is itself competitive. Prob ably it has at least a tincture of sport and parry, in
the fashion of gymnastic exercise; teachers might need to inculcate the spirit
for such exercise.

Thus Plato uses philosophos- group terms in the Protagoras as he uses them in the Charmides. Being philosophos refers to the capacity for conversations, and philosophia to the conversations themselves, ones that follow norms of pro-16 In Plato’s Hippias Major, Socrates needles Hippias for his inability to sell a range of his lectures in Sparta by presenting Spartans as a society of choosy learners (283b5–286a2).

17 Earlier in the dialogue, the name sophistai refers to those characterized by knowledge of wisdom (Pl. Prt. 312c8), who nourish souls on mathêmata (313c5–7), and who teach people to become better (316c5–317c5).

18 In four lines Socrates uses συγγενέσθαι, συγγιγνόμενοι, and συγγίγνονται (342c4–8), leaving no question about the parallel he draws between Sparta and Callias’s house.

19 For more on this topic, see Moore 2016.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 231
ductive engagement and that concern virtues and the possession or transmis-
sion of them. These conversations often include sequential and hard- pressing
questions about definitions and the relationship between similar concepts or
the testing of one another’s literary and gnomic interpretations. In general, phi-
losophia includes a self- consciousness about the conversations themselves,
including an explicit concern for their rules, goals, and educational content.

Already we can see Plato’s conception of philosophia as a redemptive and
quasi- formal version of the conceptions we saw in Gorgias, Thucydides, Dis-
soi Logoi, and the rhetorical teachers. Socrates cards the skein of tactical re-
torts into the smoother plaits of step- wise argumentation. The drills of prepa-
ration assume an intrinsic value. Victory over an ignorant opponent becomes
victory over one’s ignorant self. The implication throughout is that Plato is em-
phasizing the self- cultivation and group work that must always have justified
the sublimation of the fighting instinct into the fast- paced and clever exchange
of words. This emphasis impressed itself on a tightly circumscribed group. We
now turn to the broader sell.

Phaedrus: Two Va ri e ties of Philosophia, or Practice and

Justification?

The Phaedrus can seem to provide the clearest and best contrast between Pla-
to’s innovative construction of philosophia and Isocrates’s construction or a
mundane cultural version of it. So, anyway, much scholarship has assumed.

Close scrutiny of the dozen or so uses of philosophos- group terms in the dia-
logue undermines this assumption. Rather than two va ri e ties of philosophia,
the dialogue pre sents both the practice and a hypothesis about the background
psy chol ogy and metaphysics that would explain the practice’s capacity to make
a person better through conversation.20

Plato’s Phaedrus, set some de cades after the Charmides and Protagoras, depicts Socrates’s conversation with his younger friend Phaedrus, an aspiring
orator and devotee of the speechwriter Lysias. The ending of the dialogue re-
flects explic itly on the meaning and application of the term philosophos, with
the goal of giving content to that to which Socrates hopes Phaedrus and Lysias
might aspire. We should call “philosophos, or something like that” (Pl. Phdr.

278b), Socrates says, whoever can compose speeches with knowledge and not
mere opinion, and who can then defend those speeches while still admitting
their limited value. Philosophos has a laudatory sense: Socrates treats this

20 For more detail on this section, see Moore 2016.

232 CH A PTER 8
lesson as a chastening of Lysias, who according to him has not yet earned the
name (ἐπωνυμία). He also means the term to inspire Phaedrus, who might yet
strive to deserve to be called it. Phaedrus reveals his excitement to try his best;
but he also feels the dig against his erstwhile mentor. In response to Socrates’s
judgment about his favorite, Phaedrus asks Socrates what kind of person they
might call his favorite, Isocrates. Socrates responds by praising Isocrates as
by nature better than Lysias in speeches, as more nobly blended in character,
and as more promising than anyone now alive (279a3–7)— and then adds that
there is by nature within Isocrates’s mind (διανοίᾳ) some (τις) philosophia, and
because of this, a more divine impulse could lead him to better things, should
he want so to be led.

In the course of the conversation that leads up to these closing remarks,

Socrates has already said much about the meaning of the name philosophos
that is to be relayed to Lysias. His mythical palinode speech— which pictures
the course of the soul in love as a char i ot eer with two horses— links philoso-
phoi with truth- discovery, and he later outlines an argument that assumes
that philosophizing involves knowing how things really are, not just how they
seem to be (Pl. Phdr. 261a3–262c4). Socrates’s discussion of reading, and his
continued request for answers and revised answers, shows the importance of
defending one’s views (275d4–276a7). His doubt that he could ever give a
proper account of the soul, or of himself, suggests that human existence calls
for deep modesty and reserve (246a4–6, 266b3– c1).

We might won der, however, about the philosophia mentioned in the di-
alogue’s closing lines that resides by nature within Isocrates’s mind. Does
it refer to the same philosophia that Socrates wants Phaedrus to recommend
to Lysias, which includes investigating real ity, giving reasoned arguments in
support of one’s positions, and recognizing the meagerness of any written ac-
count? From one perspective, it seems it must. Socrates never explic itly tax-
onomizes or ranks versions of philosophia. Further, the proximity between
the two remarks about philosophia suggests a continuity in meaning between
them. From another perspective, however, it might seem that Isocrates’s phi-
losophia, what ever its degree, must differ from the kind that Socrates en-
courages Phaedrus to acquire. We might expect that Socrates and Plato find

Isocrates’s teachings anathema to their vision of good education. Socrates, after
all, cleaves popu lar rhetorical training from the training he recommends for

Phaedrus. Isocrates’s extant speeches, as we saw in the previous chapter, use
the term philosophia to refer to his practice by contrast with the overwrought
and captious arguments of the Socratics and Aristotelians. Surely Isocrates and

Plato competed for students and did so by advancing distinct visions of

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 233
philosophia.21 Recent scholarship simply assumes that Isocrates’s tis philosophia differs from Socrates’s or Plato’s vision.22

There are, therefore, reasons both for accepting and for rejecting the idea
that Plato uses a single idea of philosophia on the final page of the Phaedrus, and by extension, in the dialogue as a whole. As the palinode ends, Socrates
tells Phaedrus to settle on one way of life and to give himself “wholly over to
love accompanied by philosophical talk” (Pl. Phdr. 257b6). Two pages later,

Socrates warns Phaedrus that the cicadas singing overhead tell the muses which
humans spend time in philosophy and which in sheep- like sleep (259b3). Again
two pages later, Socrates tells some logoi to persuade Phaedrus that lest he practice philosophia well, he will never be able to speak well (261a4). What then is the object of Socrates’s encouragement? Once again, as in the Charmides and

Protagoras, Socrates never explic itly defines philosophia, the philosophos, or the activity of philosophein. We can tell only by looking at his uses of them.

The first occurrence of philosophia in the Phaedrus, a crucial one, comes during Socrates’s attempt to one-up Lysias’s speech lauding the non- lover
as the best lover: he will not subject his beloved to the oppressive strictures
of jealousy. Among the reasons Socrates gives against spending time with a
jealous lover is that such a lover tries to keep his beloved away from those
associations that would make him strong rather than weak, wise (σοφός)

rather than unlearned (ἀμαθής), courageous rather than cowardly, eloquent

(ῥητορικός) rather than incapable of speech, and shrewd (ἀγχίνος) rather than
slow (239a2–4).23

21 For the Phaedrus as Plato’s contest with Isocrates, see also Howland 1937; Coulter 1967; Burger 1980, 115–26; Nehamas 1990; Goggin and Long 1993; McAdon 2004; Cooper 2004;

Nightingale 2004, 14–35; McCoy 2009.

22 De Vries 1969 ad 279a9: “Socrates refers to Isocrates with “mordant sarcasm,” and “Plato leaves it to his readers to decide whether they will take . . . φιλοσοφία in the Platonic or the Isocratic sense”; see also De Vries 1953, 40–41, and De Vries 1971, 388. Yunis 2011 ad 279a8–
b2: The τις “suggests that Isocrates occupies an ambiguous position between the (conventional) philosophia that he promotes and the (true Platonic) philosophia that remains for him an as yet unrealized possibility.” Werner 2012, 230n162: “it is likely that Plato is using the term φιλοσοφία here as a way of taunting Isocrates, and is deliberately leaving it ambiguous as to which sense of the term is meant”; see also 120n40 and 228–29. Similar views about two opposed senses of philosophia are held by Brown and Coulter 1971, 411–14, and Griswold 1986, 286n18. McAdon 2004, 32–35, supports his view that Isocrates’s view of philosophy is dif ferent from Plato’s in the Phaedrus by appeal only to Plato’s uses of the term “philosophy” found outside the Phaedrus.

23 We have no reason to think Socrates rejects the meaning of the words in this section, despite his rejection of the authorship of this speech (contra De Vries 1969 ad 239b4; Brown and Coulter 1971; Rowe 1986 ad 239b3–4; Yunis 2011 ad 239b4).

234 CH A PTER 8

Keeping him away from many useful associations (συνουσιῶν . . . ὠφελίμων)

that would make him most a man (μάλιστ᾽ ἀνήρ), he is cause of a great harm;
and greatest of them are those from which he would become most thoughtful

(φρονιμώτατος)— and this is divine philosophia. (Pl. Phdr. 239a7– b4)

So philosophia is a kind of social arrangement identical to that described in
the Charmides and Protagoras. Whereas other associations conduce to matu-
rity as venues for the growth of strength, skill, experience, courage, fluency
in public address, and cleverness, this association helps people become more
thoughtful, reasonable, and insightful. It is a distinctly beneficial association.

Its satisfactions cause participants to turn their backs on other putative rela-
tionships and obligations, as the jealous lover fears (cf. 252a1– b1).

Instances of the philosophos word group next arise in Socrates’s second
speech (the “Palinode”), one that many readers take as decisive for Plato’s
views of philosophy. Socrates has represented the life of the gods as souls in
chariots endlessly circling the world. Mortals in this repre sen ta tion, by con-
trast, stop circling the world once they lose sight of real ity (τῆς τοῦ ὄντος
θέας), which sooner or later they will ( Phdr. 248b4). This means that every
human soul has in fact seen the realities (τὰ ὄντα), difficult as keeping an eye
on them may be, but that each eventually loses track of the truth, suffering
from distraction and badness (λήθης . . . κακίας), and falls to the ground

(248c7). Fortunately, not all is lost; souls are transplanted into human lives,
each in one of nine ordered classes. Into the premier class go the philosophoi:

The [soul] that sees the most [is put] into a seed of a man who will become a
philosophos or a philokalos or a dedicatee of culture and love (φιλοσόφου ἤ
φιλοκάλου ἤ μουσικοῦ τινος καὶ ἐρωτικοῦ). (Pl. Phdr. 248d2–4)

This passage emphasizes something other than what the instances of philoso-
phia found in Charmides, Protagoras, and the passage at 239a– b emphasizes, namely that philosophy is a conversational and mutually improving or benefit-ing group practice. It treats the philosophos as someone who pursues a distinct
way of life, perhaps as a master of the practice of a certain kind of conversa-
tion. Along with its focus on the philosophos’s way of life is the palinode’s
linking of that way of life to two others: that of the philokalos and of the person of mousikê and erôtikê.24 Socrates does not say how these types of life are related, whether as identical, or as va ri e ties of the philosophical life, or as
distinct species of a common genus of which philosophos is just one species—

24 Scholarship on this passage often ignores these companion lives, as in Werner 2012, 119.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 235
knowing which would help us understand philosophia. We can look to the eight
lower classes, most of which also have related ways of life, for clues.

Just below the philosophos and his two or three siblings we find the law-
bound king (βασιλέως ἐννόμου) and the military and ruling person (ἤ
πολεμικοῦ καὶ ἀρχικοῦ). The connective structure seems to distinguish three
kinds of life here. The next level down includes the politikos and the people
involved in estate management and business; the fourth, the hardworking man
of the gymnasium25 and the person who knows healing for bodies; the fifth,
the soothsayer and the person concerned with certain rituals; the sixth, the
poet and the person concerned with mimêsis; the seventh, the city- and earth-
workers; the eighth, the person engaged in sophistry or crowd- rallying; and
the ninth, the tyrant ( Phdr. 248d4– e3). Some patterns reveal themselves.26

Members at the same level do differ; the city- and earth- workers (craftsmen
and farmers) provide the clearest case. Yet the members at each level also share
a general concern: management of a city; management of smaller groups of
people; the well- being of the body; religious observance; creation of art; skilled
mechanical production of goods and ser vices; and persuasion of people. The
entries in a level mentioned later are not defective, derivative, or secondary
forms of the first entry. The second, fourth, and sixth levels prove this.

This pattern suggests that the three named lives at the first level are neither
avatars of the noble philosophos nor his bastard relatives. There are no reasons for thinking the life of the philosophos is being treated as better than or logically prior to the lives of beauty (τὸ καλόν) or of culture (μουσική) and love

(ἐρωτική). They are dif fer ent ways of life connected by a general concern. In
a passage quoted and studied in chapter 5, Thucydides links the activities of the first two types of life. “We philokaloumen with economy, and we philos-ophoumen without weakness.” Pericles must pair the charges of philokalein
and philosophein because they result from similar appearances— indulging in
building and in talking, in wasting money and time— and have similar goals:

self- cultivation in the preparation for what may come. The Athenians have ac-
cumulated adequate resources, both in buildings and in thought. From this per-
spective, the palinode’s pairing of the philosophos and the philokalos is unsurprising. Both sorts of people have good practical reasons for acting in ways that
seem, to outsiders, to be idle talk or the de cadent expansion of one’s affairs.

The linkage with those dedicated to mousikê and erôtikê is unsurpris-
ing. The Phaedo pre sents Socrates saying that he repeatedly dreamt he was

25 Burnet 1901 supplies a conjectured disjunction, φιλοπόνου <ἢ> γυμναστικῶν, which would allow for three distinct people at this level, not merely two.

26 Yunis 2011, 114–15, conjectures an in ter est ing account of the groupings.

236 CH A PTER 8
instructed to make mousikê (Pl. Phd. 60e3, 7). He said he took this dream to be cheering him on in his pre sent activity, thinking that his philosophia constituted mousikê, indeed of the greatest kind (61a4). Admittedly the usual view
of mousikê has it as the production of poems (61b1), not doing what Socrates
does. Yet he still thought philosophy fit. This might seem paradoxical; on the
ladder of lives in the palinode, the philosophical life is perched five levels
above the poetical life. But mousikê, rather, involves a special attitude toward the Muses and high culture. Socrates says that he composed a hymn to Apollo,
and then versified the stories of Aesop.27 The Phaedrus shows that the Muses
may be propitiated in still further ways, including with poetry that teaches
each generation the splendid works of the ancients (Pl. Phdr. 245a1–8) and with

“other practices” (259d3).

Throughout the dialogue, then, Socrates draws complex overlaps between
philosophia, philokalia, and an interest in mousikê and erôtikê. The lover of beauty (ὁ ἐρῶν τῶν καλῶν) is called a lover (ἐραστὴς καλεῖται) when he partakes in mania (μετέχων τῆς μανίας, Pl. Phdr. 249e3–4). Socrates often attributes to himself knowledge of ta erôtika.28 Somehow doing philosophy is
similar to these other socially and po liti cally salient practices. All four share a
certain civic piety, a seriousness of deliberate preparation, a concern for con-
veying cultural norms to later generations, and an orientation toward wisdom
and its best guise, beauty, and attention to living well (cf. 250a5– e1).

Granted, the crucial point may appear to be that philosophoi have seen the
most of “what is.” Philosophia is to be defined in connection to the really real.

In the palinode, the really real is the set of universals, that which is ascer-
tainable only by mind, for example the universals of justice, discipline, and
knowledge ( Phdr. 247c5– e2). “[We] followers of Zeus look for beloveds who
are philosophoi and leaders ( hêgimonikos) by nature” (252e3), in that “we”

are philosophoi, too, and gaze at the whole, simple, unchanging, and blissful
revelations in a pure light (250b7–8). Yet a unique connection between phi-
losophia and the universals vanishes in the solvent of the passage’s details.

The philosophos saw in a previous life more of “what is” than others but, all
the same, failed to keep seeing it. The previous incarnations of the other ways
of life on the nine- level scale also saw a mea sure of the really real. Essentially,
the philokaloi and dedicatees of culture and love saw the same amount of the
really real as the philosophoi. So the philosophos cannot be defined solely by his (past self’s) connection to the really real; every one else shares in that
connection.

27 See Betegh 2009; Kurke 2011, 251–55 with 259–64.

28 Cf. Belfiore 2012.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 237

For none of the lives does the palinode stipulate the actions constitutive
of those connections. It does not say how one “philosophizes.” The soul ob-
serves the really real; it strug gles to stay high in the shared orbit; then it falls
to earth. But it gives no earthly correlate to this meta phorical observing. This
interpretative gap means that we cannot simply assume that the human way
to seek to know real ity is dif fer ent from any other purportedly non- Platonic
method of accessing real ity, as long as that method aims to reveal the nature of
justice, discipline, and knowledge. Conversation, modeling, apprenticeship,
speech- training, and mathe matics seem plausible candidates. All that the pal-
inode suggests is that the method of observation and contention practiced by
philosophoi must share something with the practice of the philokaloi and the dedicatees of culture and love.

The palinode uses the verb philosophein in ways that treat philosophia as a pedagogical practice (249a1–2). Its most complex discussion of a philosophos
comes immediately after, when describing the conditions for reincarnation as
a human.

For a [soul] that has never seen the truth will never arrive into this shape [of
a human]. For a human must comprehend a thing said in accord with a form

(συνιέναι κατ᾽ εἶδος λεγόμενον), it coming from many perceptions into one,
being brought together by reasoning (ἐκ πολλῶν ἰὸν αἰσθήσεων εἰς ἓν λογισμῷ
συναιρούμενον): and this is recollection of those things that the soul of us once
saw, having accompanied god and looked askance at what we now claim is real,
and coming up to what is really real. It is for this reason that the mind (διάνοια)

of the philosophos alone becomes winged: he is always, thanks to his memory,
as near as he can be to these things, the proximity to which things makes even
god divine. And indeed, a man using such reminders correctly, being continually
initiated into completed mystery rites, alone becomes really completed [i.e., initi-
ated]. And standing outside the realm of things that it is human to take seriously,
and becoming next to the divine, he is censured by the many as being deranged,
but in fact he is possessed, as escapes the notice of the many. (Pl. Phdr. 249b5– d3) Humans collate and abstract— they reason— and thereby reach the truth more
readily; philosophoi distinguish themselves by doing this most consistently.

The passage describes the pro cess by which individual experiences become
something linguistic and do so only in their unification.

As the passage continues, the philosophos is described as living in the human
way best. Like all other humans, the philosophos is engaged with the universals, the things said in accord with a form, but unlike non- philosophoi he is “always”

engaged with them, to such an extent that he seems bizarre to many people.

238 CH A PTER 8

Of course, as the run-up to the first use of philosophia in the palinode makes
clear, the philosophos fails to maintain complete focus on the really real, even if he does not fail as soon as others do. So, too, here, the “always” is qualified as
kata dunamin, “as far as [the soul] is able.” The difference is quantitative. Since absolute attendance on the really real is divine—it makes any divine thing (such
as gods) divine— all humans share in, or ought to share in, something divine.

The philosophos, in seeking to select or bring together perceptions into unifying speeches, shares most in what is most human: paradoxically, in being divine.

We should pause to note similarities between this and earlier passages. The

“divine philosophia” mentioned in Socrates’s first speech reveals itself as a
richer concept. Philosophia is not just of the deepest importance. It is, as least in this most recent expression, the practice that contributes most directly to
being divine. Also in that earliest use, Socrates said that philosophia made one
most thoughtful (φρονιμώτατος). Here too philosophia involves recollecting
the most; amplifying one’s understanding, reason, and deliberation; and hav-
ing a mind ( dianoia) most cognizant with the sort of unities typical of divine
rationality. Thus Socrates uses the word philosophia in his second speech in
much the same way he uses it in his first speech. Nor is it so surprising that the
philosophos, though really manifesting what is best in humans, seems strange
to most humans. As we saw in the discussion of the first use in the palinode,
philosophoi are grouped with others who are avid about what is most signifi-
cant in culture— beauty, art, love— and these people look strange.

The palinode’s last two uses of philosophos- group words suggest that phi-
losophia is a way of life devoted to proper self- integration. It first addresses the ideal case. Good lovers
strain against [the embraces of the beloved] through shame and speech (μετ᾽
αἰδοῦς καὶ λόγου ἀντιτείνει); if, in leading to a well- ordered life (τεταγμένην
τε δίαιταν) and philosophia, the best part of their mind should prevail, they lead (διάγουσιν) a blessed and mentally integrated (ὁμονοητικόν) life, being masters
of themselves and well- ordered (ἐγκρατεῖς αὑτῶν καὶ κόσμιοι), enslaving that
by which badness enters the soul, and liberating that by which virtue enters. (Pl.

Phdr. 256a6– b3)

The palinode then proceeds to the non- ideal but still admirable case:

If to a coarser and unphilosophical life (διαίτῃ φορτικωτέρᾳ τε καὶ ἀφιλοσόφῳ)

[they turn], and are dedicated to honor (φιλοτίμῳ δὲ χρήσωνται) . . . [ these people
may choose what people call blessed (sc. sex) and] do things not approved by the whole mind (ἅτε οὐ πάσῃ δεδογμένα τῇ διανοίᾳ πράττοντες). (Pl. Phdr. 256b7– c7)

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 239

Philosophia is identified in the first of these two quotations with being well-
ordered, directed by reason, self- controlled, integrated, and protective of the
prerogatives of virtue. There is no reduction of philosophia to a concern for
the really real or to a professional approach to theoretical inquiry, even if such
a concern is, in some way, a condition of philosophia, as it is of any human life, and such an approach would be an appropriate vehicle for that concern. There is a
repeated emphasis on the traits linked to discipline, the very virtue on which the

Phaedrus closes (279c3). The subsequent passage coordinates philosophia with the absence of coarseness, contrasts it with the concerns for honor and bodily
plea sure, reiterates its oddness in the public eye, and treats it as the result of
wholehearted attention alone. Just as at the end of the Phaedrus, where Socrates
prays that his outside and inside are coordinate,29 here the palinode states that
philosophia means acting (publicly) as the mind decides (privately).

At the close of the palinode, Socrates expresses his wish that Phaedrus turn
to philosophia. He prays to Erôs, using philosophia group words twice in close succession:

Blaming Lysias as father of the [first] speech, stop him from [making] such
speeches, and turn him to philosophia, just as Polemarchus, his brother, has been turned. (Pl. Phdr. 257b2–4)

[Do this] so that this lover of him no longer wavers as he does now, but wholly
toward love accompanied by philosophical speeches he may make his life.

(257b4–6)

We may not know exactly why Lysias’s speechmaking does not count as
philosophical; Socrates obfuscates his critique of Lysias’s speech to the un-
loved (234e5–235a8). But Socrates says that Polemarchus has turned toward
philosophia. The Phaedrus tells us nothing else about Polemarchus; but in the Republic, we see that Polemarchus engages Socrates well in conversation.30 Polemarchus opens the Republic by having his slave restrain Socrates;

Socrates learns that he wishes to force him into joining him and others in a
discussion at his house followed by the observation of some new races (Pl. R.

1.327a1–328a10). He interrupts Socrates to defend his father, Cephalus, when
his father fails to answer Socrates’s questions about justice consistently; he
observes that Simonides’s verses support Cephalus’s contention. For several

29 On this closing prayer, see Clay 1979; Griswold 1986, 226–29; Yunis 2011, 246–49; Wer-
ner 2012, 230–35.

30 On Polemarchus’s character, see Page 1990; see Gifford 2001 and Howland 2004 on the
historical events involving Polemarchus alluded to in Republic Book 1.

240 CH A PTER 8
pages Polemarchus acts the poetic expert, expounding Simonides’s view but
graciously modifying it when Socrates shows the untenability of those inter-
pretations. When he fails to defend even these modifications, he says that he
would gladly join Socrates in battle against those who believe justice means
harming one’s enemies (1.331d3–336a8). Some books later, Polemarchus and

Adeimantus whisper to each other. We learn that they were complaining that

Socrates did not explain how the community of wives and children, the idea for
which follows from the view that friends hold possessions in common, should
be manifest in the city he describes (5.449a7–450a1). This evidence pre sents

Polemarchus as an interlocutor who loves conversation with Socrates, caring
about the most plausible views of justice, graciously accepting Socrates’s ques-
tions and refutations, and curious about the practical details of this theoretical
model.

Phaedrus sees value both in the life Lysias models and in the life Socrates
describes. The latter is the life not expressly of philosophia but of “love ac-
companied by philosophical speeches.” This suggests that philosophia names
a kind of conversation with a friend or beloved. From the conversations with

Polemarchus depicted in the Republic, we see that such conversations will be
those that press a person to express what he finds most valuable and true, and
then to undergo testing of those views he expresses.

Socrates’s exhortation to philosophia continues even after the palinode. He
turns from his explicit concern with speech competition and the nature of
love to the nature of good speaking and writing. Perhaps because he intends
to continue with less rhetorical brilliance than before, he tells Phaedrus that
their continued conversations remain beloved by the divine and in par tic u lar
by the Muses.

The cicadas report to the most se nior Muses, Calliope and Ourania, who among
humans spends time in philosophia and honoring their music (μουσικήν), a music
that is a talk (λόγους) both human and divine and that has the most beautiful
sound. (Pl. Phdr. 259d3–8)

Philosophia honors the Muses’ sonorous talk. This talk is both human and di-
vine; as we have learned before, these coincide at the level of the concern for
virtue. Socrates treats what he has said as reasons that they continue to talk

(λεκτέον). This suggests that philosophia honors the gods by mirroring their
speech, on the human though still aspirationally divine plane.

The philosophical conversation to which Socrates encourages Phaedrus’s
commitment proceeds, for the remainder of the dialogue, as a meandering in-
quiry into the nature of speaking well. A good speaker needs only to know

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 241
what an audience finds persuasive, Phaedrus tells Socrates ( Phdr. 260a1–4).

Socrates shows in return that Phaedrus does not really believe this (260b1–
d1). But in showing him this, Socrates worries that he has spoken too harshly
against the partisan of rhe toric (260d3–9). So he brings forth some arguments

(λόγοι) to represent a more nuanced position. He addresses those logoi:

Come to us, noble creatures, and persuade our beautiful- child Phaedrus that
unless he philosophizes adequately (ἱκανῶς), he will never be adequate at
speaking (ἱκανός ποτε λέγειν) about anything. (Pl. Phdr. 261a4–5)

Philosophizing is a condition for being a good orator. The logoi go on to
claim that perfect deception requires perfect knowledge about every thing

(261d10–262c3). So it would seem that philosophia is knowledge of the details
of every thing in the world, so that, as the logoi say, one may know how ex-
actly every thing differs. But this argument is itself deceptive, because it is
invalid, and deliberately so.31 Furthermore, nothing in the previous uses of
philosophos- group words has suggested that philosophizing involves becom-
ing omniscient. Indeed, the few instances relating philosophia to contact with
the really real suggest distancing oneself from the bulk of things one could
possibly know to focus on the most fundamental aspects of the world. Even
more tellingly, the conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus that follows,
which seems to epitomize good discussion— Socrates, after all, persuades

Phaedrus— does not require Socrates to know every thing. So the logoi, not
surprisingly given their name, “[mere] arguments,” do not satisfactorily link
philosophia and omniscience.32

Yet the logoi’s invalid, unpre ce dented, and incongruous discussion of phi-
losophia has a positive lesson. It seems likely that both Phaedrus and we are
to remember that philosophizing is something quite dif fer ent from knowing
the details of every thing in the world (a similar lesson is given by the Platonic

Rival Lovers; see chapter 10). Philosophia seems perhaps a response to the fact that we do not know all those details. As phi los o phers we are instead to maintain a critical consciousness in conversation, to make sure to say what we
really believe, and to ask questions when our interlocutors’ remarks become
unclear or too abstract.

We now return to the end of the Phaedrus. At the beginning of this section,

I quoted part of Socrates’s closing remarks. The longer remark appears to
make an etymological play on the word philosophos:

31 Moore 2013a.

32 On the status of logoi as reified speeches in fourth- century BCE Athens, see Ford 2008.

242 CH A PTER 8

If a person composed these [sc. speeches] knowing how the truth stands, is able
to support in argument what he has written, and can show, with his own avow-
als, that his writings are effectively worthless . . . to call this person sophos
seems to me to be grand and appropriate for god alone; but either philosophos or something like that would be more fitting and apt for him. (Pl. Phdr. 278c4– d6) The second and third criteria for philosophos- hood are simple enough. Defending a view is a central part of any productive conversation, especially those
about one’s possession of virtues. The Platonic dialogues show little else be-
sides conversations containing defenses of such positions. And showing that
one’s composed words are of little value requires only the awareness and self-
awareness described in the Apology, that the world is harder to know than
mortals tend to think. This awareness comes especially through conversation,
the reciprocal testing of views.

Controversy attends the first criterion. What truth must a philosophical
speaker know? It cannot be the truth of the really real, since only gods are in
this state of wisdom, and philosophoi differ from the gods. Nor was there ever
a satisfactory argument in favor of the philosophos being omniscient, knowl-
edgeable about absolutely anything a person might talk about. It is not obvi-
ous what remains. It is apparently a deliberate aporia in the dialogue, what
the good speaker should know. This aporia follows Socrates everywhere; it
is never obvious what he knows— besides, perhaps, his own ignorance and ta
erôtika— such that his conversations and life go the way they do. What seems
more obvious is that a philosophical speaker would know, besides the ways
both to defend a speech and to abandon a speech, about what to make a speech.

One should talk about what really matters, what would really honor the gods

( Phdr. 277d10–278b4). For the philosophos, knowing the truth may amount to knowing (i.e., truly) what to talk about.

Socrates does not make much of the fact that this is the philosophos’s activ-
ity. Some other name would work just as well.33 The etymological connection
implied between sophos and philosophos, which recurs in Heraclides’s story of Pythagoras and the subsequent tradition, is playful, but provides little information. The philosophos may have some relationship to the wise person

( sophon) or to wisdom ( sophia), but the prefix phil- does not establish the tenor of that relationship with any determinacy, except that it is not one of identity.

We find the final use of the dialogue’s freighted term, philosophia, in

Socrates’s closing remarks about Isocrates, cited at the beginning of this

33 Yunis 2011 ad loc. gives a list of alternative names culled from the dialogue.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 243
section. Here I quote the entire passage. Socrates has just told Phaedrus to
relate the above results concerning philosophia to Lysias:

PHAEDRUS: And you— what? How will you proceed? For we must not at all leave
aside your companion.

SOCRATES: Who is this?

PHAEDRUS: Isocrates the beautiful; what will you report to him, Socrates? What
will we call him?

SOCRATES: Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus; but what I prophesy for him, I am
willing to say.

PHAEDRUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: Compared to Lysias, he seems naturally better at speeches. He also
seems more nobly blended in character, and so as he grows older it would
hardly be amazing were the difference in speechwriting between him and
past or present- day speechwriters to grow wider than that between a man
and boys. And wider even than that, if he were unsatisfied with doing only
that, and some diviner impulse led him to greater things; for there is some
philosophia naturally in the mind of that man. (Pl. Phdr. 278e5–279b1)

This is Plato’s sole explicit reference to Isocrates in his dialogues. What ex-
plains Plato’s silence everywhere else is hard to say. What seems clear is that
up to this point, Socrates has not distinguished between multiple distinct types
of philosophia or philosophoi. He has done quite the opposite, observing that many types of people not explic itly named philosophoi share in the essential
features of philosophia. There are no grounds for the reader to assume, then,
that Socrates here refers to a special, heretofore unmentioned philosophia. It
is in fact easy to understand Socrates’s point about Isocrates while assum-
ing that philosophia means here what it has meant throughout the dialogue.

Socrates may be saying that Isocrates knows what he should be talking about,
the education and well- being of people; knows how to defend his positions,
giving arguments of a varied nature; and knows the relative poverty of his
wisdom, presuming a modesty of pedagogical power.34 It may even be that
young Isocrates seeks to know about the nature of justice and discipline and
knowledge, at least to a degree of precision he finds acceptable. Perhaps Pla-
to’s disappointment with Isocrates has even more pathos given his belief that

Socrates would have approved of the young Isocrates.35 The similarity in the

34 Johnson 1959 attempts a reconstruction of Isocrates’s thoughtful pedagogical method.

35 Werner 2012, by contrast, asserts on unspecified evidence that “Plato was angered by Isocrates’s use of the term φιλοσοφία” (227–30 and n158; my italics).

244 CH A PTER 8
names of Socrates and Isocrates is prob ably not lost on Plato (cf. Pl. Plt. 258a1), and so too the similarities, and dissimilarities, in their intellectual practices.

In summary, we have found that there are no obvious bifurcations in the
term philosophos’s use, where some instances would have a “conventional”

or “rhetorical” meaning and others would have a “technical” or “Platonic”

meaning. We might posit instead two apsects of the same enterprise, what we
might call the “empirical” aspect, what one does and seeks when doing phi-
losophia, and the “theoretical” aspect, what explains the condition for and
value of doing philosophia. Thus the Phaedrus can count both as a work of philosophia, namely as a practical and theoretical framework for those already
committed to the practice, and as a protreptic to philosophia, namely, as an ex-
hortation to the practice articulated in the practical and theoretical registers.

Without doubt Plato innovates, but this is in the conditions for successful phi-
losophia, not in what most fundamentally it looks like.

Parmenides and Philebus: Corroboration of
the Conversation View

The lesson from the Phaedrus, that philosophia is a kind of conversation concerned with mutual self- improvement, finds a pair of summaries in two perhaps
unlikely dialogues, which are Plato’s dialectically and metaphysically most
erudite. The Parmenides, Plato’s dramatically earliest dialogue, opens when
one Cephalus of Clazomenae asks for the famed story of the young Socrates’s
conversation with Zeno and Parmenides in 449 BCE.36 He wants to regale
his friends with it, whom he calls “highly philosophical” (μάλα φιλόσοφοι,

Pl. Prm. 126b8). Apparently they share with the Protagoras’s Callias a love of hearing and perhaps reflecting on or learning from certain kinds of conversation, in par tic u lar those between outstanding thinkers. Early in that conversa-
tion between Socrates and his elders, Socrates admits his difficulties with the
concept of universal forms. He cannot get over his prejudice against putative
forms of mud or other execrables. Parmenides diagnoses this blockage: on
account of his youth, “philosophia has not yet taken hold (ἀντείληπται)” and
so has not yet liberated him from the grip of public opinion (130e2). In Par-
menides’s mouth, philosophia means going through arguments on their own
terms, in a conversation embargoing outside judgments of honor or disgrace.

The criteria of good philosophical conversation, which include the norms of

36 This is not the Cephalus of Syracuse, host in the Republic. The dramatic date of the dialogue’s frame is in the late 380s BCE. See Nails 2002, 83–84, 308–9.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 245
logic, explanatory clarity, interpretative fairness, and a shared motivation,
come from the participants to the exchange. Parmenides goes on to encourage

Socrates’s development of a coherent theory of the forms. Without forms, con-
versation would be altogether impossible, he claims.37 And without conversa-
tion, whither philosophia (135c5)? The implication is: it would be vanquished,
undercut, impossible. Fortunately, Socrates has a noble impulse (ὁρμή) toward
talking (λόγος), Parmenides says, and so he will want to preserve conversation
and, accordingly, philosophia (135d). Thus in the Parmenides, philosophia is good conversation (Plato’s first point), and conversation may depend, for any
success, on knowable universals (Plato’s second point).

We get a similar picture from the Philebus, Plato’s dialogue about the rela-
tive roles of plea sure and reason in the best life. Socrates gets his primary in-
terlocutor, Protarchus, to agree that there are two kinds of arithmetic, calcula-
tion, and mea sure ment: the kind practiced by the many, including builders
and traders; and the kind practiced by those philosophizing or working in the
manner of philosophia. The former kind deals with irregular units, the latter
with identical ones. Protarchus is brought to infer that skills may have two
forms, such that the skill “of those philosophizing” is more precise in clarity
and purity than that of those not philosophizing. This means that the technai
animated by the philosophos’s motivation (ὁρμήν) are more precise and true
in terms of mea sure and counting. The most precise comprehension of being,
real ity, and that which is always same comes through philosophy’s métier, “the
power of conversation” (ἡ τοῦ διαλέγεσθαι δύναμις).38 Philosophia is not it-
self this comprehension, but the best route to it. Protarchus makes this clear
when he cites Gorgias as claiming for himself the greatest power with the skill
of persuasion (ἡ τοῦ πείθειν [τεχνή]), which is simply the route to the good
thing itself, making all things subject to oneself. The dialogue comes to an
end with Socrates’s final denigration of hedonists, who treat “the love felt by
beasts” as better grounds for deciding on the good life than the love of argu-
ments that keep coming to light (μεμαντευμένων ἑκάστοτε λόγων) thanks to
the philosophic muse (ἐν μούσῃ φιλοσόφῳ).39 Even when divinized, philoso-
phia provides the norms for productive conversation. And so in the Philebus, as in Parmenides and Phaedrus, philosophia is a mode of conversation that edifies because, as we learn here, it differs from other practices in its orientation toward the stability, purity, and excellence of actual real ity.

37 Against this translation, see Gill 2012, 18n1, with bibliography.

38 This is often translated “the art of dialectic,” but for that we would need technê dialektikê.

39 Pl. Phlb. 57c2–3 (two forms), 57d1 (in terms of mea sure ment and counting), 58a2–3 (what is the most precise comprehension), 57e6–7 (power of conversation), 59d1–8 (best route to comprehension), 58a7– b1 (parallel to Gorgias), 67b5–6 (philosophical muse).

246 CH A PTER 8

For reasons any reader may see, Plato did not intend a broad public to give
the Parmenides serious study, and a sympathetic readership for the Philebus
might need considerable toleration for metaphysics and moral- psychological
questions and distinctions. And yet they pre sent philosophia so named in the
same way that Plato’s more accessible dialogues do. This suggests that through-
out his work, he deploys a commonplace view of philosophia, even if he does
much more than is common to understand how, if it is to work, philosophia
does work.

Lysis and Symposium: Two More Protreptic Etymologies

From the evidence of the Apology discussed in chapter 6, I have assumed that Plato takes up a name that Socrates and his friends have been called, reconstructs or rediscovers the positive sense of it, retrojects that positive notion onto
the stories he tells of Socrates’s conversations, and then at times explains the
conditions for or the benefit of philosophia. The rediscovery is for those stuck with the name philosophoi, or those sensitive to its charge, or those curious
about the group that its limits of application seem to circumscribe. From this
perspective, Plato treats the name as opaque, defined ostensively by those to
whom it applies. His characters use the term naturally, and through their use
they assert the range of application: the practices, the people, the intentions.

As long as we see their use as basically popu lar, their changes in emphasis can
sink in. Their repetition helps acculturate readers to the shift.

In four dialogues, Plato’s Socrates pre sents reflections on the composition
of the word philosophia. We have already seen those in the Phaedrus, where he juxtaposes the name sophos with philosophos and treats the latter as inferior in epistemic authority or confidence. He treats the phil- prefix only im-
plicitly, as contributing to that inferiority. In three other dialogues, however,

Socrates gives more robust and affirmative consideration to the prefix.

This is obvious especially in the Lysis, Plato’s dialogue about the nature of
friendship, philia. Socrates begins the conversation there by convincing Hip-
pothales that he should get his beloved, Lysis, to recognize that he lacks the
wisdom that serves as foundation for the freedom and happiness he desires

(Pl. Lys. 207d5–210d10). He continues the conversation with Lysis’s closest
friend, Menexenus. Impressed at Menexenus’s friendship with Lysis, he ex-
claims how much he desires a friend and how little he knows about getting
one, and in doing so he introduces phil- prefixed terms into the discussion. This occasions the first of two steps in revaluing philosophia: spinning another once

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 247
negative phil- prefixed term, philetairos (“companion”). This lays the ground-work for another case of positive spin:

Since childhood I’ve been desiring (ἐπιθυμῶν) a certain possession (κτήματός
του), as one person desires one thing, another person another. This man desires
to possess horses, that one dogs, another gold, another honor. But whereas I feel
pretty calm (πρᾴως ἔχω) toward those things, toward the possession of friends

I am extremely desirous (πάνυ ἐρωτικῶς), and I would wish (βουλοίμην) for
myself a good friend more than the finest quail or rooster a person might own—
and yes, by God, even more than a horse and a dog, so it seems— and, by the

Dog, I think I would much sooner welcome a companion (ἑταῖρον) than the gold
of Darius, more even than Darius himself: it is in this way I am sort of (τις)

philetairos. (Pl. Lys. 211d7– e8)

Desiring a companion ( hetairon) is like desiring any other possession, either
weakly or powerfully. Socrates is “extremely desirous.”40 He says that this
makes him “sort of philetairos.” The qualifier tis shows that he uses the word in an unusual way. Thucydides and Aeschines use the term as something negative, to refer to a vain loyalty, a pride in a sense of belonging and the apparent
willingness to sacrifice even though the benefits will really accrue entirely
to one’s honor.41 Xenophon similarly glosses it as a keenness to serve others
with ulterior motives: to the ultimate end of receiving benefits in return.42 Ar-
istotle collocates it with philophiloi as the attributes of children in their excessive plea sure from spending time with others, caring nothing for the profit
or loss of such relationships, and indeed as a symptom of their wide- ranging
disposition to excess.43 So, in the fourth century BCE, philetairos has a not
altogether positive sense, and it never other wise means “desiring a friend,” or
even “lacking a friend.” Socrates is saying, as Aristotle said about the philau-
tos (chapter 3), that we could construe philetairos this way, even though it has never actually meant this.

Not long after, Socrates generalizes from his playful reconstruction of
philetairos. Having argued from the hypothesis that friendship requires the
partners to the friendship to return the love or friendship, he concludes that
this means there are no philippoi if their object of love, horses, do not love
them in return. Glossing philippoi as “friends/lovers of horses” is fictive and

40 Cf. Sappho 16.1–4 PLF.

41 Thuc. 3.82.4; Aeschin. 1.110 ( Against Timarchus).

42 Xen. Cyr. 8.3.49.

43 See chapter 3, p. 77.

248 CH A PTER 8
tendentious, since Socrates cannot believe it generally means either “lack-
ing horses,” or “wanting to be friends” with horses, or even “feeling love”

for horses.44 Socrates then lists, as those who will not actually be friends
unless their objects befriend them in return, the friends- of- quail (φιλόρτυγες),
friends- of- dogs (φιλόκυνες), friends- of- wine (φίλοινοι), friends- of- exercise

(φιλογυμνασταί), and, fi nally, friends- of- sophia (φιλόσοφοι) ( Lys. 212d6–7).

This hectic play on phil- prefixed terms is suspicious. Socrates acts as though
they all take the form “friend of/desire for x.” That purported homogeneity is
fictitious. His rhetorical aim is clear: it prepares for a new gloss on philoso-
phos, one connected to being desirous for a sophia that one lacks.45

That Socrates gives a new gloss to the philosophos word group here is
clear from the one time he uses the term naturally, where he uses it to refer
to conversation and conversationality in just the way he does in the Protago-
ras, Charmides, and Phaedrus. The dialogue begins with Socrates talking to Lysis, getting him to admit his lack of wisdom, and then to Menexenus, taking an erudite line about the subjectivity or objectivity of the state of being “a
friend.” At the point of Menexenus’s refutation, Lysis chimes in, observing that

Menexenus’s view cannot be sustained. Hearing this, Socrates acknowledges
his delight in Lysis’s philosophia (Pl. Lys. 213d8). This must mean Lysis’s competence at this sort of self- and other- examining conversation about fundamental matters, such as sophia and philia. That is because Lysis has revealed his careful attention to the conversation (213d4–5), his willingness to critique
views advanced in the conversation, even those from his friend (213d2–3), and
his openness to undergoing conversation himself, staying with it even to the
point of admitting ignorance. So in its unmarked use in the dialogue, philoso-
phia denotes the familiar Socratic conversations of the Platonic dialogues, not
the lack of, desire for, and special friendship with sophia.

Socrates’s new gloss does not explain what philosophia has always meant.

We cannot say that these special kinds of conversations, and the competence
in their engagement, are so called because they were always practical or inter-
personal expressions of an intense desire for sophia. The previous chapters of
this book have shown that this could not have been the meaning.46 What we
can say is that Socrates is advancing a lighthearted yet novel interpretation of

44 It generally means “equestrian,” often as a national trait, e.g., the people of Aetna (Pind.

Nem. 9.32), the people of Thrace (Eur. Hec. 9, 428; Soph. fr. 582), or Trojans (Eur. fr. 935; Soph.

fr. 859), but also as a personal trait, e.g., Hieron of Syracuse, who won a chariot race (Bacchyl.

3.69), and Cyrus, φιλιππότατος καὶ τοῖς ἵπποις ἄριστα χρῆσθαι (Xen. An. 1.9.5.4). The implication is prob ably “horsey,” inclined to spend a lot on horses or horse racing, perhaps as a sign of wealth and leisure.

45 E.g., Pl. Lys. 209c4, 209e2, 210a6, 210a8–d9.

46 Cf. Peterson 2011, 247–48, on more plausible words to express “lover of wisdom.”

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 249
those conversations and the disposition to hold them. We can understand them
as expressions of a desire for sophia, even if the prac ti tion ers neither felt or identified such a desire, nor had any attitude toward sophia as such, and even
if the word came from a name meaning something like “emulating sophoi.”

Τhis radical reinterpretation depends on a familiar linguistic sophism: gener-
alize by assuming that morphologically similar words are morphosemanti-
cally similar, then decompose by asserting an unsubstantiated but appealing
morphosemantics for phil- prefixed terms. Socrates uses specious etymologiz-
ing to revalue philosophy.

As the argument in the Lysis about philia progresses, Socrates returns once again to etymologizing. Rejecting the assumption that similars attract, such
that good would be friend with good, or bad with bad, Socrates supposes in-
stead that the friend of the good must be a person who is neither good nor bad

(Pl. Lys. 216e2–3). Badness crowds the gates, however; only a desire for the
good keeps it away (217e8–9). We may conclude, Socrates says, that neither the
sophoi nor the badly ignorant philosophize, only those who, while unlearned,
realize that they are unlearned and want to rid themselves of that potentially
bad condition (218a5– b1). Socrates caps this by saying that they have now dis-
covered what a friend is and to whom (or what) it is a friend (218b7–10).

Why Socrates ends up talking about philosophia here, he does not say:

does it serve as a mere example of a phil- prefixed name, or as part of an
in ter est ing but inessential digression, or as the crucial case? Socrates had
already linked friendship and wisdom in the early conversation with Lysis,
and he had implied that philosophia involves engaging well in conversations
with friends. If wisdom is the best good, and philia aims ultimately for good-
ness, as the discussion of the Lysis goes on to suggest, then philia in its best or most abstract formulation is love or friendship for wisdom. In that case,

Socrates’s appeal to philosophizing in his analy sis serves both as example
and as relevant ideal.

Of course, from the etymological perspective the impor tant thing is that

Socrates again decomposes a phil- prefixed word. He treats philein as a desire for something one lacks. This maps imperfectly to friendship, which occurs
more than at the moment of lack. Socrates helps us forget this, proclaiming his
unusual state of no friends but the desire for one. So his personal revelation
further positions philosophizing as the practice of the self- knowing, epistemi-
cally modest, pedagogically optimistic, sophia- admiring person. It is not sim-
ply contemplation, which wise people or gods could presumably do, or rote
acquisition, which people without a desire could presumably do.

Famously, we see these etymological moves in the Symposium as well.

There Erôs is called a philosophos (Pl. Symp. 202d6), which represents an

250 CH A PTER 8
intermediate state between sophia and and amathia (“ignorance”). We learn that “not one of the gods philosophizes or desires to become wise (ἐπιθυμεῖ
σοφὸς γενέσθαι)— for each already is— and, if anyone else is wise, he does
not philosophize” (204a1–7). The badly ignorant do not philosophize either.

So far, the Lysis. Diotima adds, however, that the love of wisdom is the love of
beauty. This establishes more firmly the relationship between a loving relation-
ship and philosophia.47 More impressively, it links philosophia to the Symposium’s so called “ladder of love” (210a4–212a7), which represents coming to
a wholehearted commitment to virtue. Thus Socrates’s incremental etymo-
logical play in Lysis and Symposium deploys fallacious linguistic reasoning to re orient his interlocutors’— and Plato’s readers’— understanding of philosophia. To the extent that people treat Socrates’s arguments as somehow
insightful or useful, Plato can claim success in having shifted thinking about
philosophia.

Republic: The Philosophoi- Kings

A more elaborate version of the etymological re- semanticization of philoso-
phia that we see in the Lysis and Symposium is seen on the larger stage of the Republic, at the end of Book 5. Plato does not redefine philosophia as much as he shows Socrates defending it by presenting the word as though it means
something other than it really does.

This move occurs in the context of Socrates’s proposition that only
philosophoi- kings could bring about the happy city. He and Glaucon imagine
the withering responses this proposition would occasion: ridicule and disre-
pute (Pl. R. 5.474a5, cf. 5.473c8), assault and battery (5.474a1–3), and legal
charges (ἀμυνῇ τῷ λόγῳ; δώσεις δίκην, 5.474a4–5). This last imagined re-
sponse is the relevant one; Socrates pre sents himself as having to provide a de-
fense of philosophoi as po liti cally authoritative. In Book 6, he will respond to a dif fer ent concern, voiced by Adeimantus, that philosophoi tend to be useless
or positively harmful, by providing a sociology of education, explaining the
ways philosophically promising youth get diverted from the better path. Here,
by contrast, he foregoes sociology for morphosemantics. He is going to defend
the word philosophos. His lexical effort will have him defining or distinguish-
ing (διορίσασθαι, 5.474b7; cf. ὁρίζεσθαι, 5.474c5) and clarifying (διαδήλων,

5.474b10) the term.

47 We have seen a connection of philosophein and philokalein at Thuc. 2.40.1 and Pl. Phdr.

248d2–4.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 251

Readers of the Republic already got a hint of this kind of maneuver in

Book 2, when Socrates jokingly pre sents philosophoi as dogs: they love only
those they know. His argument depends on his treating the term philosophos
as an unproblematic synonym for philomathês ( R. 2.376b8). He then treats philomathês as valuing knowing, as though it means philôn to manthanein;
then implicitly as valuing what one knows, as though it means philôn mathê-
mata; then implicitly as valuing only what one knows, as though it means
philôn oudên allo ê mathêmatôn. This is the property attributed to the dog who welcomes and takes as its own only whom it knows (ὃν . . . ἂν γνώριμον,
ἀσπάζεται: 2.376a6; τό . . . οἰκεῖον, 2.376b6). Obviously these are not valid in-
ferences, so there is no reason to accept that philosophos really means “loving only those one knows.”

Socrates’s set of comparanda in Book 5 for philosophos includes philomathês
but also much else: in his implied analy sis of phil- prefixed names there, he
gives attention to at least ten such names: philopaides, philoinoi, philotimoi, philositoi, philomathêtai, philotheamones, philêkooi, philotechnoi, philomathoi, and philodoxoi. Socrates begins by speaking of “loving” (φιλεῖν): he asserts
that “loving something” (φιλεῖν τι) does not mean loving some but not all of it;
it means, instead, “cherishing every thing” (πᾶν στέργοντα). Glaucon should
recall the relevant princi ple, Socrates says: they have already discussed how
epithumia, a desire such as thirst or hunger, is always for the entire object of
the desire, not part of or a variety of that desire (4.437d8– e8). In this passage

Socrates has moved fluidly and unmarkedly between three verbs of affection,
philein, epithumein, and stergein; this suggests that philosophein is not stuck meaning only or especially philein + sophia. We also see, perhaps more importantly, that Socrates knows that the meaning of philosophos is not trans-
parent from its morphology or the semantics of its apparent parts; other wise
he would not have to say any of these things. He must gloss philein and estab-
lish the constraints it puts on its putative objects. The novelty of Socrates’s ar-
gument comes out in Glaucon’s confusion about the general scope of philein;
he must see philia as particularistic in its attentions rather than as a putative affection for an entire class.

Socrates turns to examples. His first is of the philopais ( R. 5.474d3), that is, the erôtikos (5.474d2, 5.475a4), for whom all boys seem worthy of his welcome (ἀσπάζεσθαι) and care, and whose other wise unappealing qualities will
be spun positively. His second is of the philoinoi, who welcome (ἀσπαζομένους)

all wine, even plonk (5.475a6–8). His third: the philotimoi, who cherish being
honored (τιμώμενοι ἀγαπῶσιν) even by inferior people, since they desire honor
generally (ὡς ὅλως τιμῆς ἐπιθυμηταὶ ὄντες) (5.475a10– b2). From these three
cases of “being desirous of something” (τινος ἐπιθυμητικόν), Socrates infers

252 CH A PTER 8
the apparently surprising or non- obvious conclusion about the philosophos: he
is the one who is “desirous (ἐπιθυμητικήν) of sophia” (5.475b8–9). Socrates
then gives a brief related argument. We do not call those who chafe at learning

(τὸν . . . περὶ τὰ μαθήματα δυσχεραίνοντα) philomathês or philosophos, just as we do not call those who decline to eat certain things philositos (5.475b10– c5).

The one who is gladly willing to taste all learning, and can hardly get his fill,
is a philosophos (5.475c7–10)— a distinctive individual, and not one we have
seen before, to be sure.

Glaucon notes that this cannot complete the definition. For if it did, phi-
losophoi would include two further groups, both of whom “enjoy learning”

(καταμανθάνειν χαίροντες), namely the philotheamones (“theater fans”) and
the philêkooi (“ music fans”) ( R. 5.475d1–4); and this would be quite strange (ἀτοπώτατοί), because “ those ones would not voluntarily be willing to go to
discussions and such activities (πρὸς . . . λόγους καὶ τοιαύτην διατριβήν),” as
apparently would befit philosophoi, “but only to choral festivals wherever they
are offered” (5.475d4–9). Glaucon worries that if we understand philosophoi
as mathêtikoi tinôn, “learners of anything,” then the category even includes
learners of the “minor crafts” (τεχνυδρίων) (5.475e1–2).48 In brief, Glauon sees

Socrates’s novel construction of philosophos as too broad; its real meaning is
more tightly linked to the idea of conversation.

Socrates accepts this concern and narrows the meaning, saying that phi-
losophoi are philotheamones only to the extent those spectators attend (as perhaps they generally do not) exclusively to “the truth” (τῆς ἀληθείας) ( R.

5.475e7). This puts philosophoi on the one side, philotheamones (traditionally so called), philêkooi, philotechnoi, and praktikoi on the other (5.476a10– b2).

Only the philosophoi can see and welcome (ἀσπάσασθαι) beauty itself, that
is, true beauty. Socrates then gives an argument for treating beauty itself as
a proper object of knowledge, and instances of it only objects of mere belief

(through 5.479e10; the same holds for other abstractions). So philosophoi, he
summarizes, welcome and love (ἀσπάζεσθαί τε καὶ φιλεῖν) that which they
know (γνῶσίς); non- philosophoi love and concern themselves with (φιλεῖν τε
καὶ θεᾶσθαι) that of which they have only belief (δόξα). “We would not be inapt
to call them [sc. the latter group] philodoxoi rather than philosophoi”— even if they would take being so called quite hard (5.480a6).

The contrast with the Symposium account of the word philosophos is evi-
dent. In that dialogue, philosophoi lack sophia but know it, and so they pursue 48 This word is hapax in classical lit er a ture. At Ath. 10.714, this passage is confusingly conflated with Pl. R. 5.479b10–17 and paraphrased as “philosophoi of minor crafts are like those at a feast who waffle [about their food]” (τοὺς τῶν τεχνυδρίων φιλοσόφους τοῖς ἐν ταῖς ἑστιάσεσιν
ἔφη ἐπαμφοτερίζουσιν ἐοικέναι), and treated as Plato’s allusion to a riddle.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 253
sophia; sophia is a presumed good, and ignorance of one’s ignorance is a
presumed bad. Here, had Socrates deployed the same reasoning, philosophoi-
kings would excel by alone realizing they lack wisdom. (Perhaps this wisdom
would help them avoid acting in error and also pursue wisdom.) This is not

Socrates’s approach in the Republic. Instead, he proceeds in two steps, the sec-
ond prompted by Glaucon. First, he argues from the prefix phil- : it implies a
desire for all that the second ele ment stands for, not just some of it. He does
not say why he argues for this; the implication might be that successful leaders
require knowledge ( mathêmata) not just of a subset of things; they must know
all things. Those who are not designated with a phil- prefix may ignore the apparently unattractive; in the case of mathêmata, it may be hard- to- learn topics.

Philosophoi eagerly learn even what seems pointless or unpleasant to learn.

Following the reformulation of the phil- prefix, philosophos came across
as unacceptably broad, so Socrates then gave a reformulation of the - sophos
second ele ment. Remarkably, he does not say that he is giving an analy sis
of sophia or being sophos. Perhaps remarkably, too, he does not say that the philosophos pursues the truth, or is philalethês, and he does not say why he speaks of the philosophos rather than the philomathês. He says rather that the philosophos is philotheamones of the truth, and then argues that this requires that the philosophos alone pursue what is always true, namely, knowledge.

It is clear that Socrates is taking a distinctive route to defining the philoso-
phos. He wants to assert that philosophoi pursue knowledge, first, no matter how unappealing or difficult its attainment is, and, second, of what is stable
and fundamental. He wants to clarify the attitude and the object. Why not just
say so? The reason, it seems, is that this is not what the term philosophos orig-
inally means, and Socrates cannot just make up a new meaning and then an-
nounce it. He has to shift incrementally.49 Socrates recognizes that the name
philosophos sounds bad, as most phil- prefixed names do—we see Aristotle
arguing this in the Nicomachean Ethics (see chapter 3). Socrates’s approach to renovating the term philosophos is to have Glaucon hear other phil- prefixed terms differently, in a novel way, such that they can sound okay, even admirable, and so too philosophos. Then Socrates paves the way to thinking of new
referents for the second ele ment of phil- prefixed names, such that treating
philosophos as concerning truth and knowledge comes across as a legitimate
discovery.

Socrates’s analy sis of the other phil- prefixed names shows this. Each such
term, rare and thus likely ethically charged, seems to start out bearing a

49 Socrates makes a series of similar incremental shifts in the Phaedrus; see Moore 2013a, 2014a, 2014c.

254 CH A PTER 8
negative intimation and then is revised to sound positive. Each in minia-
ture replays the history of the term philosophos, only here in an explicit and
tendentious way. Indeed, the elucidation of Socrates’s method here provides
core evidence for one of this chapter’s main claims, that Plato is not really
asserting a new meaning of philosophia; either he is saving the appearances

( Charmides and Protagoras), or he is attending to its conditions of success ( Phaedrus), or he is defending the practice through rhetorical fancy, the playful provision of a not- true etymology. I turn to seven of the phil- prefixed
terms in this passage.

Φιλόπαις (“boy”) has, in its earliest uses, a sense of being dubiously “flir-
tatious” or “lustfully unrestrained.”50 Socrates redeems it, treating it as a
label for the unjudgmental appreciator of young men.

Φίλοινος (“wine”) has, starting in the fifth century BCE, a sense of intem-
perance.51 Socrates pre sents it instead as describing the aficionado of all wine.

Φιλότιμος (“honor”) began, as we saw in chapter 3, with the negative connotation of overweening ambition. Socrates pre sents it instead as describing
one who aspires to honor in all its forms.

Φιλόσιτος (“cereal”) does not predate Plato, but cannot be his invention,
since while the second ele ment of the term would appear to refer specifically
to those concerned with “cereal,” “grain,” Socrates’s interpretation of it as de-
scribing the man who loves all food shows that the synecdoche “cereal- food”

must predate Socrates’s usage. Its earliest meaning is obscure, though notably
its only other classical usage, in Xenophon, parallels it to two other phil- prefixed names: being philogeôrgos and philoponos (Xen. Oec. 20.25–27). This collocation, and its rarity, suggests that it hardly can be taken to have meant
something so neutral as “hungry” or “food- enjoying,” for it if did we might
expect it rather more frequently.

Φιλοθεάμων (“sights”) again does not appear before Plato, but Glaucon’s
casual and derivisive usage of it as fanboy or spectacle- monger shows that it
cannot have been a Platonic coinage.52 The term philotheamôn seems to have

50 In Simonides, it is collocated with a drunk φιλάκρητος (“drinker of unmixed wine”), and the φιλόκωμος (“avid reveler”) (Simon. fr. 7.25 ll. 5–6). Hellenistic use has it connected to illness: Alexander the Great is philopais ekmanôs (Dicaerchus in Ath. 13.603a– b); Callima-chus speaks of someone being “struck by the philopais illness (ἐκκόπτει τὰν φιλόπαιδα νόσον)”

(Epigr. 46.6).

51 In Euripides’s Antiope, Zethus describes the bad qualities (κακῶν) introduced by music, which include being philoinos in addition to being idle (ἀργόν), neglectful (χρημάτων ἀτημελῆ), and perhaps also disadvantageous (ἀσύμφορον) and out of place (ἄτοπον) (Eur. fr. 183). People argue whether it is worse to be philoinos than philoglukus (fond of sweet wine) (ps- Arist. Prob.

875b3), suggesting that neither is good.

52 Meinwald 2017 argues that philotheamones are people who seek to understand the world through the dramatic per for mances they watch. Additional evidence against a Platonic coinage

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 255
an almost exact synonym, philotheôros; this term appears in Aristotle in
reference to the fan of theama.53 As we saw in chapter 3 (pp. 77–79), Aspasius (a commentator on Aristotle) observes that just as philotimos has a positive
sense— even as it also has a negative sense— for Aristotle, again, the negative
one precedes the positive—so too philêkoos and philotheamôn have negative meanings, even if they appear positively in the Ethics.

Φιλοδόξος (“reputation,” “belief”), yet another word that does not appear
before Plato, must predate Plato, and generally refers to an excessive desire for
reputation ( doxa). In the Rhe toric, Aristotle claims that philodoxoi are envious (φθονεροί) regarding what ever it is they desire a reputation for, as the doxoso-phoi desire reputation for sophia (Arist. Rh. 1387b32–34). Aristotle must be relying on colloquial usage. I discuss Socrates’s radical departure below.

Φιλομαθής (“learning”), in its earliest extant appearance, shows up in
a maxim collected by Isocrates, “if you are philomathês, you will be polu-
mathês” (ἐὰν ᾖς φιλομαθής, ἔσει πολυμαθής, Isoc. Ad Dem. 18), which seems a justification for an other wise dubious curiosity. In the Phaedrus, Socrates
excuses himself for his unfamiliarity with the countryside by claiming he is
philomathês, which causes him to want to stay in the city (Pl. Phdr. 230d3).

In both cases, the idea seems to be “peculiarly curious” in the sense of “nosy”

or “busy.” By later in the fourth century BCE, to be sure, it specifies the intel-
lectually curious person.54 Socrates here is anticipating that reformed and
positive usage.

The majority if not all of the phil- prefixed parallels to philosophos seem to have started out with either a negative or at least wry inflection. The second
ele ment is often synecdochal, pointing as it were indirectly at some socially
relevant be hav ior that one must voluntarily regulate. My suggestion is that

Socrates acknowledges the similarity of the term philosophos to these phil-
prefixed names. There is something wry built into the name, given its mem-
bership in the genre of phil- prefixed name- calling names. Why does he draw
attention to this fact? He is redeeming the name in two ways. First, he is pre-
senting as positive a quality of some traits referred to by phil- prefixed names: they’re not choosy! Second, he is overhauling them, effectively a momentary
is its natu ral pairing with philêkooi, which appears elsewhere in Plato (Pl. Lys. 206c10; Euthyd.

274c3, 304c6; cf. R. 7.535d5, 8.548e5); Isocrates (1.18.5); and collections of sage maxims that date to the fourth century BCE— Stob. 3.1.172 (φιλήκοον εἶναι καὶ μὴ πολύλαλον, 1.4 [Demetrius’s collection]; cf. DL 1.92); Stob. 3.1.173 (φιλήκοος ἔσο [Sosiades’s collection]).

53 Arist. Eth. Nic. 1099a10. It is also a word found in the Middle Comic Alexis, without context.

54 Arist. Eth. Nic. 1175a14: just as the mousikos person especially agapein sounds and songs, the philomathês especially agapein thinking through abstract matters. See, generally, Xen. Cyr.

1.2.1, 1.4.3, 1.6.8; An. 1.9.5.

256 CH A PTER 8
re- semanticization. For example, philêkoos surely first meant “given to pas-
sive listening,” being a wallflower, not contributing to conversation. But Glau-
con spins it as an active decision— wanting to hear every thing and thereby
to learn. The philomathês, a term prob ably already undergoing unconscious
re- semanticization, is shifted in sense from “curious,” “nosy,” “given to in-
vestigation rather than action” to an active learning of as much as pos si ble
that is impor tant. Socrates’s use of philodoxos provides the clearest case of resemanticization, in which the second ele ment is almost wholly changed in
sense: from “concerned with doxa qua reputation,” to “pursuing [all] doxa
qua belief.” We are then to see Socrates performing an identical operation for

Glaucon and Adeimantus on philosophos. The outcome is “pursuing even dif-
ficult sophia qua knowledge.” What did it start from? Well, something wry or
even negative about some unreasonable excessiveness. Did Plato(’s Socrates)

redefine philosophia? Not really; he is presenting philosophia in a new way, though not as new, for the par tic u lar apol o getic argument about philosophoi-
kings here.

Conclusion: Plato and the Origin of Philosophia

I have argued that Plato did not utterly innovate— “before Plato, the father of
philosophy, came the word’s inventor, Pythagoras,” says Saint Ambrose ( De

Abr. 2.7.37). Instead, he renovated, retrojected, and reappropriated. He saved
the appearances, justified the practices, and encouraged their advance. We have
seen Thucydides’s Pericles rebut the notion that philosophizing leads to weak-
ness and off- footedness, and Isocrates and Alcidamas locate philosophia in
the education needed by any highly effective person. We have seen Socrates
pinned as philosophos but then trying to rectify the term’s sense. And we have
seen other Socratics, such as Phaedo and Antisthenes, vindicating philosophia
through appeal to its unexpected intra- and interpersonal benefits. None seeks
to deny the entirety of earlier usages, as though one could simply rechristen
the term with a new meaning. Instead, each emphasizes as salient some here-
tofore less prominent feature in the constellation of be hav iors, norms, and
contexts associated with philosophia. Thucydides’s Pericles accepted that in
philosophizing, people talked about non- emergent issues, but then argued that
those issues prepared Athenians for po liti cal and military crisis. The rhetori-
cians took the same angle, equating philosophia with a broadly appealing
paideia. Socrates explained his concern for logoi, his strange religious statements, and his curiosity about the nature of things as instrumental to his life-
supporting self- examination and philanthropic examination of others. His

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 257
followers found martial and heroic pre ce dent in the sôphrosunê- increasing
effects of philosophizing.

Something similar goes for Plato. He reconstructs philosophia as a benefi-
cial conversational- educational activity. He fuses the Athenian model of com-
petitive verbal games to a universal model of leisured self- improvement. He
does so by having his fifth- century BCE interlocutors refer offhandedly to
their semiformal and advice- sharing discussion groups as “philosophizing.”

In many dialogues, philosophia retains a colloquial sense, referring to a cer-
tain kind of edifying talking with like- aspiring people.

But this explains only some of Plato’s uses of philosophos- group words.

Other instances appear to pre sent a notion of philosophia distinct from
edifying conversation. Such are the instances where philosophizing means
coming into contact with the forms, orienting oneself toward virtue, com-
ing out of the cave and looking toward the sun, driving one’s chariot high
into the heavens, and preparing for death. Even here, however, Plato has not
rejected the colloquial sense as symptomatic of a squishy and dilettantish
culture, replacing it with a hardheaded and technical sense of the term. He
has not moved altogether beyond Socratic method or incremental conversa-
tional improvement. He has instead reflected on the conditions for conver-
sation to edify, for the exchange of words to burnish one’s moral and intel-
lectual personality. The norms of philosophical conversation were assumed
from the start to deserve commitment and exhortation just because it would
be by following them that one might move toward knowledge and human
excellence— but why is this? Plato’s dialogues animate conversations that
suggest possibilities.

I cannot demonstrate systematically that Plato’s two sorts of description
of philosophia match. I have wanted mainly to make plausible the idea that

Plato does not create a new technical notion of philosophia from whole cloth
and that what he does create he does not simply oppose to the everyday or rhe-
torical notion of philosophia. Plato, as far as we can tell from the tenor of his interlocutors’ exchanges, takes doing philosophia as something more or less
set by his pre de ces sors and contemporaries: talking about fundamental issues
necessary for improving oneself and others. That tenor differs from that found
in other authors in terms of explanation, the tolerance for precision, and the
expected benefits. But we have no evidence that he repudiates other modes of
philosophia so called, even if he does repudiate other modes of teaching, dis-
cussing, and valuing aspects of life.55

55 The ways that he takes up and repudiates non- philosophical modes or genres are the great lesson of Nightingale 1995.

258 CH A PTER 8

I have so far spoken of Plato’s two- movement legitimation and justification of
philosophia. We might call this the dimension of appropriation. The audience
of this terminological appropriation includes those already called philosophoi
or those who associate with or model themselves on so- called philosophoi.

Some may have even already deigned to accept the name- calling, finding ease
in acquiescence or even a bit of ornery pride. But a label little helps constitute
personal or group identity while its application remains acerbic or pointed. Ap-
propriation, especially with the help of wishful etymologies, allows a person
to take himself to be choosing to govern himself by certain norms, and, in the
case of a group, to be among others who share in that choice and thereby can
share in the burdens that such a choice sets upon them all. In institutional
terms, appropriation allows for the self- conscious adoption and practice of
a discipline. A discipline defines a common endeavor delimited by specific
practices, expectations, and goals. A name for the discipline, paired with a
promising semantic archaeology of that name, allows for coordination and
critical maintenance of those specific ele ments. Thus appropriation fosters
disciplinization. This also means that it fosters specialization, technicaliza-
tion, and other forms of elaboration. The people advancing these articulations
must explain and defend themselves only to their disciplinary fellows, who
already value fine- tuned shifts in focus and approach. Disciplines grow up with
a goal at times transparent to those outside the discipline; but the reasons for
their inner divisions and digressions become increasingly opaque to all but
co- practitioners.

Appropriation always has its audience: in the case above, those already called
philosophoi or inclined to the life of those so called. Philosophia must be legitimated to them only because they are not yet in the discipline— necessarily
so, for an inchoate discipline only now coagulates. Platonic philanthrôpia mo-
tivates efforts to pre sent philosophia as good and desirable to those not yet
practicing it, or to those hovering near competing pedagogues or research
programs. A practice beneficial to some as humans is a practice actually ben-
eficial to all as humans; only a perverse schadenfreude would try to keep
such a public good private. “That all should philosophize!” This mode of
thinking has its precursors in exhortations to justice; we find these in the Platonic Alcibiades and Clitophon.56 To Platonic philanthrôpia we must add the unavoidable sense of philautia, the benefit to the discipline— practiced
by Plato and his associates—in increasing its numbers. A discipline needs a
critical mass of prac ti tion ers to generate network benefits,57 to induct subse-

56 See Moore 2012 and 2015b, 101–35.

57 Collins 2000.

PLATO’S SAV I NG OF TH E A PPEA R A NCES 259
quent generations, to capture resources, and to resist encroachment by mass
culture or antagonistic movements. On the arguments that Plato’s Socrates de-
ploys, philosophia need not be sold only in uncut form, as a total re orientation and rigorization of life. The audience of these efforts toward disciplinary
expansion need not be only those so positioned or so prepared for the self-
sufficient academic life. A moderate path still yields moderate benefits. We
mea sure along the dimension of expansion in the protreptic moments of Plato’s
dialogues. These pre sent philosophia as appealing to those beyond a core constituency. Some dialogues find structure in the protreptic genre: the Phaedrus
in par tic u lar, but also the Euthydemus and the Phaedo. Others look rather to include protreptic passages, the Gorgias and the Republic most notably. It is in these places we see claims beyond the “Philosophizing amounts to this, what
you’re already doing, and though you already believe it’s good to do it, here
are the reasons”— Plato’s mission seen on the dimension of appropriation—
but all the way to “Whoever you are, and what ever your current goals, you
should philosophize!”— Plato’s mission seen on the dimension of expansion.

Put briefly, by making an idiosyncratic activity normative, the activity loses
its idiosyncrasy; what is normative for some is normative for all.

9

Aristotle’s Historiography of Philosophia

The Idea of the Discipline Named Philosophia

I have argued in this book that, from its beginning, the term philosophos picked
out those groups of people who investigated fundamental matters with per sis-
tence and in concert, despite the apparent risk of enervation or self- defeat.

Their philosophia was, for some, an identifiable avocation, as we have seen
in Gorgias’s Helen, the Dissoi Logoi, and Isocrates’s Antidosis. I then argued that it awaited the lifetime of Plato for the term philosophia to purport to pick out the emotional- evaluative state paraphrased as the “love of wisdom.” We
have seen Socrates engaged in va ri e ties of such etymological fancy in the

Lysis, Symposium, and Republic. In this chapter, I argue that it awaited the time of the Early Acad emy, in the second quarter of the fourth century BCE,
for the term philosophos to acquire the meaning used or self- applied by much
of this book’s readership: a member of the discipline called philosophia, a dis-
cipline with a lineage of expositors and critics, writers and readers, teachers
and students, that goes back, for example, to Thales. Though earlier authors
spoke of earlier thinkers as doing something similar to themselves, they did
not call both themselves and their pre de ces sors philosophoi. Aristotle, by contrast, calls certain pre de ces sors philosophoi, treats their statements as pertinent to his own philosophical pursuits, and provides a theory for understanding
that pertinence. This does not mean that Aristotle in ven ted the discipline of
philosophia; rather, he reveals and sharpens ideas developed in the colloquia
of the mid- fourth- century BCE Acad emy, an environment that his colleague

Heraclides would have shared when writing his On Diseases.

The first part of this chapter discusses the way certain pre- Aristotelian writ-
ers wrote about those eventually to be called philosophoi; I focus on Hera-
clitus, Hippias, and those of Plato’s generation, Plato included. Their efforts
consolidated a canon of relevant thinkers, but did not yet explic itly name them
philosophoi or treat of them as sharing in a discipline understood as historically extended backwards and forwards. The second part of the chapter discusses the
way Aristotle thought about the history of his practice: he called philosophoi
those with whom he could “share opinions” about the matters central to his own

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 261
investigations and who, before him, presumably shared opinions with those
before themselves. The third part of the chapter clarifies the notion of a his-
torically extended discipline.

Pre- Disciplinary Philosophoi in Heraclitus, Hippias, Plato,
and Their Contemporaries

Heraclitus and Competition with Sophoi

Heraclitus of Ephesus serves as our earliest source for remarks about those
eventually in the philosophical canon. He writes about Homer, Hesiod, Archi-
lochus, Bias, Thales of Miletus, Xenophanes of Colophon, Hecataeus of Mi-
letus, and Pythagoras of Samos.1 Except for Bias, whom he admires, and

Thales, whom he classifies as an astronomer, he excoriates the rest, as we saw
in chapter 2. 2 All eight have impor tant connections to the later canons of philosophy, even if by Aristotle’s time fewer than half were seen as core figures.3 This se lection has added glory given that nobody would have treated

Hesiod, Xenophanes, Hecataeus, and Pythagoras as members of a single cabal
or school or tradition of thought. Heraclitus picks them out for representing
the height of sophia in his contemporaries’ eyes, and for making the same
epistemic mistake: vaulting with their long pole of polymathic wisdom right
past noos. Heraclitus, who vaunts his own singular wisdom, sourced in self-
knowledge rather than extensive research, takes them as his cultural competi-
tors. So, Heraclitus distinguishes himself not from a discipline, not from a
corporate body, not from a lineage of thinking, but from those with the best

Panhellenic reputation for (both old and new) wisdom.

Though Heraclitus does not have a disciplinary conception of philosophia,
he presages it. He picks on many of those who have been eventually accreted
into the discipline. He himself comes to be so accreted even if as on a spur. He
chooses as criteria of judgment the possession of a unitary sophia and the un-
derstanding of the log os, both terms elemental to later philosophical discourse.

Most remarkably, as we saw in chapter 2, Heraclitus said that philosophoi men 1 B38 (Thales), B39/D11 (Bias), B40/D20 (Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Hecataeus),

B42/D21 (Homer, Archilochus), B56/D22 (Homer), B57/D25a (Hesiod), B81/D27 ([Pythago-
ras]), B105/D24 (Homer), B106/D25b (Hesiod), B129/D26 (Pythagoras).

2 See Morgan 2000, 53–58, for an in ter est ing account of Heraclitus’s reasons.

3 Hesiod appears in many sophos lineages (see below, pp. 265–66); he was even called a philosophos (DL 9.22, with Koning 2010, esp. ch. 6). Hecataeus retains his fame for sophia into the Roman period (Ael. VH 13.20). Archilochus becomes the subject of a book by Heraclides (DL 5.87) and before that has a fifth- century BCE play named after him, which refers to Homer and Hesiod as sophistai (DL 1.12).

262 CH A PTER 9
really have got to be researchers into much. We saw that the term philosophoi
likely referred to Pythagoreans or their ilk. Heraclitus condemns as polymaths

Hesiod, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus just as he does the Pythagoreans. Plausi-
bly, then, he would call them philosophoi, too. Had he done so, he would not
thereby be constituting a discipline; he would simply be generalizing a handy
label. What we do see in his use of philosophoi and in his excoriation of those
he judges the most influential teachers of Greeks is a first step in the develop-
ment of a history of philosophy.

Hippias and Sophos Lineages

An historical sensibility about sophoi gets its most impor tant realization in
the work of Hippias of Elis.4 He traces lines of doxastic family resemblance
among authors from as early as memory would allow until his own time, in-
cluding himself. He must have done so for the public fascination such archae-
ology affords and to dignify the new as no worse than the old or the old as
the source of the new. The perhaps unintended effect was the publication of a
map of sophoi past and pre sent and increased appreciation for the continu-
ities and discontinuities in Greek thought as it developed over the centuries.

Without theorizing philosophia or delineating its course, Hippias provided
the eminently relevant prosopography from which such a theory and delin-
eation could be built. Because of his centrality for providing the historical
material and sensibility necessary for the disciplinary self- understanding of
classical philosophoi, we should understand him and his works as best we can.

Plato pre sents Hippias as competent and of high repute across the fields
of theoretical inquiry known to fifth- century BCE Athenians.5 At Callias’s

4 For Hippias’s work, see Pfeiffer 1968, 51–54; Patzer 1986; Morgan 2000, 95–96; Zhmud

2006, 50 (“first treatise on the history of ideas”); BNJ 6; Rossetti 2015a, 140–44. Mansfeld 1986
argues that glimmers of historiography arose in Gorgias (see also Palmer 2009, 35–36), Protagoras, and the Hippocratic writers; but they were neither obviously earlier nor more influential, and their work remains in quantities that are too small to explore the historiographical attitudes that they assumed. The fifth- century BCE historian Xanthus of Lydia wrote about his con temporary, Empedocles (DL 8.63), as well as about the age of Zoroastrianism (DL 1.2), but we do not know whether he wrote anything genealogical; see Schepens and Theys 1998; Kingsley 1995. Glaucus of Rhegium wrote a history of music, and because early prac ti tion ers of music theory later became canonical philosophical figures, he in effect wrote a partial history of philosophia, with information about Musaeus (Harp. s.v. Mουσαῖος), Empedocles (DL 8.52), and Democritus (DL

9.38), but our evidence about its form, motivation, and reception is too fragmentary to interpret; see Huxley 1968, 47–48, 51–52; Ford 2002, 140–42; BNP s.v. “Glaucus [7]”; Zhmud 2006, 28, 49–50; and Barker 2014, 33–37, 43–45.

5 Protagoras suggests that Hippias, whom he nevertheless esteems (Pl. Prt. 317c9– d8), teaches what he would not: arithmetic (λογισμοί), astronomy, geometry, and musical culture (318e2); cf. Xen. Mem. 4.4.6.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 263
party in the Protagoras, a crowd surrounds him, peppering him with ques-
tions “about nature and astronomical phenomena”; he gives careful and full
answers to each.6 He takes his expertise as his license in sophia. He accepts

Socrates’s calling him “Hippias the sophos” and, more grandiosely, speaks
about those pre sent as “most sophoi” of all Greeks, here in “the headquarters
of sophia,” we who know “the nature of things.”7 So, in Plato’s reconstruction,

Hippias takes himself to have knowledge about physical and other kinds of in-
quiry, judges this knowledge to make him sophos, and identifies as his peers a
class of sophoi. This suggests that Hippias provides a cooperative, optimistic,
and localized formation of sophoi, at least as seen in contrast to Heraclitus’s
unstructured class of competitive or in de pen dent putative sophoi. This reflects a camaraderie more than a discipline. Another Platonic dialogue shows us
more about Hippias’s lineages.

Plato appears to echo or parody Hippias’s writings throughout the begin-
ning of his Hippias Major. As in the Protagoras, Socrates calls Hippias sophos, and does so repeatedly, as though Hippias had flamboyantly included himself
under the concept he spent so much time writing about.8 Indeed, the dialogue
opens with Socrates calling Hippias ὁ καλὸς τε καὶ σοφός (“the beautiful and
wise”), no mere intellectualized variation of kalokagathos but likely a quota-
tion from his work: we know that he deemed a person included in his lineage,
the Milesian Thargelia, πάνυ καλὴ καὶ σοφή (“most beautiful and wise”).9

Socrates soon brings up that lineage. Having exclaimed at the variety of dip-
lomatic and po liti cal tasks Hippias has undertaken, he won ders what Hippias
makes of the fact that many or all of Hippias’s forebears (οἱ παλαιοὶ ἐκεῖνοι),

“whose names are called great in sophia”— Pittacus, Bias, those around (τῶν
ἀμφὶ) Milesian Thales, and on down to Anaxagoras— refrain from po liti cal
matters.10 That Hippias has a prepared answer implies that Socrates’s list
comes from him.11 Hippias soon confirms the implication, saying that he pub-
licly praises ( these) forebears for their wisdom, even as he privately believes

6 Pl. Prt. 315c5–7: περὶ φύσεώς τε καὶ τῶν μετεώρων ἀστρονομικά . . . διέκρινε . . . διεξῇει; cf. Hp. mi. 363c4– d3, 364b8– c2; Hp. mai. 283b7–285b7, 286e6, 287b2–3.

7 Pl. Prt. 337c8–338b2. On Hippias’s confidence in sophia, cf. Hp. mi. 364a3, 364a10. That he was an ambassador ( Hp. mai. 281a) and involved in po liti cal activities (cf. Brunschwig 1984; Dusanic 2008) is consistent with his being a sophos.

8 Pl. Hp. mai. 281b6, 286d7. See Kurke 2011, 344–58, for a remarkable argument to this effect.

9 Pl. Hp. mai. 281a1; Ath. 13.608f. See Patzer 1986, 100–5; Gera 1997, 179–86 (Thargelia of Miletus), 180–81 (Hippias’s reference to her).

10 Pl. Hp. mai. 281c7. As we saw in chapter 3, the sophoi were surely not so quiescent; but fourth- century BCE authors liked to argue contrariwise, as Heraclides did in a dialogue featuring Thales (DL 1.25).

11 His preparation is indicated by the introduction of his response: “What do you think
but . . .” (τί δ᾽οἴει . . . ἄλλο).

264 CH A PTER 9
that con temporary sophia renders the value of older instances nugatory.12

Socrates reiterates that Hippias concerns himself with “the earlier ones lead-
ing up to Anaxagoras” (τῶν προτέρων περὶ Ἀναξαγόρου).13 Plato must be play-
ing up Hippias’s lineage of sophoi, one that extends from at least the sixth-
century BCE Seven Sophoi to an Athenian exiled not long ago.14 Hippias has
fortified it with Thales’s associates and successors, maybe Anaximander or
similar Milesians.15 Socrates refrains from putting Hippias at the end of this
list only because he wants Hippias to explain his financially evidenced supe-
riority to the other sophoi.16

Plato leads us to believe that Hippias’s sophos- list fits a broader category
of “origin tales” (ἀρχαιολογίαι) that Hippias tends to tell. Hippias says that the Spartans want to hear his accounts of the families (γενῆ) of heroes and of
men and of the foundations of cities. Plutarch tells us Hippias had an Olym-
pic Victors list.17 Hippias delineates personages into subjects apparently to
provide an eminent field against which to show off one’s excellence. He sets
out his horizontal lines— con temporary, tuition- charging sophists— for the
same reason. In neither case does it appear that he puts the people he writes
about into constructive conversation; while he pre sents present- day sophoi in
something of a congress, we do not have evidence that he showed dialectical
connections among the earlier ones. Socrates upbraids his work as storytell-
ing (μυθολογῆσαι, Pl. Hp. mai. 286a1).

More information about Hippias’s lineages comes from Plato’s Cratylus,
which pre sents Socrates’s etymologizing the names of gods. Making hay
about ousia and Hestia, Socrates brings in Heraclitus for support, and then re-
fers to Rhea and Kronos. Acknowledging that he and his interlocutors have
already discussed Kronos, he pauses, then exclaims that he is being attacked
by “some swarm of sophia.” Heraclitus, he observes, has spoken with an
ancient wisdom (παλαί᾽ . . . σοφὰ λέγοντα) that they can date to Homer and
even earlier, to the very naming of Kronos and Rhea. Heraclitus says that

12 Pl. Hp. mai. 281d5–282a10.

13 Pl. Hp. mai. 283a1. This is in the context of Socrates’s expressing won der that earlier sophoi neglected money.

14 Jaeger 1962, 129, thus shortchanges Hippias when he attributes to Aristotle instead “the historical insight to put the Seven Wise Men at the head of this succession of commanding intellectuals [found in On Philosophy 1], whose influence on the development of Greek thought seemed to him so impor tant.”

15 On Anaximander as in Thales’s sphere, see DL 1.13, 1.122. Other sources confirm that

Hippias discussed Thales: Arist. De an. 405a19 and DL 1.24; see further Snell 1944.

16 Socrates likens Hippias to Gorgias and Prodicus as men who also perform public ser vice and charge for private tutelage (Pl. Hp. mai. 282b1– d5); Hippias accepts the comparison only to brag that he earns more than they do.

17 Plut. Num. 1.6.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 265
every thing moves (ῥοῇ) like a river (ποταμόν), Socrates reports, and claims
that those who named the gods thought the same when they called them by the
names of streams (ῥευμάτων). Homer likewise speaks of “Oceanus origin of
gods” and “ Mother Tethys” ( Il. 14.201, 302). Hesiod too, and Orpheus as well.

Socrates says that these all agree (συμφωνεῖ) and tend toward Heraclitus’s per-
spective (πρὸς τὰ τοῦ Ἡερακλείτου πάντα τείνει) (Pl. Cra. 401c–402c). Thus
each “speaks wisely” in a similar way, namely about water as the world’s key
princi ple.

The swarm of wisdom seems to fly from Hippias’s research into like- minded
sophoi.18 The implication from the Cratylus gains corroboration from Clement of Alexandria. He quotes the opening of Hippias’s book:

Of these things perhaps some have been said by Orpheus, some by Musaeus in
lines here and there (κατὰ βραχὺ ἄλλῷ ἀλλαχοῦ),19 some by Hesiod, some by

Homer, some by other poets, some by prose writers, some by Greeks, and some
by foreigners. What I will do, having collected the best and most categorizable

(ὁμόφυλα) from all these, is to compose this new and multifaceted writing.

(Clem. Strom. 6.15.1–2)

Others testify in de pen dently to Hippias’s discussion of etymologies and Homer,
to his interest in the sea god Oceanus and the Oceanid nymphs, and to other
divine beings.20 Socrates’s remarks about rivers and etymology suggest ex-
cerpts from Hippias’s se lection of “lines here and there” from canonical au-
thors, and his bringing of Heraclitus into the mix sounds of a piece with Hip-
pias’s bringing in Anaxagoras and the Milesians around Thales.

Doubtless Hippias drew from a growing consensus about canonical sophoi.

His contemporaries, including Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Damastes of Sigeion,
but also Herodotus and Aristophanes, argued about the relative ordering of Or-
pheus, Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod.21 As we noted above, Cratinus in his

Archilochoi called those around Homer and Hesiod sophistai (DL 1.12). In Plato’s Apology, Socrates says that, were he to have an afterlife in Hades, he

18 See Mansfeld 1983, in response to Snell 1944 and (effectively) Patzer 1986.

19 LM 2.7, by contrast, translate this as “to put it briefly, by each one in a dif fer ent place,”

but this seems overly obvious for the opening line, insofar as it notes only that Hippias has not relied on an earlier compilation.

20 Etymology: B9/D26; Homer: Pl. Hp. mi. 363c2; Oceanus: B8/D28; other divine beings: B13/D35, B14/D29; see BNJ 6 ad F9–11 for commentary.

21 For the first three, see Procl. Chrestomathy 1.4. Damastes wrote a Περὶ ποιητῶν καὶ
σοφιστῶν (“On Poets and Sophistai”) ( Suda δ 41); likely this is a key source . For the next two, see Hdt. 2.53.2–3; Ar. Ran. 1032–36.

266 CH A PTER 9
would anticipate philosophizing with Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer

(Pl. Ap. 41a6–7).

Where Hippias seems to have innovated in ways relevant to developing a
disciplinary consciousness for philosophy was in adding sophoi, their wise
ideas, and the relations between those ideas, perhaps motivated by goals of
systematicity, completeness, and usefulness. He may have had two sources
of inspiration for this. First, this retailer of Trojan stories may have noticed the
naturalizing common denominators in con temporary Homeric allegoresis, no-
tably by Theagenes of Rhegium and Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who reduced
the Trojan conflict to strife between the basic ele ments or celestial phenom-
ena.22 This would allow him to identify meaningful parallels between the
earlier poets and later physicists, and thereby assem ble a canon of doctrinally
related sophoi down to the fifth century BCE, a chronological and thematic list
of the great advisors and teachers. People already accepted relations between
certain poets, such as Homer and Hesiod, and between certain researchers,
such as Parmenides and Empedocles.23 Additionally, there was increasing
sensitivity to the idea of a cogent historia peri phuseôs (“investigation into
nature”).24 Hippias could then generalize, positing pedagogical lineage or
at least a meaningful ordering between the remainder of the names. Second,
the flourishing of ever- elaborated lore about the Seven Sages and the circula-
tion of rhetorical handbooks must have included sayings attributable to wise
authorities and citable at any instance; in the latter case, or ga nized collections
would have provided resources both of content and form from which Hippias
could construct his historical taxonomy.

We know Hippias’s book to have been a great success; for many Greeks of
the fifth and fourth centuries it reconstructed a course of intellectual discov-
ery, agreement, and contention, and it published the “greatest hits” of that
history. But he did not constitute the discipline of philosophy. We do not know
him to have used the word philosophos or philosophia. No later author took him up as a member of the discipline,25 and presumably disciplines are formed

22 On Theagenes, see Morgan 2000, 63; Ford 2002, 68–75; Naddaf 2009; for Metrodorus,
see Richardson 1975, 68–70; Califf 2003.

23 Most 2007.

24 See Leszl 2006, 367–69; Laks 2018, 2–12. The texts: Eur. fr. 910; Diss. Log. 8; Pl. Lys.

214b; Prt. 315c; Phd. 96a; Xen. Mem. 1.1.11, 1.1.14.

25 There are two apparent minor exceptions. Suda ι 543 calls Hippias sophistês kai philosophos, but Pausanias (5.25.4) is prob ably right that the Greeks called Hippias (only) sophos. Plato and Xenophon include Hippias in conversations that may count as philosophia to their authors, but they include many others, too, who were even more obviously never deemed philosophoi.

Notably, Aristotle cites Hippias only as a source of information, never as a person with views or a way of life worth discussing.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 267
by their prac ti tion ers. Fi nally, while we see him having created his sophos
lineage, we do not know him to have engaged critically and productively
with the ideas recorded in it. Olympic victors do not constitute a discipline
simply by having their names written down on a list. The discipline of phi-
losophy awaits a higher sun for its growth. Yet Hippias’s work sows some
seeds and fertilizes the ground.

Philosophical Historiography at the Time of Plato

By early in the fourth century BCE, the framework for disciplinary forma-
tion comes into view. As we saw two chapters earlier, in Isocrates’s Busiris,
prob ably from the 380s BCE, Pythagoras is said to have learned philosophia
from the Egyptians.26 This points to an early interest in the sources of phi-
losophia, and the sense that “Greek” philosophia descends from Pythagoras.

In his Encomium of Helen, from sometime in the first quarter of the fourth
century BCE, Isocrates mentions the paradoxes of Protagoras, Gorgias, Zeno,
and Melissus.27 All four of Isocrates’s figures remain canonical, two as phi-
losophoi, each advancing incredible claims about the nature of knowledge, lan-
guage, and being. In the Antidosis, from the late 350s BCE, Isocrates situates
himself against other purported teachers of philosophia: their encouragement
to slog through astronomical and geometrical subtleties has as much bene-
fit as the encouragement to practice anything does: as preliminaries to the
real effort. Isocrates’s vision of philosophia foregoes the disputes found in

“the arguments of past sophists” (τοὺς λόγους τοὺς τῶν παλαιῶν σοφιστῶν),
who differ among themselves concerning the number of fundamental “be-
ings”: an infinite number, or Empedocles’s four (with strife and love), or Ion’s
maximum of three, or Alcmaeon’s two, or Parmenides’s and Melissus’s one,
or Gorgias’s none— all of which enumeration counts as sheer mystification

(περιττολογίας . . . θαυματοποιίαις) (Isoc. Antid. 265–68).28 We have already
seen that Isocrates’s concern for philosophia does not lead to a disciplinary
conception of it; indeed, he seems to contrast his approach with that of adver-
sarial research. By the 350s BCE, Isocrates can rely on five de cades of reflec-
tion on philosophia’s past.

Three other contemporaries of Plato reflect something of an inchoate dis-
ciplinization. While Xenophon treats himself as external to philosophia, and

(as we saw in chapter 6) even treats Socrates as marginal to the practice, he 26 Isoc. Bus. 18; see Livingstone 2001 ad loc.

27 Isoc. Hel. 1–8.

28 Such taxonomizing gets an apparent defense in PVindob. G.26008 fr. B col. II; see Most 1992; Megino Rodriguez 2008; HJ 63.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 267

9/18/19 1:20 PM

268 CH A PTER 9
appreciates the burgeoning “inquiries into nature” epitomized by Anaxagoras
and the extensive debates about the nature of justice.29 Simmias of Thebes,
famous from Plato’s Phaedo, is said to have written an On Philosophy; though we know nothing of its contents, Simmias studied with Philolaus, the most
impor tant Pythagorean of his generation, and so he would be well placed to
discuss both con temporary and historical philosophia.30 The most pertinent
source is Alcidamas, the rhetorician whose remarks on philosophia we stud-
ied in chapter 7. Aristotle cites him for the claim that every town, no matter how anti- intellectual it may seem, honors its wise ( sophoi): for example, the

Chians honor Homer, the Spartans honor Chilon, the Italians honor Pythago-
ras, and the Lampsacans honor Anaxagoras.31 This list looks Hippian, or at
least it appears to have a common source in rhetorical collections of topoi.

More in ter est ing is the next quotation (which we have already seen), the sole
fragment of Alcidamas’s Physics:

Alcidamas, in the Physics, says that Zeno and Empedocles studied with (ἀκοῦσαι)

Parmenides at the same time, that later they separated from him, and that, whereas

Zeno philosophized on his own (κατ᾽ ἰδίαν φιλοσοφῆσαι), the other continued
on to work with (διακοῦσαι) Anaxagoras and Pythagoras, emulating (ζηλῶσαι)

the latter in his dignity (σεμνότητα) of life and bearing, and the former in his
physical investigations (φυσιολογίαν).32

We see here the coordination of four figures regularly appearing in the rear-
view mirrors of Alcidamas’s contemporaries. He connects them pedagogically

29 At the end of the opening paragraph of the Life of Xenophon, Diogenes Laertius writes: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἱστορίαν φιλοσόφων πρῶτος ἔγραψε (DL 2.48). Hicks 1925’s influential translation as

“Moreover, he was the first to write a history of phi los o phers” is implausible, on vari ous factual (Xanthus of Lydia had prob ably already written about Empedocles), generic (the Memorabilia is about Socrates alone, whom Xenophon does not explic itly treat as a phi los o pher), and linguistic grounds (we would expect περὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων ἱστορίαν; cf. Ath. 4.54.29); this unusual locution surely means “Besides that, he was the first among phi los o phers to write history” (for φιλοσόφων πρῶτος, see Gal. De nat. facult. 2.38.13 Kuhn)— rightly, Mensch 2018, 88.

30 DL 2.125. The work would be short; it fits, with twenty- two others, in a single volume.

Plato’s Socrates says that Simmias has generated more speeches than anyone he knows (Pl.

Phdr. 242b), and that he is energetic and ingenious in debate (Pl. Phd. 85c, 86d). Rankin 1983, 184, suspects that Simmias is some years older than Plato. On Simmias’s discipleship with Philolaus, see Zeller 1931, 38–40.

31 Arist. Rh. 1398b11–16. The reference in the manuscripts to Pythagoras is deleted by Kassel 1971, 139–40, followed by Muir 2001.

32 DL 8.56. The work’s date is unknown; Alcidamas wrote at least until 369. Milne 1924,

17–18, speculates that it was written on the model of Gorgias’s On Non- Being, which she claims to have used the dialectical method of Zeno and Melissus, allowing Plato’s “Eleatic Palamedes”

to refer to Alcidamas (cf. Quint. Inst. 3.1.10).

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 269

(who learns from whom), doxographically (whose views differ from whose),
and characterologically (who acted similarly to whom).33 He implies that all
four men philosophein (on the assumption that the source is quoting him) and
three other things: that philosophizing by oneself, while conceivable, goes
against the norm; that phusiologia counts as a kind of philosophizing; and that
philosophizing both modifies one’s comportment and pursues understanding.

Each reflects a disciplinary perspective. Vari ous people engage in the same
activity; that activity is both personally enculturated and impersonally ad-
vanced in concert with others; that activity is directed toward at least one type
of discovery or creation; and, again, there is something of a way of life related
to the discipline. In presenting Zeno, Empedocles, and the rest in this way, Al-
cidamas has gone beyond Hippias in constructing a history of philosophy,
braiding lines of “philosophical” influence expressly so called, and noting
subdisciplinary divisions and va ri e ties in the modes of practice. Whether he
took those steps unaided we cannot say, since he was writing into the 360s

BCE; he may simply have reflected popu lar discussions of these thinkers. And
though he considered himself engaged with philosophia we cannot readily as-
cribe him to the discipline of philosophia himself, and thereby to an internal
understanding of its leading concerns. All the same, he provides in a con ve-
nient encapsulation something of the view of philosophoi necessary for con-
structing a disciplinary conception.34

In the last chapter, I argued that we do not see, in most of Plato’s dialogues,
a fully disciplinary and historical view of philosophy. Plato depicts philosophia
instead as present- tense conversations structured by the pursuit of excellence,
virtue, or goodness, as the Symposium most vividly depicts. The parties to philosophia are the parties to a conversation, which involves the pre sent interlocutors. The interlocutors can talk about absent thinkers, such as Protagoras or

Simonides, but centripetal forces bring the conversation back to the interlocu-
tors themselves.35 Talk of books similarly becomes talk of the reader or lis-
tener: Socrates dramatizes his reaction to reading Anaxagoras’s book (Pl. Phd.

97b8–99d2); Zeno’s reading gets the conversation of the Parmenides going

33 Whether Alcidamas’s account defies accepted chronology depends on the meaning of akousai and diakousai, which mean either “study with” (in person) or “study” (not necessarily in person), and on the meaning of “Pythagoras,” which could mean either Pythagoras himself (or his “works” themselves), or later thinkers who took up Pythagoras’s brilliant white mantle.

Alcidamas may himself not have known the precise connections between these men; he prob-
ably drew inferences from hearsay and from similarities in their works.

34 Alcidamas seems also to have written one of the earliest doxographies of poets, the

Mouseion (“house of the Muses”), which prob ably included the Certamen, the contest between Homer and Hesiod; see Suda α 1283; Muir 2001, xx.

35 Pl. Prt. 347e with Meno 71d (Gorgias); Hp. mi. 365d (Homer). Cf. Ford 1994, 212–14.

270 CH A PTER 9

( Phd. 127c3– e4). Plato’s Socrates does not ignore the past, but it gets flattened and relativized to those currently discussing it.36 Philosophia is principally a matter of one’s being challenged in one’s views by the unpredictable and compelling questions and rebuttals of one’s interlocutors. This can have a virtual
realization in inner dialogue, but cannot be reduced to it, in light of Socrates’s
definition of philosophia as “examination of oneself and others” (Pl. Ap. 29a1).

This is the way “self- knowledge,” which takes conversation with others, is at
the heart of the Platonic philosophical enterprise.37 Just as the search for self-
knowledge comes to no proper end, a proper conversation cannot be exhausted,
as we know from our lives and from Socrates’s saying so at the end of many

Platonic dialogues. A refutation ends a game or contest, but in conversation,
and thus in philosophy, it merely spurs further talking.

Plato does, of course, mention practically all the people Aristotle eventually
calls philosophoi, even without presenting himself as canvassing or articulating
or positing the history of philosophoi. We saw that Plato esteems Anaxagoras
for contributing to Socrates’s thought about rational or teleological explana-
tion at the cosmic level. Socrates reports Empedocles’s views about effluences
in order to seduce Meno in a “Gorgianic” register of persuasion, and attributes
views about “strife and love” to “ later Ionian and Sicilian muses” (Pl. Men.

76c4; Soph. 242d7–243a1). Xenophanes is a prominent member of “the Eleatic
tribe,” in holding to the thesis that “all are one” ( Soph. 242d5). Heraclitus
comes up in the Cratylus, as we saw, and Heracliteans zing in and out of the

Theaetetus ( Tht. 179e3–180b3). Pythagoras and Pythagoreans are mentioned twice, in the Republic. Parmenides and Zeno travel together and teach Socrates
in the Parmenides; Parmenides is also in the Theaetetus (183e5–184b1), joined elsewhere in that dialogue by Protagoras, Homer, Heraclitus, and his followers). Most are mentioned simply for a slogan or way of talking. The Eleatics of
the Parmenides give Socrates a lesson in thinking, not a synopsis of their on-
tological writings. We learn about Anaxagoras’s views only from the perspec-
tive of Socrates’s excitement and disenchantment. And the term philosophoi
generally refers to participants in Socrates’s discussion circle or to those who
have adopted an estimable attitude toward learning.

All the same, we do see the lineaments of a historical disciplinary thinking
in Plato. Sometimes he clumps thinkers together: Empedocles and Gorgias,

Ionians, Sicilians, Heracliteans, Parmenides, and Zeno (or “Eleatics”). Usually
he says little about tilling these clumps into rows, but he does say something.

36 Thus DL 3.25, which says that Plato initiated rebutting (ἀντειρηκώς) his pre de ces sors’

views.

37 Cf. Moore 2015b.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 271

In one case, from the Theaetetus, we see an echo of the Hippias- reliant Cra-
tylus discussed above. Socrates says that many people believe that all being is
really becoming: “and regarding this, all the sophoi except Parmenides are to
be gathered in order (ἑξῆς . . . συμφερέσθων), Protagoras and Heraclitus and

Empedocles, and the leading (ἄκροι) poets in each kind of poetry, Epicharmus
in comedy and Homer in tragedy, who said ‘Oceanus origin of gods and mother

Tethys’ ( Il. 14.201, 302), said that all things are born from flow and motion”

( Tht. 152e1–8). This list of sophoi is not yet a list of philosophoi, but it is a list of thinkers presented for reflection. In another case, a paragraph from the Sophist, cited in the previous paragraph ( Soph. 242c7–243a4), the Eleatic visitor gives us what looks like a partial source for Isocrates’s Antidosis. He rebukes

Parmenides and “every one else” (including Eleatics, Ionians, and Sicilians)

who urge critical delineation (ἐπὶ κρίσιν . . . διορίσασθαι) of the number and
nature of “beings”: “Now, whether or not all the things they said were true, it
would be harsh and discordant to make any great censure of these famous and
ancient men (κλεινοῖς καὶ παλαιοῖς ἀνδράσιν).” We can say that “they spoke
without caring whether we could follow them” (οὐδεν . . . φροντίσαντες εἴτ᾽
ἐπακολουθοῦμεν αὐτοῖς λέγουσιν). The Eleatic visitor thus provides an his-
torical taxonomy of those who wrote about “beings” (τὰ ὄντα), drawing subtle
distinctions, and judging them on their ability to hold a conversation with their
successors. Most scholars of Platonic dialogues believe that Plato wrote the

Sophist late in his career, with the Acad emy already established. We can say,
then, that we see inchoately in Plato the historical disciplinary conception that
fi nally comes into mature view with Aristotle.

Aristotle’s History of Philosophia as Diachronic Conversation

Aristotle moves back from the pre sent. He affixes the conversational web to
historically distant branches. Philosophia for him is a long- term joint effort
pursuing sophia defined in a distinctive way. No longer is it solely a matter of personal heroism or self- improvement; Aristotle never defines philosophia in
terms of self- knowledge. For him, philosophia is understanding and explaining
every thing most fundamentally, either considered broadly, such that philoso-
phia includes all epistêmai, or narrowly, such that philosophia takes up the undergirdings of all epistêmai. Like Plato, he thinks this requires a communal
effort.38 But that community includes those no longer pre sent. Thus philosophia

38 Contra, e.g., Jordan 1990, 5–7, who mistakenly believes that Greek phi los o phers “had no conception that the tasks of philosophy were shared in common.”

272 CH A PTER 9
does not occur only in local instances. It takes a cumulative effort, with the
burden shared by all those we can conceive of as having contributed to that
cumulative effort. We stand on giants’ shoulders. But this does not simply
allow us to look farther. The giants have seen and thought in their own incisive
ways; while we are borne up by them, their views bear on our own. They are
less like stools than friends who, giving us a lift, still have something to say.

Plato assumes that one cannot know what the ancients really meant, and
so one may as well focus on oneself; this is a princi ple of epistemic humil-
ity. Aristotle assumes that the ancients were really wise, and so one ought to
reconstruct their arguments as well as pos si ble; this is a princi ple of epistemic
charity. Doing this charitable reconstruction allows earlier prac ti tion ers to con-
tribute to the cumulative effort.39 Scholarship has long disputed Aristotle’s
virtues and vices in his reconstruction of his pre de ces sors. The stakes of the
battle concern the usefulness of Aristotle’s works as witness to his pre de ces-
sors for our in de pen dent work in ancient philosophy.40 But Aristotle’s reli-
ability and the meaning of his testimony matter little to the pre sent chapter.

What matters is that however tendentiously or dialectically or teleologically

Aristotle treats his pre de ces sors, when he calls them philosophoi and treats
them as worthy of respectful analy sis, he reveals a disciplinary conception.41

In this, too, as we have already seen in this chapter, Aristotle the historiog-
rapher stands on the shoulders of historiographical giants. Already Heraclitus,

Hippias, Alcidamas, and Plato had sieved and sorted the best intellectuals and
thinkers of the generations within memory or rec ord. Contemporaries might
put up other past thinkers for candidacy, constructing and reconstructing the
canon, such as the fifth- century BCE Hippo whom Aristotle considers and
rejects as unworthy for charitable reconstruction. Thus Aristotle labored in
fields long furrowed, happy to call the acreage a farm and apply himself to its
cultivation. The best conversational partners, like the best soils, repay many
seasons of work. Even the idea of a diachronic conversation preceded Aris-
totle. Socrates imagined Hades as a timeless place for conversation between

39 Aristotle’s Protrepticus encourages, in the case of the fragmentary remains of philosophical Pythagoreanism, “setting out from small glimmers (αἰθυγμάτων), building such things into a corpus (ὁρμωμένους σωματατοποιεῖν), helping make it grow” (Iambl. DCMS 22.68,7–24).

40 Cherniss 1951 and McDiarmid 1953 doubt the usefulness; Guthrie 1957 recuperates Aris-
totle; Stevenson 1974 clarifies the stakes; Collobert 2002 and Hussey 2012 describe Aristotle’s historical methods.

41 Jaeger opens his Aristotle (1962, 3–4) with the claim that “Aristotle was the first thinker to set up along with his philosophy a conception of his own position in history; he thereby created a new kind of philosophical consciousness.” Seeing oneself in history requires seeing there to be a history, and in Aristotle’s case, a history of philosophia; I am describing the texture of the consciousness of that history. (Cf. Barney 2012, 104, who gives an appealing argument for Aristotle’s status as “the first historian of philosophy.”)

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 273
his most esteemed forebears and himself. Aristotle’s discipline of philoso-
phia embraces these conversations as the ones most fruitful for each mem-
ber’s objectives.42 The factors contributing to his ability to make philosophia
into a discipline structured in this way include his relatively late date, his
ecumenical interests, his ravenous appetite for books, and, most importantly,
his two de cades in Plato’s Acad emy. The Acad emy formalized the Socratic
discussion circles depicted in the Charmides and the more general discussion
circles depicted in the Protagoras. Participants other than Socrates could now
give full- time attention to philosophical pursuit and conversation, and they
could proceed more linearly and systematically than a part- time or intermit-
tent discussion club would allow. Each researcher would bring his or her own
historical understanding; together they could provide, orally or in their per-
sonal libraries, the material for Aristotle’s historiography.

The next sections vindicate one part of this view, that Aristotle consolidated
certain of his pre de ces sors into philosophoi and thus as prac ti tion ers in the discipline of philosophia. We will see that he shapes up a long history of philosophia, periodizes and striates it, and explains the roles of its ancillary members.

Aristotle contributes much else to the disciplinary formation of philosophia,
especially in methodology, treatise- writing, use of research associates, highly
fruitful cross- disciplinary investigation, and sheer analytic brilliance, bring-
ing aporiai into focus, and providing the most provocative answers.43 In our
focus on the philosophos word group, we must let those innovations speak for
themselves.

Histories of the Sophoi

Aristotle’s conventions for naming intellectual prac ti tion ers look jumbled and
ill- defined. He switches among philosophoi, hoi philosophountes, phusikoi, phusiologoi, sophoi, theologoi, and poiêtai. Often Aristotle prefers shorthand 42 Simplicius, commenting on Aristotle’s Physics 184b15 ( In Phys. 36,25–37,6), pre sents the spirit of continuity most vigorously: “Since we will hear even of Aristotle refuting (ἐλέγχοντος) the views (δόξας) of earlier phi los o phers, and before Aristotle Plato appears to be doing this and before them both Parmenides and Xenophanes, one must know that these men, concerned
for their more superficial audience, quite refute (διελέγχουσίν) instances of apparent oddness in their [forebears’] writings, the ancients usually revealing their thought in an enigmatic way.

Nevertheless, Plato is obviously impressed (θαυμάζων) with Parmenides, whom he seems to
quite refute (διελέγχειν δοκεῖ). . . . And Aristotle apparently intuits (ὑπονοῶν) the depth of his wisdom, when he says that ‘But Parmenides seems to speak <with sharper sight> (μᾶλλον
βλέπων, M. A.5 986b27).’ Thus these men, though sometimes they fill out what has been omitted, sometimes clarify what has been said unclearly, sometimes distinguishing what has been said about the intelligibles [in such- and- such ways], still they merely seem to refute (ἐλέγχειν).”

43 See, for example, Barnes 1982 and Natali 2013.

274 CH A PTER 9
temporal deictics, like hoi nun (“ those now”) and tôn proterôn (“ those earlier”). Sometimes he mixes and matches. At Metaphysics Ν, for example, Aristotle expresses the popularity of the idea that beauty and goodness
came into existence after other things came into existence by attributing it
to the theologoi and hoi nun (Ν 1091a29– b15). In Book Λ, he attributes this idea to Pythagoras and Speusippus (Λ 1072b31). Speusippus surely counts as

“among those now.” Does Pythagoras count as a figure among the theologoi?

Aristotle seems to mention his pre de ces sors in an ad hoc or arbitrary way.

In fact his orderings are coordinate and clear: he is drawing from preex-
isting categories and, at times, consolidating them under new guises. To see
the structure of Aristotle’s chronography we might start with the passage in

Metaphysics N. There he pares down his history to two categories. Continuing
on the subject of people who believe that the advent of goodness postdates the
first princi ples, he calls the earliest group of such people “the early poets” (οἱ
ποιηταὶ οἱ ἀρχαῖοι). They treat Night, Heaven, Chaos, and Ocean as “the first
things,” which are ethically neutral, and posit as somewhat later a “reigning
and ruling” Zeus who serves as the origin of all ethical norms. The later group
he calls “ those who do not speak exclusively in myth” (οἵ μεμιγμένοι . . . τῷ
μὴ μυθικῶς πάντα λέγειν). Aristotle includes three sub- categories here. There
is Pherecydes and the others who speak of the ariston (“the best”).44 Then
there are the Magi, for whom no information is given. Fi nally, “among the
later sophoi” (τῶν ὑστέρων δὲ σοφῶν) he mentions Empedocles and Anax-
agoras, who posit love and mind as the later normative princi ples. Hence we
have a mixed bag of appellations and groups: cosmogonic poets; the miracle-
mongering Pherecydes and those who share his concept of a superlative ideal;
some Persian intellectuals; and two students of nature from the fifth century

BCE. There may seem to be no shared name, only a shared view about a two-
step origin of the world. But then we might won der why Aristotle chooses
these people to list, or knows to interpret them allegorically or so charitably.

Perhaps they do share something else; and we can come to see that they in fact
do share a name. Aristotle must call them all sophoi; his usage “among the
later sophoi” admits as much. The “ earlier” sophoi must be the “early poets,”

Pherecydes and his ilk (who are not much earlier than Empedocles), and the

Magi (knowledge of whom may date to Xerxes’s crossing of the Hellespont in
the early fifth century BCE).45

44 This is the only reference to Pherecydes in the Metaphysics, but Apollonius Mir. 6 may cite Aristotle (= On the Pythagoreans fr. 1 Ross) for the claim that Pythagoras followed Pherecydes, and like him engaged in miracle- mongering (τερατοποιίας).

45 Chroust 1973a, 2.209, 424n16, believes that Aristotle might be summarizing his On Philosophy. For more on the Magi in the Acad emy, see Horky 2009.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 275

But the impor tant dichotomy in this passage is not between the “ earlier”

and “ later” sophoi. It is between those who speak entirely in myth and those
who do not. The first group are the poets, who speak in terms of Night, Heaven,
and so forth. They write genealogical stories and animate characters, and
as sophoi their works must have been either understood as providing models
for human life or interpreted allegorically or symbolically. Elsewhere in the

Metaphysics Aristotle refers to those who speak in terms of Night and Heaven
as theologoi, though this category might be somewhat larger than “poets,” if it
includes Pythagoras (Λ 1071b27). Aristotle finds the theologoi difficult to deal
with; he includes Hesiod and the like (Ἡσίοδον καὶ πάντες ὅσοι θεολόγοι)

among them. They concern themselves with first princi ples, but enthralled by
their own experience with language and imagery, they forget to make compre-
hensible their claims about those princi ples (a complaint similar to that of the

Eleatic visitor in Plato’s Sophist). This matters if gods are to be taken as first princi ples. Aristotle grows impatient, complaining that “it’s not worth giving
serious investigation (σπουδῆς σκοπεῖν) to their mythical expressions of wis-
dom (τῶν μυθικῶς σοφιζομένων); we ought rather to learn from and interrogate
those who speak via demonstration (δι᾽ ἀποδειξεως λεγόντων δεῖ πυνθάνεσθαι
διερωτῶντας)” (B 1000a18–22). But we see that even in his frustration at their
indirection, Aristotle includes these poiêtai and theologoi among the sophoi, and thus as relevant to his study into fundamental explanation.

The second group, those who speak “not . . . exclusively in myth,” includes
those who carry on certain aspects of the poetic tradition, though to a lesser
extent: at least Pherecydes and Empedocles. Thus Aristotle observes the rise
of some non- imagistic or non- dramatic ele ments, either the positing of abstract
forces or reasoning through sequential argument. The stories of the poets may
lend themselves to this reformation. Aristotle elsewhere says that poetry is more
philosophical than history; and cosmogonies, while superficially historical,
in fact unfold necessarily or plausibly— they comprise claims readily infused
with notions of forces and logical requirement.46 Empedocles retains a Hes-
iodic drama in his accounts of Love and Strife; Anaxagoras incants the tale of
the Mind’s whirling world.

Aristotle thus provides in Metaphysics N a miniature history of the sophoi.

Aristotle defines the sophoi at the beginning of Metaphysics A as those who know as much as pos si ble though without knowing every individual item,47
who can comprehend difficult matters and especially those not learned through
sense perception, and who tend to be accurate and good at explanation ( M. A

46 Arist. Poet. 1451b1–7; see Powell 1987, 348, for subtleties in Aristotle’s view of history.

47 Cf. Arist. An. post. 79a5: we may understand the universal but by lack of observation have ignored some instances.

276 CH A PTER 9

982a8–13).48 In other words: they have high- level understanding without being
polymaths; they are insightful about abstract and conceptual matters; and they
have the intellectual virtues of error- correction in the ser vice of knowledge
and articulation in the ser vice of understanding. In a lost work Aristotle ex-
presses this view in an etymological key. Sophia is a sort of “clarity” (σάφειά)

for “making all things clear” (σαφηνίζουσα); clarity is something light (φαές),
so called from the terms for light (τὸ φάος καὶ φῶς); and brings hidden things
to light. Matters of the intelligible and divine realm (τὰ νοητὰ καὶ θεῖα) are
most clear in themselves but our bodies prevent us from seeing them; sophia
was so called for bringing those things to light.49

Aristotle does not use the philosophos word group in any of these sophos-
histories. Yet he calls Empedocles and Anaxagoras philosophoi elsewhere. We
may then won der about the relationship between sophoi and philosophoi, and even of the relevance of the former to the latter. As we will soon see, Aristotle
repurposes his history of the sophoi for his history of the philosophoi. The philosophoi constitute a proper subset of the sophoi, specifically the group in Metaphysics N of those who speak “not . . . exclusively in myth.”

History of the Philosophoi

Aristotle pre sents the middle of Metaphysics Α (983a23–993a23) as giving his-
torical proof to his claim in the Physics that there are exactly four kinds of
causal explanation. He shows that previous thinkers concerned themselves
with none other than these four. This follows his analy sis of the sophos near
the book’s beginning, and thus we are to deem as sophoi all who follow. He
confirms this when he summarizes the most impor tant chapters, A.3 and 4; he
says he has drawn his results “from the sophoi who already themselves talked
through these matters” (τῶν συνηδρευκότων ἤδη τῷ λόγῳ σοφῶν), that is, what
he just discussed (A.5 987a2–3). These sophoi include Thales, Anaxagoras, Em-
pedocles, Leucippus, Democritus, Anaximenes, Diogenes of Apollonia, Hip-
pasus of Metapontum, Parmenides, Melissus, the Pythagoreans, Alcmaeon,
and Xenophanes.

Yet Aristotle also refers to all these men as philosophoi ( M. A.3 983b2, A.10

993a16). Thus all philosophoi are sophoi. Nearly all the sophoi he mentions in this chapter are philosophoi. We are left to ask about the exceptions and the
sources of differentiation. We will see that the philosophoi belong to the discipline of philosophia. While a discipline has lines of internal differentiation, it 48 On this section see Broadie 2012, esp. 53–62, and Cambiano 2012. HJ suggest this section is from the Protrepticus, and thus pre-350 BCE.

49 Arist. On Philosophy fr. 8 Ross (from Philoponus). For discussion, see Gerson 2005, 68–70.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 277
is more importantly a community of discussion (συνηδρεύειν τῷ λόγῳ), such
that every body can be taken as talking with one another. It excludes those
sophoi who cannot be taken as talking to others in the discipline, such as the
poets at whom we have already seen Aristotle grumble.

This explains Aristotle’s treatment of Thales as the “initiator” (ἀρχηγός) of
one kind of philosophia, the one that accepts a material princi ple and that at-
tracted “most of the early philosophizers” ( M. A.3 983b6, 983b20). Some schol-
ars have wanted to show that Thales really did usher in a totally new method
of investigation.50 Others, by contrast, have doubted it, ascribing the real in-
novation to Anaximander or judging Thales merely a clever and practical
sophos.51 But Aristotle does not support his assertion by appeal to Thales’s
qualitative novelty, theoretical purity, or intellectual profundity. Thales’s sta-
tus as initiator comes, according to Aristotle, from his having been first to put
forth the claim that water is the material princi ple. Aristotle recognizes the
controversy in his claim.52 Some people say that the “earliest theologizers”

(πρώτους θεολογήσαντας), from quite long ago (τὸυς παμπαλαίους καὶ πολὺ
πρὸ τῆς νῦν), even before Thales, had already accepted water as the first thing,
and thus as equivalent to the material princi ple. This can be inferred from
their making Oceanus and Tethys parents of creation and from the tradition
of swearing an oath on Styx, which would imply that this river is the old-
est thing (A.3 983b18–32).53 But it is “unclear” (ἄδηλον, A 984a2) whether
the theologoi really believed that water was the first princi ple; even if they had views about first princi ples (Ν 1091b4–7), Aristotle seems unable to read
them as having made an assertion about water of the sort he takes Thales to
have made.54 Accordingly, Thales is the first sophos to have a stated view

50 E.g., Rosen 1962; West 1963, 172–76; Panchenko 1993; O’Grady 2002; Sassi 2018 [2006],

21–26 (Thales’s “clarity” and dispensing of divine- agent explanations).

51 E.g., Kahn 1960; Dicks 1959.

52 De Cesaris 2018, 185–87, discusses some in ter est ing translation issues here. A similar controversy arises for the introduction of a second princi ple, Mind. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae adopted this view, but it is said that his semi- legendary country- mate Hermotimus of Clazomenae had already done so (Arist. M. A 984b18–19). Aristotle does not try to settle the issue, adding only that Hesiod, Parmenides, and Empedocles could be included as adopters (984b23–

985a10). The same intra- Clazomenaean confusion arises again when Aristotle observes that people do not know whether Anaxagoras or Hermotimus said “for intellect is the god in us”

( Protrepticus, in Iambl. Pro. 8.48,16). Hermotimus was said to be a pre- incarnation of Pythagoras (DL 8.5); Lucian calls him a Pythagorean ( Encom. musc. 7; cf. Pliny HN 7.42) and names a play after him.

53 At Mete. 347a6–8, Aristotle says that the ancients spoke riddlingly of Ocean; at 353a34–
b1 he says that those who spent time in theologia considered the origins of the seas and the rivers to be deep under the Earth.

54 Admittedly, Aristotle has limited information about Thales’s views of water, rely-
ing mostly on prior accounts (as seen, e.g., at Cael. 294a28– b6); he knows a bit more about

278 CH A PTER 9
of the sort that Aristotle can take as open to critique, and thus involved, no
matter how inchoately (cf. Soph. el. 183b29), in the sequence of debates found
in the later philosophoi, down to his own time and himself.55 It may be that

Aristotle judged Thales “the first . . . to break with the tradition of divine genealogies,”56 and he may have been famous as an exemplary figure for
nearly two centuries already,57 but the impor tant point is that Thales could be
taken as saying things that, as sparse as they may have been, could be readily
formulated, without allegoresis, as answers to the questions about nature that

Aristotle has.58 In other words, Hippias’s sophos lineage, on which Aristotle
prob ably draws, is unexceptionable as a list of sophoi, but it does not adum-
brate a discipline; hermeneutic obstacles leave some members dialectically
and conversationally cut off.59 Aristotle creates the discipline of philosophia

Thales’s view of souls and god, at De an. 405a19 relying on Hippias for Thales’s attribution of souls to inanimate objects and at 411a8 quoting Thales’s “Every thing is full of gods.” LM

5.772 argue that Aristotle in fact constructed Thales’s views (at least of water) from the doctrines of Hippo, the fifth- century BCE Pythagoreanizing thinker whom Aristotle maligns as not worth considering in his history of sophoi/ philosophoi, “given the thinness (εὐτέλειαν) of his thinking” ( M. A 984a4). Someone must have included him in a history of sophoi, plausibly Hippias himself (recently, Barney 2012, 87–92, 104). Aristotle elsewhere includes him among the “more superficial” writers ( De an. 405b2) who “tried to refute” those (including Critias of Athens) who say that soul is blood. Aristotle was not the first to criticize Hippo; the comic playwright Cratinus got there in the late 430s BCE (Cratin. Panoptai fr. 167 PCG = Hippo A2/

DRAM. T15 + 16a).

55 Theophrastus appears to have taken a dif fer ent view: people indeed investigated nature before Thales, but Thales put them all in the shade (Simpl. In Phys. 23,21–33). This suggests, incidentally, that when Theophrastus interprets Prometheus’s giving fire to humans as his giving them a share in philosophia (Σ Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.1248–50; discussion in Fortenbaugh 2014, 150–56), he is making an allegorical rather than a historical claim.

56 BNP s.v. “Thales”; cf. Mansfeld 1985.

57 Thales is discussed as significant, exemplary, or a first- discoverer by many before Aristotle: Alcaeus (Him. Or. 28.2 [= A11a/R5], but see Wöhrle 2014, 273n2, for difficulties), Pherecydes (Arist. On Poets fr. 3 Ross [= DL 2.46], Suda φ 214.1–9), Xenophanes (DL 1.23, 9.18.11–

12), Heraclitus (DL 1.23), Choerilus of Samos (DL 1.24, but see again Wöhrle 2014, 29n1, for difficulties), Democritus (DL 1.22), Herodotus (Hdt. 1.74, 1.75, 2.20 [apparently including him among “some Greeks wishing to become distinguished by their sophia” (Ἑλλῇνων . . . τινὲς
ἐπίσημοι βουλόμενοι γενέσθαι σοφίην)]), Aristophanes ( Nub. 180; Av. 1009), Plato ( Tht. 174a4–
b6 [cf. Phdr. 249d7–8]; Prt. 342e4; Hip. mai. 281c5; R. 600a4–7; Ep. II.311a1–7), Andron (Clem.

Strom. 1.21.129.3–4), and Eudoxus of Cnidus (DL 1.29).

58 For related views, see Mogyoródi 2000, 339–41; Palmer 2000, 184–91, 202; Leszl 2006b;

Barney 2012. For a contrasting view, see Finkelberg 2017, 10–12.

59 Aristotle prob ably drew on Hippias’s work for his (lost) Sophist, which word he and Hippias sometimes use for sophos. After all, it is in that work that Aristotle is said to have called Zeno and Empedocles inventors of dialectic and rhe toric. Other commentators (e.g., Jaeger 1962, 30–31; cf. Chroust 1973a, 2.24–25) have assumed that this work imitated Plato’s Sophist, which, as we have seen, also includes a list of sophoi (Pl. Soph. 242c–244b; we have seen that this list may itself benefit from Hippias’s work), but there is no evidence that Aristotle has here written about not- being or the sophist qua dissembler— maybe he has simply updated Hippias’s work.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 279
by seeing with whom he can fruitfully engage. He entered a preexisting de-
bate about the origins of phusiologia and provided a new criterion for settling
the question about philosophia.

One group with whom we know he could fruitfully engage were the “so-
called Pythagoreans” (οἱ καλούμενοι Πυθαγόρειοι, Arist. M. A 985b23); he
dedicates to critical interpretation of them many chapters in the Metaphysics

(including, in Book Α, 989b29–990a35). Aristotle refers specifically to their
view as a philosophia and locates it with those of Xenophanes, Melissus,

Parmenides, and Alcmaeon in the “Italian philosophia” (A 987a31).60 They
stand apart from the materialist phusiologoi, having made their princi ples and
ele ments “more subtle” (ἐκτοπωτέροις)— that is, immaterial (A 989b30).61 Ar-
istotle gives them a mixed review, applauding their endeavor to define the

“what is” (τί ἐστιν), but critiquing the result as too simple (λίαν δ᾽ ἁπλῶς) and
superficial (ἐπιπολαίως). Like every one at their time, they lacked dialectic,
which may have begun with Zeno and Socrates but came into its own with

Plato’s “investigations into the types of arguments” (A 987b32). Elsewhere

Aristotle attributes to Pythagoras all kinds of miracle- mongering.62 Still, he
never treats the Pythagoreans as anything less than as philosophoi.

Throughout Metaphysics Α, Aristotle emphasizes the capacity and distinc-
tiveness of the practice designated by philosophia. Functionally speaking,

Aristotle notes at the volume’s beginning, philosophia involves investigating
real ity; but phenomenologically speaking, it means experiencing won der and
seeking explanation ( M. Α 982b11–22).63 Some instances of won der are expe-
rienced only by specialists; these aporiai motivate Aristotle’s more abstruse
discussions. But close- to- hand won ders (τὰ πρόχειρα τῶν ἀπόρων, Α 982b13–

14) count, too: “the philosophos is somehow a myth- lover too” (καὶ φιλόμυθος
ὁ φιλόσοφός πως ἐστιν, Α 982b18–19).64 At the volume’s end, Aristotle evalu-
ates the prac ti tion ers of philosophia whose work he has summarized. “All

60 Aristotle reports that Parmenides may have been the student of Xenophanes ( M. A 986b21); Xenophanes and Melissus were a bit unrefined (μικρὸν ἀγροικότεροι) in their views, and Parmenides seems to speak having somehow seen better (μᾶλλον βλέπων ἔοικέ που λέγειν, 986b18–28). On the fourth- century BCE reception of Xenophanes, see Mansfeld 1987; Palmer 1998 and 2000, 182–87.

61 They were the first to take up mathe matics, whence they de cided to set numbers as first princi ples (Arist. M. A 985b23–986a2).

62 See his On the Pythagoreans frr. 1–3 Ross; Philip 1963.

63 In a lost work, Aristotle imagined subterranean men seeing the earth, sea, and sky for the first time, and, presumably awed by them, inferred their divine origins (already being primed to believe in a divine agent): Cic. Nat. D. 2.37.95–96. On won der in Aristotle, see Gadamer 1982, 143–45; Nightingale 2004, 228–29, 253–68.

64 For discussion, including of the uncertain text of this passage, see Broadie 2012, 62–67.

Aristotle’s examples of such won ders are puppets, incommensurable diagonals, and solstices.

280 CH A PTER 9
seem to search out (ζητεῖν) causes, the ones spoken of in the Physics,” and while in one way they have talked about those causes, in another way they have
not, speaking “too vaguely” (ἀμυδρῶς). “The earliest philosophia seems to
have spoken falteringly (ψελλιζομένῃ) regarding every thing” (Α 993a11–16).65

While vagueness and inarticulacy hinders conversational fluency, it does not
foreclose discussion.

Aristotle’s Historiographical Theory

We just pieced together Aristotle’s disciplinary vision from offhand comments,
and found that he includes in philosophia all those whose views about fun-
damental explanation he can interrogate, reconstruct, and critique. We can
also see that he believes that philosophoi improved in articulacy and self-
consciousness over time. We turn now to Aristotle’s explicit remarks about the
history of philosophia.

He provides them in a short volume written in de pen dently of Metaphysics

Α and now collated as Metaphysics α.66 There he states quite directly that
philosophy is the study of truth (ἡ περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρία, M. α 993a35).

Nobody can be self- sufficient in the work of studying the truth, but neither can
anybody altogether fail. Each person says something about nature (λέγειν τι
περὶ τῆς φύσεως, α 993b1), and while each contribution on its own counts
for little or nothing, together they can be martialed into something great

(συναθροιζομένων . . . τι μέγεθος, α 993b3).67 Therefore, philosophia is nec-
essarily a group endeavor, and the numbers that are needed exceed those who
are alive in a single generation.

Aristotle has not yet explained the nature of this group endeavor, and thus
has not yet shown how philosophia is a discipline. Nor has he described how
to think about the members of the group he judges vague or confused. To
social attitudes he now turns. We should be grateful (χάριν ἔχειν) to those
with whom we share opinions (τις κοινώσαιτο ταῖς δόξαις) but also to those with
superficial opinions (τοῖς ἐπιπολαιότερον). The latter have just as much con-
tributed to the group endeavor, having prepared our habits of thinking (ἕξιν
προήσκησαν) ( M. α 993b12–14). In the art world, Phrynis allowed Timotheus

65 Aristotle uses the same verb to describe Empedocles’s inarticulate idea of the efficient cause ( M. A 985a6).

66 See Menn unpublished, §1a5, 38–45, for this work’s authenticity and source.

67 The verb συναθροίζω often refers to the assembling of (other wise scattered) soldiers (Xen.

An. 7.2.8; similarly horse men at 6.5.30), where only when they work together do they have effect, or of naval vessels of (other wise far- flung) allies (Lys. 2.34), or the military forces of (other-wise geo graph i cally dispersed) Greeks and barbarians (Pl. Menex. 243b); but it may also have been used in the festival analogy of Iambl. VP 12; see chapter 4, p. 118.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 281
to make the music we enjoy.68 Just so, among those concerned with truth, some
give us opinions (παρειλήφαμέν τινας δόξας, α 993b18) that we can use, and
others have enabled them to do so. As Aristotle explains it, philosophia is a
discipline when we “share opinions.” Sharing opinions does not mean that
every body accepts the same views; it means having a common set of opinions
which we can explore and about which we can debate. This is how we investi-
gate nature: by creating, articulating, testing, and revising our ideas in concert
with others.69 This we see at a length of hundreds of pages in the Metaphys-
ics. Obviously we can share opinions with people living or dead; Aristotle
shares maximally with Empedocles, the Pythagoreans, and Plato. There are
some people with whom we hardly share opinions. Aristotle may be think-
ing of Xenophanes and Hippo, both of whom he cites as having superficial
thoughts, but perhaps also of Thales, whose views scarcely remain. Yet it
would be obtuse to exclude them from the discipline. So Aristotle relativizes
the sharing of opinions. Xenophanes shared opinions with Parmenides; Hippo
may have shared opinions with Empedocles or some other Pythagoreans.

Opinion- sharing lacks transitivity; but disciplinarity does not. The discipline
is the ongoing joint effort of retrospective and con temporary conversation with
those others who are taken to participate in the same proj ect. It advances like
a rope, twined from short filaments, few of which go the entire length, its
strength varying with the density of connections between those strands. A
consequence of this view is that there need be no absolute starting point for
philosophy.70 But the starting point, such as it is, will certainly be frayed. The
further back in time one goes, those thinking about nature will not know with
whom they share (relevant) opinions. The term philosophia provides a sight-
line along which to braid its constituting strands.

Aristotle helped articulate not only philosophia as a discipline but also dialec-
tic and rhe toric, among other fields.71 He did so in the same way. He observes
that the originators of dialectic advanced only a little, and now pro gress has
been made bit by bit, and the art has been enlarged; it now has a magnitude

68 Aristotle speaks about the importance of Timotheus again in PVindob. G26008, fr. A 27, on which fragment see Janko 1987, 62, 191; Most 1992; Megino Rodriguéz 2008.

69 Barney 2012, 185–88, calls this “clarification dialectic.”

70 There need be no conclusion to it either, but disciplines can come to an end, as wagon-construction did with the advent of the motorcar. Possibly Aristotle mistakenly predicted the imminent end of his discipline: “And so Aristotle in upbraiding the phi los o phers of old for thinking, according to him, that thanks to their genius philosophy had reached perfection, says that they have been guilty of extreme folly or boastfulness; all the same he adds that he saw that, as a consequence of the great advance made in few years, philosophy would be absolutely complete” (Cic. Tusc. 3.28.69, trans. King). I note that Aristotle here retrojects his disciplinary attitude onto his forebears.

71 For Aristotle’s disciplinary articulation of physics, for example, see Hussey 2012, esp. 18.

282 CH A PTER 9

(Arist. Soph. el. 184b27). Cicero observes that Aristotle collected all the an-
cient writers on the rhetorikê technê, from its inventor Tisias down to his time, and summarized each practitioner’s precepts or maxims, which took
much interpretative effort and acumen, with the goal of understanding each
person’s method (Cic. Inv. rhet. 2.2.6–7). Naturally, we might subsume all this
to Aristotle’s dialectical method, his saving of the appearances, appealing to
the views of the sophoi on any par tic u lar question.72 This is not, however, an argument against his disciplinary approach. Disciplines comprise the sophoi
whose appearances one saves.

Conclusion: The Acad emy and Retrospective

Self- Constitution of Disciplines

Plato and his contemporaries ended up preserving the word philosophia for
posterity. Isocrates’s tuition- payers learned philosophia, Plato’s research fel-
lows studied philosophia, the first- generation fringe Socratics and friends spent their time talking philosophia. Thus philosophia grew up on a matrix of quasi-formal pedagogical, reflective, and social institutions. It could be sought out
by name, association, or habitual location. But it needed a history before it could
qualify as a discipline.

Disciplines have both prac ti tion ers and names, as the Hippocratic author
of On Ancient Medicine boasts for medicine.73 The names philosophoi and
philosophia do not at first refer to certain people defined by their partici-
pation in a discipline or to a discipline as such. But gradually they do so
increasingly refer, as people so named, or using that name, grow conscious
of others as similarly so named, and come to see themselves as defined, or
defining others, by the norms productive of that shared naming. A name
shifts from being a label— a semantically vacuous slander or praise—to a
description of a potentially idiosyncratic way of life and then to a descrip-
tion of a membership in an enterprise coordinated by continuous reference
to the name itself.

That philosophy needs a history of its discipline to become a discipline may
not drive us into paradox. Still, it may sound implausible, judging from paral-
lel disciplines. Take the disciplines of mythography, poetics, historiography,

72 Descriptions of dialectical method: Arist. Top. 100b21–23, 101a36–
b4, 104a8–15,

105a34– b18; arbitrating among conflicting opinions, M. Β 995a24– b4; Cael. 279b7–12; Phys.

206a12–14.

73 Hippoc. VM 5.1–2. Cf. Schiappa 1999, 23–28, who argues the point for rhe toric.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 283
rhe toric, or philology.74 All arose in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, and
all arose thanks to overlapping forces: centralization of cultural activity, infla-
tion of the value of speechmaking in demo cratic and diplomatic debate, and
anx i eties about Panhellenic anomie in the face of Persian meddling. They be-
came disciplines in the same way: by using a word in a new way, they isolated
chunks of embedded speech, turning them into discrete objects demanding
autonomous analy sis. Thus the practices and structures constituting poiêtikê
technê formed around the word poiêmata and the flat linguistic data it extracted from festival per for mances or sympotic revelries, as most vividly depicted
by Andrew Ford (2002). Mythography required consciousness of muthoi, of
there being such a thing as “myth” to describe, collate, rectify, allegorize, or
what ever. Likewise historiography, with historiai, “histories”; rhe toric, with
oratory; and philology, with texts and editions. In each case, the word jostles
what had been unconscious ac cep tance of the variety and just- so- ness of ex-
perience into a closer scrutiny, and that scrutiny gives rise to the discipline.

In previous chapters I have shown how the name philosophos functioned in
the rise of the discipline, and the rise of other disciplines lends plausibility to
that demonstration. We can add that these other disciplines require acknowl-
edged prac ti tion ers and a vocabulary or a set of practices.75 Rhe toric speaks
of “proem” and “counter- refutation.” Philology uses “commentary” and “obe-
lizing.” It might not seem, however, that any discipline requires for its disci-
plinarity that it have a conception of its own history or details of the intentions
and habits of its prac ti tion ers at its vari ous stages of development. Yet each
discipline does need pre de ces sors, to build up the library of texts, the list of
diacritical marks, the corpus of local chronicles, and to have started dicing the
world into the linguistic units that absorb its attention. It may seem that once
the discipline has its material to work on, such as poems, myths, speeches,
historical rec ords, or editions of Homer, and the skills to work on that mate-
rial, it can cut loose from its past. But this is not so. The materials and the
skills never achieve final or objective form; their identity and nature require
continued reestablishment, and that reestablishment requires attention to their
original establishment and all subsequent efforts. Deciding what counts as

Homer’s poems requires thinking through the decisions of one’s pre de ces sors
in poetry analy sis. So, while these disciplines attend to linguistic objects ap-
parently external to the discipline, that externality is an illusion; those objects
are continually objectified by the discipline itself.

74 Mythography: Fowler 2011; Martin 2012; poetics: Ford 2002; historiography: Lloyd 2009, 58–70; rhe toric: Cole 1991; Schiappa 1999; Timmerman and Schiappa 2010; Enos 2012; Bod

2013, 58–62; philology: Pfeiffer 1968; Turner 2014, 5–14.

75 See Bromberg 2012 with bibliography.

284 CH A PTER 9

The historical obligation seen in the non- philosophical disciplines binds phi-
losophy even tighter to its unique shape. This is because philosophy, as it
matured into a discipline, found that it does not really work on objects even
apparently external to its disciplinary practice, like the Homeridae’s bardic per-
for mances or Ionian stories about Zeus.76 It is registered in something rather
more internal: the practices of phi los o phers themselves.77 The linguistic ob-
jects sliced from the world and laid on the philosophos’s specimen slide are
the arguments, claims, per for mances, attitudes, or ideals of other philosophoi.

These words, actions, and norms may of course be taken to refer to something
in the world, or even to the whole world itself; they may be taken to manifest
patterns of reasoning or ideational constructs; and they may be practical or
theoretical. But as the observable or inferable material, only the philosophos’s
work undergoes philosophical analy sis.

As it turns out, the phi los o pher does sometimes study the world itself, as
the philologist of Homer sometimes studies Aegean trade routes or the poetry
analyst sometimes studies the dances of Asia Minor. But when a student of the
world, the phi los o pher is doing astronomy or physics, not philosophy per se;
the student of Aegean trade routes is doing maritime geography, not Homeric
analy sis per se; and the student of Persian dances is doing comparative chore-
ography, not poetry per se. When phi los o phers take what other phi los o phers
say as their point of focus, those words constitute their exclusive concern,
as we see from parallels with other fields. The poetry analyst cares for more
than her pre de ces sors’ categories and analyses of poetry; she also cares for
the poems she studies: what they are about, what their composition means,
what their qualities and effects are. So too the phi los o pher cares about the truth
of philosophical statements, the assumptions they rely on, and their power in
relieving philosophical confusions. But these concerns operate through an un-
mitigated attention to philosophical speech and work. Hence the necessity of
philosophy’s history to its being a discipline, for that history rec ords what has counted as philosophy and provides the material on which to train its ongoing attention, even as such attention is conditioned by con temporary obser-
vations and novel considerations. Without history, only a tiny con temporary
slice of philosophy would command a phi los o pher’s involvement, and she could

76 Aristotle says that philosophy differs from all other technai in needing for its work “neither tools nor places” (in Iambl. DCMS 26.82,27–28); though this makes a distinct point, it is on the right pathway.

77 This work can remain accessible to and directed toward non- philosophers if those philosophical practices to which phi los o phers respond diverge relatively little from quotidian practices; but in time that work may become wholly esoteric and unfamiliar; on this shift in ancient Greek philosophy, see Most 1999, 336. For the historical nature of philosophy considered from a more recent perspective, see Godlovich 2000, esp. 14–18.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 285
as much be called someone who is interested in philosophy as would be an
analyst of poetry who cared only about those poems published in the most re-
cent journals. And perhaps neither the poet nor the phi los o pher can see what
counts as poetic or philosophical writing without a deep corpus of material
against which to judge cases. The analyst of poetry, without a historical sen-
sibility, would instead be a pundit about con temporary literary events. So too
philosophy, seen as a discipline, needs a sweeping view of the temporally ex-
pansive realm of philosophical activity.

Above, I offered an analogy between philosophy and poetics in support of
the claim that philosophy needs its history to be a discipline. We might now
assess a potential disanalogy. Poetics and mythography are taken to analyze
the productions of others; they feed those objects through their examining ma-
chines. Philosophy, by contrast, seems not simply to analyze or receive; it also
creates and sends out. Perhaps it may seem to do this principally. This is a view
common enough to those con temporary phi los o phers who take themselves to
be spending their philosophical time applying brute mental force to puzzles
and prob lems. This view depends on two mistakes. First, those other disciplines
may also seem, to some of their prac ti tion ers, primarily creative: the writing
of histories, the creation of generic taxonomies, and the memorizing and per-
for mance of speeches. That creative side does not subordinate the analytic
reception of “poems” and “histories” and “oratory” to pre- disciplinary raw
material. Those disciplines are still constituted by those activities, even if
not wholly. Second, the phi los o phers who take themselves to have a purely
present- tense or prospective orientation forget that the puzzles they address
have been articulated, prompted, or revealed in prior philosophical work that
they take to be philosophical, and that they write for an ongoing discussion
that makes sense only as an historical phenomenon. Their history may not go
deep, but a wade or a swim makes for as much a historical orientation as a
dive. The prominence of philosophical successions shows this. Philosophy is
unavoidably critical; material to critique requires recognizing others besides
oneself to be phi los o phers; and this is what the historical consciousness raised
by a history of philosophy allows.

So, a discipline requires an historical consciousness and what I called “con-
versationality” in chapter 8: an engagement among members of the discipline.

This suggests a sort of institutional theory of the disciplines (on the model of the
institutional theory of art), in which membership depends on the judgment of its
members, perhaps after the fact, and open to revision. Such a theory allows the
possibility of “outside phi los o phers,” those never or not for a long time recog-
nized as phi los o phers; irrespective of the ingenuity or rigor of their thought, they
do not become “phi los o phers” until those in the discipline acknowledge them

286 CH A PTER 9
as such. (Refusal to acknowledge those who ought to be acknowledged will be
a disciplinary failure, of inconsistency or of irrationality.) But only time and
goodwill can force that acknowl edgment; there are no objective, ahistorical
internal criteria of membership. What contingent, historical criteria there are,
and to what use one might put earlier or other members of the discipline, remain
the most heated matters of dispute through the history of philosophy.78

It is worth admitting that “discipline” does not translate a Greek word, but I
do not claim that Aristotle had a conception of a “discipline,” only that we find
in Aristotle a conception of philosophy contiguous with our own disciplinary
conception. The closest term might be epistêmê, which by Aristotle’s time
could mean “science” in the way we mean it, as a constellation of interrelated
research questions along with lines and methods of investigation. Aristotle
does think of philosophia as an epistêmê. But he does so from considerations of the knowability of its princi ples, and thus from the epistemological status of
its argumentative outputs, for which he argues. Our notion of “discipline” may
not entail any such epistemological commitments; it exists somewhere between
an epistêmê (“knowledge”), epitêdeuma (“pursuit”), technê (“technical skill”), askêsis (“effortful exercise”), paideia or paideusis (“educational program”), diatribê (“pastime”), praxis (“practice”), and sunousia (“association”).

One thing that our term “discipline” does importantly entail, however, is
the existence of disciples. Disciplines allow no untutored geniuses, only tu-
tored genius. Fine art is not a discipline, but art theory and academic art are.

Disciples acquire the accoutrements of a discipline: in the case of the learned
disciplines, they get introduced through time into the canon, questions, meth-
ods, and other historically assembled norms, taking what their teachers and
teachers’ teachers do as normative for themselves. This rigorous “discipline”

involves learning things that at the moment may not seem practical or person-
ally salient (e.g., extensive footnoting) but end up coloring perception, valu-
ation, and activity. Schools or departments institutionalize the discipline, as-
signing mentors for the efficient induction of students into its deep and recent
past. Competition among schools within a discipline is not necessary for a
discipline,79 but results from the institutionalization of the discipline and the
situation that certain disciplinary topics thus far fail to receive consensus.

Thus in mathe matics nowadays (I suppose) there is less inter- school conflict,
but even so, there is conflict about what to focus on.

78 See Catana 2016 for bibliography concerning analytical philosophy’s puzzlement about
the history of philosophy.

79 On the historical fact and productivity of such competition, see Collins 2000.

A R ISTOTLE’S HISTOR IOGR A PH Y 287

This chapter has argued that the discipline of philosophy depends on its
own history; its evidence is the history of its historiography. I have tracked the
changing characterizations by several intellectuals of the relationship among
those who were eventually canonized as phi los o phers constituting the disci-
pline of philosophy. The earliest figures pre sent fellow thinkers in competi-
tion, lineages of similarity, and synchronic conversation. But none of these pre-
sen ta tions is historical in the requisite way. Only with Aristotle do we come
to see philosophy treated as a web of diachronic conversations; treating it this
way requires a historical sensibility, and is what fi nally constitutes philosophy
as a discipline.

10

Ambivalence about Philosophia beyond
the Discipline

The Evidence of Heraclides’s Protreptic Story

This book has followed the discipline called philosophia from its obscure head-
waters at the end of the sixth century BCE, through its backwaters and eddies
in the fifth century BCE, until the construction of the waterworks of the fourth-
century BCE schools. As this concluding chapter will show, however, Plato and
his intellectual peers channeled only some of the current; much remained to
water broader fields. The disciplinary sense of philosophia established itself, and provided our modern word “philosophy,” by concentrating one use of philosophia. But the common use, too, lived on, in both the way familiar from the earli-
est history of the term and in a relatively more laudable inflection familiar from
at least the time of Lysias at the start of the fourth century BCE. This book’s pre-
vious chapters have charted the relations between the proto- disciplinary and the
proto- common uses of the term philosophia. In the fourth century BCE, as the
disciplinary form grows increasingly robust and responsive to intradisciplinary
discussion, those relations attenuate. They do not, however, dis appear altogether.

Aspects of the discipline of philosophia, its practice, and its self- understanding continue to depend on popu lar beliefs about philosophia.

We may see those dependence relations in a variety of contexts— a com-
plete study of philosophia in the fourth century BCE, which this book cannot
provide, would make them especially clear. Heraclides’s On Diseases (mid-350s

BCE), as a protreptic to philosophia told through the history of its term and
practice, allows one vantage point. At both disciplinary and general cultural
levels, the idea of being philosophos has fi nally had its day: many people fi-
nally approve of being philosophos or seek to become philosophos. Hence the reasonableness of Heraclides’s writing the dialogue— not only would he seem
to believe the core of what he wrote to be true; he would seem to believe that
people outside the discipline could contemplate themselves joining the disci-
pline of philosophia. But that the dialogue is a protreptic at all, not simply an engagement in theoretical contemplation (or what ever) in medias res, shows

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 289
that not all people are turned toward the discipline. There must still have been
considerable re sis tance to philosophia. Hence the motivation for Heraclides’s writing the dialogue—he seems to believe that people were not yet totally sympathetic to the idea of philosophia. The remainder of this chapter will describe some of the ongoing cultural ambivalence about philosophia that is necessary
for Heraclides’s protreptic, an ambivalence best understood, even if only in-
completely, by the kind of account of the term philosophia’s origin that the
previous nine chapters have provided.

Those chapters have helped us to see something about Heraclides’s protreptic
besides the cultural ambivalence necessary for its construction and promulga-
tion. His version of the Pythagoras story, which we see well in Cicero, excerpted
in Iamblichus, and compressed and reconfigured in Sosicrates, depends on two
fourth- century BCE innovations in thinking about philosophia. The first is best
seen in Plato, even if the tradition precedes it: the reconstructive etymology of the
word philosophos. The second is best seen in Aristotle, even if again the tradi-
tion precedes it: a historical consciousness of a discipline. By contrast, the non-

Heraclidean version, on view in Diodorus and in Diogenes Laertius’s preface,
relies on related but distinct and prob ably earlier innovations. The first, well-
known from Hippias, is the historical consciousness not of a discipline of
philosophia but of lineages of sophoi. The second, well- known from Pindar, is the conception of a sophos such that the word philosophos would be coined in relation to it.

Both Pythagoras stories are protreptic, albeit in dif fer ent ways. Heraclides
points to Pythagoras and Empedocles, along with their respective interests, ob-
servation of and reflection on the kosmos, and their respective accomplish-
ments, foreseeing and healing human disease. The other authors of the Py-
thagoras stories point to the legendary sophoi, and their respective functions,
solving major human prob lems, and their respective characters, as akin to
the gods as is pos si ble. These differences speak, without doubt, to impor tant
variety in the proclivities and assumptions in Greek intellectual and para-
intellectual culture. Yet here their similarities matter more than the differences.

The stories speak equally to Pythagoras’s position in accommodating the term
philosophos and the redemption of the identity, practice, or (eventually) dis-
cipline from an image of idleness, uselessness, quietism, or vulgarity. They
do not themselves establish the practical or institutional norms for the pursuit
of philosophia, but they make pursuing a familiarity with philosophia seem reasonable enough, even admirable.

What protreptics do is turn people toward activities they are not currently en-
gaged in but about which they already have, to some extent, some positive feel-
ing. They respond to the cultural ambivalence that is instantiated in a person.

290 CH A PTER 10

Audience members of protreptics— neither committed acolytes nor self- satisfied
philistines— need to be made to feel better about making an aspirational com-
mitment to philosophy.1 Any discipline- governed person, who foregoes fa-
miliar desire- satisfactions for long- term self- modification and investigation,
looks silly to onlookers, who cannot run the cost- benefit analy sis that would
vindicate what other wise appears to be mindless repetition, wishful thinking,
or the refusal of publically acceptable norms. Protreptics attempt to vindicate
an obtuse- seeming practice. They appeal to aims that a person already has, try-
ing to show that adopting the norms of some discipline, no matter how bizarre,
annoying, or counterproductive they may seem, will in fact help that person to
achieve those standing goals. They are not mere instances of persuasion, which
urge a one- off decision. They urge a continuous flow of decisions, to act in ways
that will eventually create new and as- yet- unseen norms for action. Protreptics
to philosophia work if a person already has reasons to accept some value of philosophia, but are otiose if that person already accepts all the value.

Philosophia is the consummate protreptic- demanding discipline. It has very
little obvious value, given its similarity to daydreaming or captiousness; yet
it has as its goal the most widely admired state, personal and/or civic flour-
ishing, during or after death. It already proceeds in the register of persuasive
speech, so that its prosecution will be contiguous with its promotion; and the
wholehearted orientation toward a new constellation of values that protreptic
aims to effect is much the same as the very goal of philosophia itself, so that
its promotion will be coextensive with its prosecution.2

This chapter sketches a few points in the topology of fourth- century BCE
talk of philosophia. I begin with the highest, the ascendency of philosophos to the commonplace Greek ethic as articulated across the Hellenic world. Then I
focus on the shallow, the relentless merrymaking about philosophoi in Athenian
comedy of the later fourth century BCE. A par tic u lar cut through this shallow
is explicit apotreptic to philosophia, speeches persuading people to turn away
from it despite their inclinations to give it a try; such apotreptics get preserved
or re created in a range of fourth- century BCE philosophical texts, and I give
close attention to one from a recently published Oxyrhynchus papyrus. Against
the bivalent background of universal esteem for being philosophos and the per-
sis tent bemusement at the same, we can see two alternatives to Heraclides’s pro-
treptic. The first, from Aristotle’s Protrepticus, is a totalizing protreptic to philosophia in the “self- contradiction” genre; it works only if the term philosophia has a positive mundane sense and an unpleasant intensive sense. The second,

1 On the conditions for aspiration, see Callard 2018, especially 1–36.

2 See Moore 2012 for an argument to this effect.

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 291
from the Platonic Rival Lovers, is an aporetic protreptic in the Socratic genre;
here, enthusiasm about philosophia proves sometimes to be deeply misunder-
stood, but worth trying to get right. The epilogue to the book won ders at the rel-
evance of the history of philosophia to the present- day practice of philosophy.

The Universal Success of the Term Philosophos:

From Delphi to Bactria

The success of the word philosophos in the fourth century BCE has its clearest
evidence in a stunning archaeological discovery in the 1960s, one that indi-
cated, unbeknownst at the time, the existence of the maxim philosophos ginou

(“be philosophical!”) at Delphi by the late fourth century BCE. This proves
that philosophos could have a completely positive and universal sense—
indeed, a practically anodyne and commonsensical one— not so long after al-
most the opposite was true, and it can mean this at exactly the same time that,
for Aristotle, being philosophos could mean doing the abstrusest metaphysics.

It provides the clearest evidence for a complex and pluralistic history of the
term, since in its anodyne sense it has nothing of the fourth- century BCE

(Platonic) disciplinary notion and can hardly be thought to mean “be a lover
of wisdom”; it prob ably means, novelly, “think before you act.”

On October 22, 1966, a French archaeological team had been digging for
two years at Ai Khanoum, at the confluence of the Oxus and Kokcha rivers
in northeastern Af ghan i stan. Twenty- three hundred years earlier, this point in

Bactria marked the extreme eastern edge of the Seleucid empire, one of the
four kingdoms established after the death of Alexander the Great. Its king,

Antiochus I, established here a garrison and a trading outpost in lapis lazu-
li.3 The archaeologists were unearthing the entrance to the town’s heroön, a
structure that celebrates the city’s founder. They found, turned against a wall
and repurposed as a post- stand, a two- foot- long limestone block. On the upper
third of its face were two inscriptions. On the left they read a four- line epigram:

These wise sayings of legendary men
are set up in most holy Pytho–

Clearchus, having transcribed them there with care,
places them here, con spic u ous, in Cineas’s temenos.4

3 For its history, see Mairs 2014b, 57–101; it came to be rediscovered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Morgan 2015.

4 ἀνδρῶν τοι σοφὰ ταῦτα παλαιοτέρων ἀνάκει[τα]ι | ῥήματα ἀριγνώτων Πυθοὶ ἐν ἠγαθέαι·

| ἔνθεν ταῦτ[α] Κλέαρχος ἐπιφραδέως ἀναγράψας | εἵσατο τηλαυγῆ Κινέου ἐν τεμένει.

292 CH A PTER 10

The inscription refers to the Sage maxims found at the entrance to the Temple
of Delphi in Apollo, “Pytho,” the Panhellenic navel of the Greek world. A man
named Clearchus claims to have copied them at their source, three thousand
miles to the west, and to have brought them to adorn the burial chamber of

Cineas. He does so to mark Cineas’s establishment of this place, eventually
called Ai Khanoum. On the right the archaeologists read five more lines:

As a child, be orderly

A youth, self- controlled

An adult, just

Older yet, a good counselor

And dying, without pain.5

These five lines have an evident connection with the four to their left. They
epitomize Sage wisdom, universal commonsense imperatives concerned for
the good, successful, and fitting life. The epigrapher Louis Robert (1904–85)

recognized this linked set of Sage maxims from Greek lit er a ture.6 In the flori-
legium of Stobaeus, in the section called On Virtue, there is a work by Deme-
trius of Phalerum, the late fourth- century BCE Athenian politician, Peripa-
tetic, and inspiration for the Alexandrian library. That work apportioned one
hundred twenty- five pieces of Sage wisdom among the Seven Sages.7 After

Demetrius’s work, Stobaeus inserts a work by the other wise unknown Sosi-
ades. This “Advice of the Seven” collates its one hundred forty- seven pieces of
wisdom into a single list.8 The five maxims from Ai Khanoum are found in
almost identical form as the five final maxims of Sosiades’s list.9 The physical
evidence suggested to Robert that the block with the two inscriptions served
as a base for a stele and that this stele contained all the Sage maxims found
in Sosiades’s list. This stele would reproduce those maxims in three columns,
each forty- seven and forty- eight maxims long, with the last five, which are the
only linked set, overflowing or pushed down onto the base.

Clearchus’s display at Cineas’s heroön of these maxims and his authorizing
remarks about that display would advance Ai Khanoum’s civic self- constitution
in a range of ways. Clearchus’s trek would connect the far- flung Bactrian pe-

5 παῖς ὤν κόσμιος γίνου | ἡβῶν ἐγκρατής | μέσος δίκαιος | πρεσβύτης εὔβουλος | τελευτῶν
ἄλυπος.

6 Robert 1968.

7 Stob. 3.1.172 (apportioned into groups of 21, 20, 19, 20, 12, 17, 16). DL 5.80–81 does not include this among Demetrius’s list of works.

8 Stob. 3.1.173.

9 There are two differences: in Sosiades, the first line ends with ἴσθι, an alternative form of “be,” and the fourth line ends with εὔλογος, an alternative form of “(a) reasonable (person).”

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 293
riphery with its Aegean center by a palpable image. That attenuated geo graph-
i cal link between desert highland and pelagic homeland would be strengthened
by a normative and intellectual thread: “what the Greeks do there we do here.”

The inscriptions would help ensuing generations of settlers in this marginal
entrepôt preserve or reclaim a Greek national identity, a shared conception of
the good.10 A more complete and contemporaneous stele, though baseless,
was found in 1906 in Mysian Cyzicus, east of the Hellespont.11 Both panels
of maxims express a near- universal expansion of Greek sensibility coordinate
with the near- universal expansion of Greek po liti cal rule.

But Robert’s hypothesis of a list of 147 maxims in Ai Khanoum would be
insecure were it to depend solely on evidence from the base. Fortunately, the

French archaeologists found, a meter away from the rear- turned block, what
must be the lower- left corner of its supported stele.12 The start of two lines
could be discerned:

Ε]

ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦ]

Remarkably, items forty- seven and forty- eight on Sosiades’s list are:

ΕΥΛΟΓΕΙ ΠΑΝΤΑΣ
speak well of all

ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΟΣ ΓΙΝΟΥ
be philosophical

No other recorded Sage maxim matches φιλόσοφ], and, if Sosiades’s list were
divided into thirds, the first (left- hand) column would end just at φιλόσοφος
γίνου.13 Thus this corner- piece confirms Robert’s theory.14

10 On the inscriptions implying a Delphic or non- Seleucid foundation for Ai Khanoum, see Kosmin 2014, 237–38; Mairs 2014a. On their preserving or instilling Greek identity and morality, see Bernard 1967, 89; Institut Fernand- Courby 1971, 183–85 (n. 37); Posch 1995, 29–31; Martinez- Sève 2014.

11 Hasluck 1907, 62–63; Hense 1907, 765; Mendel 1909, 402–4; Dittenberger 1915, 3 §1268.

12 This is Kabul Museum object 05.42.190; photo graph in Cambon 2006.

13 The only other phil- prefixed maxim on Sosiades’s list is φιλοφρόνει πᾶσιν, “be courte-ous to all.”

14 Canali de Rossi 2004, 225 (n. 383), mistakenly saw a circular letter above the Ε, which he took to mean that the previous line could not be Sosiades’s ΔΟΛΟΝ ΦΟΒΟΥ, thus undermining Robert’s theory. But the mark he thought he saw was too far to the left to be part of a letter; it must have been a blemish in the stone badly represented in and then misinterpreted from Robert’s published photo graph (and perhaps the paper cast at the Fonds Louis Robert at the Institute of France); see Rougemont 2012, 201. The stele corner did not return to public display until 2006, for Eu ro pe ans in the exhibit Af ghan i stan, Les Trésors retrouvés, or ga nized by the Musée Guimet. These two pieces from Ai Khanoum, owned by the National Museum of Af ghan i stan,

294 CH A PTER 10

For Robert, the maxim philosophos ginou (“be philosophical”) identified
the Ai Khanoum sayings with those of Sosiades and furnished him with an
argument about Hellenistic culture. For us, it furnishes the sole instance of
this maxim on stone, vis i ble to all those who might turn their eyes toward it.

Already the citation in Stobaeus was essentially the lone extant instance of
the maxim from the entirety of the pre- modern Greek world, a citation, I might
note, that has received almost no scholarly attention over its millennium and a
half of availability.15 But an inscription, in contrast to a compilation in a mul-
tivolume anthology, gives us a date of promulgation, a place and context of its
use, and a hint that it had more than cata logical interest. The inscription charges
anybody and every body in this sun- parched hinterland, at the extreme eastern
reaches of an eastern kingdom, to “be philosophical.” So, not only does the panel
in Ai Khanoum tell its reader, in absolutely the most general terms, what to do
in the five stages of life, and to “follow god” (ἕπου θεῷ), “obey the law” (νόμῳ
πείθου), and “re spect your parents” (γονεῖς αἰδοῦ)— maxims 1, 2, and 4 on Sosi-
ades’s list— but also to “be philosophical.”16 “Be[ing] philosophical” is treated
as on a par with one’s basic religious, po liti cal, and domestic duties.

Settlers in faraway Bactria received such instruction. So did others. The
monument to Cineas discharges its function only in replicating other distant
monuments. The base found at the heroön claims for itself the status of veri-
fied facsimile, pointing west to its original, a panel at famous Delphi.17 This
means that a stele with identical contents stood there.18 This in turn means
that the great many Greeks who traveled to Delphi by the end of the fourth
century BCE could themselves be charged to “be philosophical.” And if

Clearchus provided a facsimile of the Delphic maxims to Ai Khanoum, hardly
a uniquely situated city, likely so too did others to their own cities.

in Kabul, were hidden or lost during the previous de cades of war; see Cambon 2006, which supersedes Tissot 2006.

15 The maxim has been also been found (and reconstructed) in the codex Vratislavensis Re-
hdigeranus gr. 12, #18 (φιλόσοφος <γίνου>) and the Second Recensio Parisina (φιλό<σοφο>ς
γίνου), both published in Tziatzi- Papagianni 1994.

16 Of all published work on these finds, only Rougement 2012, 201, discusses the meaning of philosophos ginou, though only to justify his translation of pratique la sagesse. Guarducci 1974 3.78–80 and 1987, 270–71, and Wieshöfer 1996, 112–14, ignore the corner piece on which it was inscribed.

17 The long maxim list at Miletopolis cited above is missing large portions; and the lists in the gymnasium at Thera (IG XII 3, 1020) and on the now- missing and quite mutilated P. Univ.

Athens 2782 are too short even to hint at their complete contents. For the relations between these and later maxim lists, see Oikonomides 1980, 1987; Tziatzi- Pagagianni 1994; Tziatzi-Pagagianni 1997; Führer 1997; YC 2.42–67; Verhasselt forthcoming, §5.

18 This fact is already appreciated by Kurke 2011, 109–10.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 294

9/18/19 1:20 PM

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 295

I conjecture that this would have occurred by the second half of the fourth
century BCE, and thus at a time relevant to our story of protreptics to philoso-
phia in classical Athens. According to the best dating of the Cineas heroön’s construction, the stele in Ai Khanoum would have gone up in 281–61 BCE.19

A panel in Delphi must then predate this. Louis Robert surmised that this

Clearchus was the Peripatetic from Soli, in Cyprus, who lived from the 340s

BCE at least till the 270s.20 That Clearchus cultivated a serious interest in max-
ims, writing works called On Proverbs and On Riddles, perhaps specifically those attributed to the Sages, as his Lives might suggest. These works probably gave taxonomies of maxims, or ga nized their sources, and assessed their
respective purposes.21 Clearchus also wrote about Indian, Persian, and Jewish
philosophical traditions.22 His dates and passions would therefore support the
conjecture that it was he who replicated the Delphic stele in Bactria. External
evidence cannot disprove a journey to Bactria; other philosophically minded
men traveled broadly in the wake of Alexander’s conquests and the diplomacy
of the Successors.23

The evidence for the chronology of the maxim- inscription at Delphi is in-
conclusive; the best we can say is that the gnôthi sauton was prob ably first,
prob ably by the early fifth century BCE, and two more, mêden agan and egguê, para d’atê, by the dramatic date of Plato’s Charmides, 429 BCE. We know even less about the accretion of Sage maxims from one, to three, to one hundred
forty- seven. I suspect that people dedicated individual maxims or lists of max-
ims at Delphi, which somebody transcribed and consolidated and then perhaps
added to from other circulating lists of maxims. This consolidation would ex-
plain both the haphazard organ ization of Sosiades’s list and the small patterns

19 This is the reign of Antiochus I Sotor. The best studies are Lyonnet 2012, 157–58, and Martinez- Sève 2014, which tell against Narain 1974; Narain 1987; and Lerner 2003. The other-wise useful Rougement 2012 gives an earlier date, relying on epigraphy rather than the newest archaeological (especially pottery) evidence.

20 Ath. 6.235a says that Clearchus studied with Aristotle (though Clearchus may have been too young for this to be pos si ble); Josephus says that he wrote a dialogue On Sleep that featured Aristotle as a main character ( Ap. 1.22). Among those sympathetic to Robert in identifying the Ai Khanoum Clearchus with Clearchus of Soli, see Institut Fernand- Courby 1971, 183–85; Guarducci 1974, 3.78–80, and 1987, 270–71; Burstein 1985, 67; Wieshöfer 1996, 112–14; Holt 1999, 37–47; Merkelbach and Stauber 2004, 6–7; Hiebert and Cambon 2008, 94–96; Taifacos

2008; Bar- Kochva 2010, 41–78; Rougement 2012, 201; Tsitsiridis 2013, 5–8; Verhasselt forthcoming, §5. Fortenbaugh 2014, 206–7, expresses uncertainty.

21 On such works see Fortenbaugh 2014, 125–26.

22 On the Jews in par tic u lar, see Joseph. Ap. 1.176–83 with Bar- Kochva 2010, 40–89; his contemporaries also wrote about Jews, as we see from Theophrastus (Porph. Abst. 2.26) and from Megasthenes (Clem. Strom. 1.15.72.5).

23 For example, Dicaearchus (a Peripatetic), Hecataeus of Abdera (a Pyrrhonian?), and Megasthenes (unaligned?).

296 CH A PTER 10
to be found within it.24 For example, “follow god” (ἕπου θεῷ) and “revere the
gods” (θεοὺς σέβου) are in position 1 and 3. Another version of the egguê,
para d’atê is “flee pledges” (ἐγγύην φεῦγε, 69).25 This spate of dedications
could reflect pieces of advice that petitioners to Delphi found most helpful and
thus valuable, and perhaps paralleling the dedication of body part sculptures
at Epidauros celebrating cases of successful healing.26

The consolidation of inscriptions of maxims already at Delphi or akin to
those dedicated at Delphi would provide an explanation for the position of phi-
losophos ginou (48), which is found next to “speak well of all” (47) and “choose
holiness” (ὅσια κρῖνε, 49). Because philosophos ginou has a relatively early
spot on the list, perhaps it was inscribed at Delphi initially in unconsolidated
form. Getting to forty- eight dedications might have taken a while. I would think
that the dedication of maxims beyond the “big three” postdate 370 BCE and
that philosophos ginou would not be in the initial spate of secondary max-
ims. Speaking very approximately, then, I would target the years following 350
as those during which philosophos ginou found its way onto Sage lists, and
thence onto the Delphic panel. The temple fell to an earthquake in 373, the sanc-
tuary was sacked in the Third Sacred War in 356, and the temple was rebuilt
fi nally in 330. Rebuilding could occasion the reor ga ni za tion of the maxims and
their literary preservation.

What the Delphic philosophos ginou shows us is that there was at least a
trio of fourth- century BCE senses for the term philosophos. There is no rea-
son to think that philosophos began with this bland meaning; it does not fit the
earliest testimony, lexical parallels, or phenomena of re- semanticizing ety-
mologies in the fourth century BCE. We can see the Delphic sense rather as
the result of semantic evolution, much of which we have already traced. It has
not been completely traced, to be sure, given the inadequacy of the evidence,
given the fact that most early fourth- century BCE uses are (pre-)disciplinary,
and given the possibility that the Delphic sense does not have (immediate)

24 Only one maxim in the first eighty- eight is negative, whereas fourteen of the next fifty-four are. Only five of the first ninety- one are in three or more words (excluding three- word maxims with μή), whereas sixteen of the remaining are. The last five maxims form a coherent unit. Susan Prince won ders to me about the consistency of its views on fortune: “acknowledge fortune” (τύχην νόμιζε, 68); “do not trust in fortune” (τύχῃ μὴ πίστευε, 143); “love fortune”

(τύχην στέργε, 77)— and about its cowardly or mercantile ethics: “fear power” (τὸ κρατοῦν
φοβοῦ, 109) and “seek profit” (τὸ συμφέρον θηρῶ, 110).

25 Cousins or glosses of gnôthi sauton show up scattered through the first column: “know what you’ve learned” (γνῶθι μαθών, 6); “understand yourself” (or “be yourself,” ἴσθι σαυτόν, 8); “consider your mortality” (φρόνει θνητά, 11); “govern yourself” (ἄρχε σεαυτοῦ, 14); “do what you know” (γνοὺς πρᾶττε, 50); “examine your character” (ἦθος δοκίμαζε, 52). A similarly sporadic set of maxims concerns friendship (15, 20, 28).

26 On such medical dedications, see Dillon 1997, 169–77.

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 297

Attic roots— clearly, philosophos- group terms had a life of their own across
the Aegean. Still, we have seen the coevolution of a disciplinary and pejora-
tive uses, none of which cancelled other uses out, even if they influenced one
another in impor tant ways.

The Derision Continues: Alexis and His Laughable Philosophoi

Our best non- philosophical evidence for the pejorative use of philosophos-
group terms from after 350 BCE comes from Alexis (ca. 375–275 BCE), a
playwright of Middle and New Comedy in Athens. In perhaps his earliest such
extant use,27 in a fragment from his Galateia, a servant says:

My master, a teenager, used to pass the time
with speeches and attempted to
philosophize. There was a Cyrenaic there,
so they say, Aristippus, a ready- witted sophist,
who back then rather excelled all the rest,
and in licentiousness stands out among men now.

My master gave him big bucks to become
his student. And while he did not altogether master
the curriculum . . . 28 (fr. 37 PCG)

The servant pre sents philosophizing as a cogent course of study (τέχνη) for
those soon to be of age (μειρακίσκος); and given that it is a study in speech-
making for the wealthy (cf. τάλαντον), it is presumably for those seeking a life
in politics. Alexis’s critical purchase against philosophein has three points:

philosophizing is time- consuming and expensive; it attracts dreamers, those
with unachievably big ambitions (οὐ πάνυ | ἐξέμαθε); and its exemplary prac-
ti tion ers end up exemplary for “licentiousness” (ἀκολασίᾳ). Philosophizing thus
looks to fourth- century BCE Athenian audiences as a putatively promising

27 The dating (late 360s–340s BCE) depends mainly on the reference to Aristippus (Arnott

1996, 141n1). Though I restrict my survey to uses of philosophos- group terms, Middle Comedy also includes humor about Plato (Alexis Meropis fr. 151; Amphis Amphikrates fr. 6; Aristophon Platon fr. 8), his Acad emy (Epippus Nauagos fr. 14; Epicrates fr. 10), and Pythagoreans (Alexis

[and Cratinus?] Pythagorizousa; Aristophon Pythagoristes; Alexis and Cratinus Tarantinoi).

For bibliography, see Arnott 1996, 305–8.

28 Ὁ δεσπότης οὑμὸς περὶ λόγους γάρ ποτε | διέτριψε μειρακίσκος ὢν καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν |
ἐπέθετο· Κυρηναῖος ἦν ἐνταῦθά τις, | ὥς φασ’, Ἀρίστιππος, σοφιστὴς εὐφυής, | μᾶλλον δὲ
πρωτεύων ἁπάντων τῶν τότε, | ἀκολασίᾳ τε τῶν γεγονότων διαφέρων. | τούτῳ τάλαντον δοὺς
μαθητὴς γίγνεται | ὁ δεσπότης. καὶ τὴν τέχνην μὲν οὐ πάνυ | ἐξέμαθε.

298 CH A PTER 10
route to civic success, which its novices fail to follow while its experts fail as
models of that success.

Our fragment from the Galateia pre sents the external view of philosophein, one that I surmise differs little from the earliest impressions observers had of
those they deemed philosophoi. Another fragment, from perhaps around the
same time, pre sents an apparently internal view:29

While walking from the Piraeus, through evils
and puzzlement, it comes to me to philosophize.

It seems to me, to put it as briefly as pos si ble,
that the paint ers are ignorant of Love,
at least those who make images of this divinity.

For it is neither female nor male, and again,
neither god nor man, and yet again, neither stupid nor insightful,
but, combining material from everywhere,30
it brings many forms into one outline.

For it is the daring of man, the cowardice of woman,
the ignorance of mania, the reasoning of thought,
the intensity of a beast, the toil of steel, the ambition of divinity.

And these things, by the Athenians and the gods,

I do not know what they are, but— all the same— there’s something
of this sort, and I’ve nearly got the name.31 (fr. 247 PCG)

Likely a parody of Plato’s Symposium,32 this passage is presented as a plau-
sible if risible response to amatory difficulties. Embracing complexity, it runs
to paradox; seeking general princi ples, it runs to abstraction; working toward
completeness, it runs to excess. The speaker’s heterodox bombast, which might
seem to give fresh insight into a topic, stalls in a farrago of high ideas: the climax

29 Arnott 1996, 692, gives a date of 345–320 BCE very tentatively.

30 The verb συννενησμένος has long been disputed by editors; the idea is presumably the
one at Pl. R. 6.488a5–7.

31 Πορευομένῳ δ’ ἐκ Πειραιῶς ὑπὸ τῶν κακῶν | καὶ τῆς ἀπορίας φιλοσοφεῖν ἐπῆλθέ
μοι. | καί μοι δοκοῦσιν ἀγνοεῖν οἱ ζωγράφοι | τὸν Ἔρωτα, συντομώτατον δ’ εἰπεῖν, ὅσοι | τοῦ
δαίμονος τούτου ποιοῦσιν εἰκόνας. | ἔστιν γὰρ οὔτε θῆλυς οὔτ’ ἄρρην, πάλιν | οὔτε θεὸς οὔτ’

ἄνθρωπος, οὔτ’ ἀβέλτερος | οὔτ’ αὖθις ἔμφρων, ἀλλὰ συννενησμένος | πανταχόθεν, ἑνὶ τύπῳ
τε πόλλ’ εἴδη φέρων. | ἡ τόλμα μὲν γὰρ ἀνδρός, ἡ δὲ δειλία | γυναικός, ἡ δ’ ἄνοια μανίας, ὁ δὲ
λόγος | φρονοῦντος, ἡ σφοδρότης δὲ θηρός, ὁ δὲ πόνος | ἀδάμαντος, ἡ φιλοτιμία δὲ δαίμονος.

| καὶ ταῦτ’ ἐγώ, μὰ τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν καὶ θεούς, | οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅ τι ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ ὅμως ἔχει γέ τι | τοιοῦτον, ἐγγύς τ’ εἰμὶ τοὐνόματος.

32 Details and qualifications at Arnott 1996, 692–94.

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 299
is a self- caused confusion and a loss for words. From the inside, according to
an outsider, then, philosophizing is taking the long way around fundamental
human prob lems, seeking untold conceptual distinctions and taxonomies that
look impressive but, in the end, do not get to the basic issues.

Fi nally, in Alexis’s undatable play Linus, Linus is showing off his library
to Heracles:

LINUS:

Go up
and take what ever book you want there,
and then you can read it—at any rate, look through
the titles, and take your time; nobody will bother you.

Orpheus is there, Hesiod, tragedy,

Choerilos, Homer, Epicharmus, prose works
of every kind. It’ll make clear what your nature is,
the one toward which you most incline.

HERACLES: I’m taking this one.

L: Show me what it is first.

H.: A cook book, so the title shows.

L.: You’re some philosophos, that’s quite clear:

having passed over so many books,
you grab the Art of Simus.

H. Who’s this Simus?

L. A supremely ready- witted man. He now inclines more
toward tragedy, and among actors
is far and away the superior chef, as his associates
deem him— and among chefs, the superior actor.

— A cattle- sized hunger is this man!

H.: Say what you wish:

for I am hungry, know this well.33 (fr. 140 PCG)

33 ΛΙΝ. Βιβλίον | ἐντεῦθεν ὅ τι βούλει προσελθὼν γὰρ λαβέ, | ἔπειτ’ ἀναγνώσει, πάνυ
γε διασκοπῶν | ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπιγραμμάτων ἀτρέμα τε καὶ σχολῇ. | Ὀρφεὺς ἔνεστιν, Ἡσίοδος, τραγῳδία, | Χοιρίλος, Ὅμηρος, Ἐπίχαρμος, συγγράμματα | παντοδαπά. δηλώσεις γὰρ οὕτω
τὴν φύσιν, | ἐπὶ τί μάλισθ’ ὥρμησε. ΗΡ. τουτὶ λαμβάνω. | ΛΙΝ. δεῖξον τί ἐστι πρῶτον. ΗΡ.

ὀψαρτυσία, | ὥς φησι τοὐπίγραμμα. ΛΙΝ. φιλόσοφός τις εἶ, | εὔδηλον, ὃς παρεὶς τοσαῦτα
γράμματα | Σίμου τέχνην ἔλαβες. ΗΡ. ὁ Σῖμος δ’ ἐστὶ τίς; | ΛΙΝ. μάλ’ εὐφυὴς ἄνθρωπος. ἐπὶ
τραγῳδίαν | ὥρμηκε νῦν, καὶ τῶν μὲν ὑποκριτῶν πολύ | κράτιστός ἐστιν ὀψοποιός, ὡς δοκεῖ

| τοῖς χρωμένοις, τῶν δ’ ὀψοποιῶν ὑποκριτής. | βούλιμός ἐσθ’ ἅνθρωπος. ΗΡ. ὅ τι βούλει
λέγε. πεινῶ γάρ, εὖ τοῦτ’ ἴσθι. There is some uncertainty about the apportioning of the final few lines.

300 CH A PTER 10

Linus pre sents the familiar (Hippian) canon of sophoi, a canon that we saw
in the last chapter,34 and uses it to diagnose Heracles’s tastes.35 When

Heracles chooses a cookbook, Linus calls him a philosophos. The joke can
be read in two ways. It could cut against Heracles: Arnott calls Linus’s re-
mark “pedantic sarcasm,” reasoning that a philosophos would choose just
about any book but a cookbook.36 This view is uncertain. In its favor is
lore connecting Pythagoreans with austerity, both in comedy and in Plato’s

Phaedo: nice food preparation is not a leading concern. Against it is the pas-
sage from Xenophon’s Oeconomicus studied in chapter 6, where Socrates’s self- ascription of philosophos comes up only when talking about growing food, and in the same chapter, the passage from Philemon’s Philoso-
phoi, where food austerity leads to clever dietary economies. So, another
way to read the joke is as cutting against philosophoi in general: no doubt
exaggerating, it treats them as mightily concerned with matters of diet.

Their putative obsession with high- flown concepts simply obscures what
they actually care about: eating in the right way. The Pythagorean dietary
regimen, Aristippus’s (and later Epicurus’s) concern for plea sure, even

Socrates’s self- sufficient “hunger is the best sauce” (Cic. Fin. 2.28) all put
gustatory matters high on the phi los o pher’s agenda. On either reading, the
philosophoi do not come out looking good: either Heracles could number
among them, or they could find their exemplar in Heracles. In either case,
they have a strained, countercultural, and obtuse attitude toward the most
mundane ele ments of human life.

None of these fragments of Alexis specifically argues against the value of
being philosophos. But none admires philosophoi, none treats philosophia as the love of wisdom or a general concern with intellectual cultivation, and
none promotes philosophein as an effective route to maturation or problem-
solving. Each pre sents philosophia as an established practice, appealing to
a certain set of (often young) people, responsive to understandable goals of
problem- solving or self- improvement, but basically silly in its procedure.

Granted, this is comedy; but comedy exaggerates parts of life already subject
to suspicion.

34 Choerilus of Samos wrote a poem about Persia, which came to be read with the Homeric
poems at the Panathenaea (see BNP s.v. “Choerilus”); he appears also to have spoken about Thales (DL 1.24, though on the reliability of this claim, see Wöhrle 2014, 29n1).

35 For δηλώσεις γὰρ οὕτω τὴν φύσιν, compare Socrates’s attempt to diagnose Strepsiades at Ar. Nub. 478–80 (with Moore 2016).

36 Arnott 1996, 412, without argument.

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 301

The Perseverance of Apotreptics to Philosophia

Comedy provides implicit charges against philosophia: its prac ti tion ers
take enervatingly roundabout and teeteringly ambitious approaches to self-
improvement and problem- solving. From the same period we also know ex-
plicit charges against it, generally from philosophical or para- philosophical
lit er a ture. Those accounts pre sent philosophia’s foibles more forcefully, as unreliable, ineffectual, or dangerous— that is, as nearly useless, actually useless,
or worse than useless. We studied the earliest such apotreptic in chapter 5,
in our study of the Hippocratic On Ancient Medicine, likely from the last
quarter of the fifth century BCE. Its author asserts that those tending toward
philosophia take a foolish approach to medical practice: to explain instances
of disease they appeal to cosmic- scale and hidden hypotheses, such as the four
ele ments or speculative anthropogenesis, rather than to meso- scale and read-
ily vis i ble abnormalities of diet and environment. The philosophical approach
suits “graphikê” better than actual curing; what ever the author means by this
word, connected to “painting,” “writing,” or “depicting,” it implies excellence
in appearance rather than in practical application. Philosophia, howsoever
in ter est ing, provocative, and even insightful as it may be, does not take the
direct route to proper medical practice.

We studied the opposite sort of criticism in chapter 6, in our discussion of Plato’s Apology of Socrates, from after 399 BCE. Socrates asserts that some
of his interlocutors and observers, unable to understand his ability to refute
them or their neighbors, accuse him of “what ever is handy against the philoso-
phoi.” In this he includes three items: studying the things above the sky and
below the earth; making the worse argument better; and not believing in the
gods that the city believes in. These are accusations not of incompetence or
irrelevance but of positive harmfulness: impiety, injustice, and immorality. As

Socrates portrays it, these are not accusations inferred from his own practice,
but rather tagged to philosophoi in general.

One of the best- known classical Greek apotreptics to philosophia, Callicles’s
speech in Plato’s Gorgias (first third of the fourth century BCE), combines
all three forms. Callicles, apparently a deep beneficiary of philosophical edu-
cation (Pl. Grg. 487c2– d1) who comes to reject conventional values as con-
trary to hedonistic self- assertion, allows that philosophia has a certain charm
when practiced by young people, in the way that speaking with a lisp does:

something of a debilitation that has its upside (485a4– d1). But at a certain
age, philosophia is just a lot of talking with young men in a corner: something

302 CH A PTER 10
quite useless (485d7). And indeed, it is not just useless; it hinders the pursuit
of the higher po liti cal and personal goods, and is therefore positively harmful

(486c4– d1). In the Republic Adeimantus shares a similar worry, though voic-
ing it as someone else’s pos si ble charge against philosophia: while those who study philosophia during their youth are fine, those who keep doing it become

“quite odd (πάνυ ἀλλοκότους), if not utterly depraved (παμβονήρους); while
even the most reasonable (ἐπιεικεστάτους) seeming people . . . become useless

(ἀχρήστους) to their cities” (Pl. R. 6.487c– d). In the de cades around Socrates’s death, then, we see a range of doubts that people have about philosophoi.

In 1984, the Egypt Exploration Society published a papyrus fragment, un-
earthed at Oxyrhynchus in the 1890s but long unread. That fragment contains
a previously unknown apotreptic to philosophy, one which, for reasons dis-
cussed below, may date to the time of Heraclides’s On Diseases. It is among
the most vivid of such arguments, and seems to owe its sentiments, here in
prose, to the versified Middle Comedy that we have just studied. Torn papyrus
puts us somewhere along a vociferous complaint about philosophoi:

(dis)agreement . . . nor do they agree there— not even about silver, though what could be whiter than silver? Still, Thrasyalkes claims it to be black. Thus when
even the whiteness of silver counts as uncertain, why marvel when deliberators
disagree about war and peace, alliances and revenues and payments and the like?

Oh, and what about the philosophoi themselves? If you confined them to a single
house and put an equal number of madmen in a neighboring house, you would
get far, far greater howls from the philosophoi than from the madmen! In fact,
this one, this Antisthenes here, says he would rather feel madness than plea sure;
and Aristippus, what . . . is mad . . . and what Plato . . . 37 ( POxy. 3659)

Our narrator pre sents philosophoi as contentious, obtuse, excitable, inarticu-
late, and life- denying. From the formal perspective, they constitute a delineated

37 [. . . ]φωνεῖν, συμφωνοῦσιν δὲ οὐ δ᾽ οὕτως, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἄργυρον— καίτοι τί γένοιτ᾽
ἂν ἀργύρου λευκότερον;— ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως τοῦτον ὁ Θρασυάλης φησὶν εἶναι μέλανα. ὅτε τοίνυν
καὶ τὸ λευκὸν τοῦ ἀργύρου πρὸς τὸ ἄδηλον, τί θαυμαστὸν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὑπὲρ εἰρήνης καὶ
πολέμου, ὑπὲρ συμμαχίας καὶ προσόδων καὶ ἀναλωμάτων καὶ τῶν <τοιούτων> βουλευομένους
διαφέρεσθαι; τί δὲ αὐτοὺς τοὺς φιλοσόφους; οὓς εἴ τις ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ οἴκῳ καθαίρξε[ι]ε καὶ ἐν ἑτέρῳ
παρακειμέ[ν]ῳ μαινομένους ἰσαρίθ[μ]ους, πολὺ . . . ] πολὺ μείζους κραυγὰς ἐκ τῶν φιλοσόφων
ἢ τῶν μα]ινομένων προσδοκα . . . ] οὗτος γοῦν οὗτος ὁ Ἀντισθέ]νης ἀσμεναίτερον ἂν μα]νῆναί
φησιν ἢ ἡσθῆναι· ὁ δὲ Ἀ]ρίστιππος τί . . . [10 letters] . . . μαίνεσθαι . . . [11 letters] . . . η· τί δὲ

Πλάτων, POxy. 3659.1–31; text from Cockle 1984, 59–62 (edited with commentary by Parsons and Hughes); see also Adorno 1989, 240 (18T3). Prince 2014, 369–70, reads αὖτὸς γοῦν οὗτος ὁ

Ἀντισθέ]νης; the difference concerns the role Antisthenes played in the earlier, lost part of the narration. Both Parsons and Hughes and Prince conjecture that Aristippus is being said to be

“mad for plea sure.”

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 303
group of men from a range of generations, represented by impor tant names,
each of whom has tag line views on set topics. The connection between their
thinking and matters of public decision- making is at once tenuous and note-
worthy. As for the narrator’s occasion for talking about philosophoi, he seems
to be responding to a visitor’s amazement about the polarization of po liti-
cal debate in a demo cratic city (presumably Athens, given the relevance of
the Socratics). The civic constitution and its constituent norms, prob ably the
norms of parrhêsia and isonomia, give citizens freedom to disagree about
matters affecting their lives and livelihoods. Though he does not say so, the re-
demption of such disagreement is that it can and does come to an end, through
formal methods of decision- making, such as majority voting. Not so the dis-
agreement among philosophoi, which makes po liti cal difference trivial: phi-
losophoi have no ave nues for resolution, and seem even to revel in discord, in
disagreements concerning at once the most vapid and the most profound issues.

Philosophoi are both embarrassing and useless.

This fragment may well come from the mid- fourth century BCE. The pa-
pyrus’s original editors, who left it undated, offered parallels for this text from
the Second Sophistic; but Susan Prince, in her recent edition of Antisthenes,
has suggested an early Peripatetic source.38 In their study of Aristotle’s Pro-
trepticus, Hutchinson and Johnson have moved its likely date slightly earlier,
suggesting that it served as proem to Aristotle’s dialogue of 353 BCE.39 They
point to several internal details: the reference to Thrasyalkes, the precision of
the thought experiment, and the “Socratic” locution of “counts as uncertain”

(πρὸς τὸ ἄδηλον).40 The even stronger evidence of Hutchinson and Johnson
comes from several external details. Lucian cites the “howling phi los o pher”

in his satire of earlier protreptics to philosophia ( Hermotimus 11). Other parts of Aristotle’s Protrepticus return to the themes of disagreement, madness, stupidity, and plea sure. Fi nally, the Protrepticus’s self- contradiction argument, which pre sents those who provide carefully reasoned arguments against philosophia as a way of life as already committed to doing philosophia (which involves giving carefully reasoned arguments as a way of life), would seem to
work perfectly against this exasperated but technically meticulous speaker.41

38 Cockle 1984, 60; Prince 2014, 370 (allowing Hellenistic authorship).

39 Their view (in HJ) is followed by Collins 2015, 253. The dating comes from the relationship to Isocrates’s Antidosis, which is datable.

40 Found at Xen. Mem. 4.2.13–18, concerning two columns, “what counts as just” and “what counts as unjust”; I note that Aristotle attributes a two- column diagram to the Pythagoreans, especially Alcmaeon, at M. Α 986a22– b3.

41 Hutchinson and Johnson 2018, 113n6. I note that the narrator is so exercised by the physical theorists’ disagreements that he appears to have a stake in them; he sounds like Plato’s characters Clitophon and Callicles, who are drawn powerfully to philosophy but are chary to follow

304 CH A PTER 10

Further circumstantial evidence for Aristotelian authorship could be
added to the evidence that is adduced by Hutchinson and Johnson. The
fourth century BCE is the last century during which we would imagine the
differentiation of philosophical views to be represented by first- generation

Socratics rather than by the found ers of the Hellenistic schools. We know
that Aristotle wrote about Aristippus and about Thrasyalkes and that few
later authors wrote about the latter.42 Anaxagoras had argued that snow is
black and Democritus had theorized about the colors of metals.43 Aristotle
reflects frequently on the color of silver in arguments about the definability
and describability of things, including reference to Antisthenean views on
the subject, and on black and white as opposites.44 Plato would have recently
observed that disagreements about “justice and goodness” were more to be
expected than those about “iron and silver.”45 Just as the speaker believes
that the philosophoi are “crazy” because they believe that opposites are the
same, for example that silver (ἄργυρος) is black— Greeks judged it white
or of light color46— and that the admirable life appears to them unlike what
it actually is, for example as free of plea sure, so also Aristotle argues that
mania is believing that, for example, fire and ice are the same thing, and failing to perceive what is actually admirable.47 Aristotle elsewhere uses
the apparently Pythagorean technical vocabulary of “an equal number.”48 If

Antisthenes and Aristippus were among the earliest authors to have written
protreptics to philosophy, we might well expect Aristotle’s Protrepticus to
its arguments when they hamper their quest for power. For commentary on self- contradiction arguments in Aristotle, see Castagnoli 2010, 68–94, 187–96.

42 Aristippus: Arist. M. B.2 996a31–36; Rh. 2.23 1398b30–32. Thrasyalkes has only two entries in DK: Strabo 1.29 and 17.790; in one, Posidonius says that Aristotle developed Thrasyalkes’s views of winds. Thrasyalkes comes from Thasos, but like his country- mates Stesimbrotus (470–420 BCE) and Leodamas (mathematician friend of Plato’s, DL 3.24; Procl. In Eucl. 66.16) he may have emigrated to Athens, perhaps after Athens’s siege of his hometown ca. 463 BCE.

43 Anaxagoras: Cic. Acad. 2.100; Sen. QNat. 4b.3.6; Sext. Emp. Pyr. 2.244, with Hine 1980
and Williams 2012, 155–57. Democritus: Theophr. Sens. 73–74, 76, 80.

44 Arist. M. Η 1043b23–27 (Antistheneans say things can be described but not defined, for example silver as white, etc.); M. Ι 1054b12–13 (silver is like tin in being white; gold is yellow and red; but there are textual difficulties here); Ι 1053b31, 1055b33–34, etc. (relationship of white to black).

45 Pl. Phdr. 263a6–11.

46 See Eur. fr. 542.1; ἀργός simply means “white” or “bright” (Arist. Top. 149a7).

47 Arist. Gen. Corr. 1.8 325a20–23.

48 Isarithmos: Arist. Eth. Nic. 1156a7 (three kinds of friendship and three loveable properties); M. Ν 1093a30 (Pythagorean obsessions with finding equivalences between numbers and groups). See also Pl. Tim. 41d8 (heightened language about the Demiurge making as many souls as stars); Leg. 845a3 (a proportional theory of punishment).

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 304

9/18/19 1:20 PM

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 305
deal immediately with them.49 Fi nally, other Aristotelian works, notably bits
of the Protrepticus, have already been found at Oxyrhynchus.50

Should this fragment be Aristotelian, then we get a vibrant impression of
the popu lar views of philosophoi at the time of Heraclides and the early Acad-
emy, even if filtered through Aristotle’s internal understanding of philosophia
and constructed for his dialectical purposes. We see two things in par tic u lar.

There is a disciplinary conception of philosophia, as constituted by a history
of (absurd) thinkers who tussle (ineffectually) over fundamental questions, for
example the reliability of sight and the value of madness— that is, appealing
to history and canonical prac ti tion ers. And there is the acute worry that such
tussles lead to social irrelevance, providing even less practical po liti cal or pri-
vate advice than madmen could give.

Against this background, several features of Heraclides’s On Diseases stand
out. First, Heraclides’s defense of philosophia appeals to historical prac ti tioners of the discipline rather than solely to con temporary efforts, which might
be a more intuitive route. Pythagoras is explic itly one such historical practi-
tioner; he has an early role in the discipline, at the time when it first became
pos si ble to call oneself philosophos. Empedocles, whom Heraclides must also
treat as explic itly a philosophos, since other wise the emphasis on the Pythago-
ras story would not make sense, is also being treated as a historical practi-
tioner, since it is his death, at least two generations earlier, that constitutes
a key event of the work. Second, Heraclides pre sents philosophia as entirely
relevant to the life of a citizen and free person, and thus as eminently useful.

The Pythagoras story speaks to the philosophos’s superiority over athletes
and merchants—or in the language of the Oxyrhynchus fragment, those con-
cerned with the honor of po liti cal deliberation and the financial success of
trade deals. Then the Empedocles story speaks to the philosophos’s superior-
ity over doctors—or in the concerns of the Oxyrhynchus fragment, physicists
concerned with the physiological phenomena (of sight and sanity). It is the
old- fashioned Sicilian doctors, presumably, who disagreed ineffectually with
one another, struggling to resuscitate the unbreathing woman; the philosophos

Empedocles alone, a scholar of the nature of soul after the fashion of Pythago-
ras, could solve the medical prob lem.

Even a third aspect of the On Diseases protreptic argument, its interest
in the word philosophos itself, may respond to the distaste of philosophy ex-
pressed in the Oxyrhynchus apotreptic. The fragment speaks of philosophoi

49 DL 6.2, 6.16 (Antisthenes, with Prince 2014, 137–39), 2.85 (Aristippus); see Alieva 2013, 128–31.

50 POxy. 666 (from Protrepticus), 2402 (from Nicomachean Ethics), 2403 (from Categories); and about a dozen more fragments in Egypt.

306 CH A PTER 10
as a group of people with no obvious work; it does not glorify their actions
as philosophein or their putative subject matter as philosophia. It compares them directly to madmen, a comparison that befits those with phil- prefixed
names, as we saw in our examination of Aristophanes’s Wasps (chapter 3, pp.

90–93). The term philosophos is possibly being used as a name- calling one, for
people who gabble crazily about matters that seem existentially impor tant— the
reliability of our senses, the value of plea sure and the value of being out of
one’s mind— but for whom repetition is more typical than conclusion. Hera-
clides’s Pythagoras story admits that the term is not transparent and that it ap-
plies to a distinctive kind of person, not merely a par tic u lar taste. Pythagoras’s
long analogy and explanation suggest further that Heraclides does not want to
pre sent philosophia as merely a commitment to mental cultivation or a desire
to be competent in giving advice. Heraclides’s Pythagoras is presented as de-
cisive for the term’s meaning— its eventual or normative meaning—as refer-
ring to a surprising way of life, one that looks lazy but does so only because
the best way to understand the world, which is an assumed great good, is to
refrain from the urgent business of the lesser types.

Aristotle’s Perfect Protreptic Argument: Multiple Meanings
of Philosophia

Hutchinson and Johnson conjecture that the fragment in POxy. 3659 comes
from the introduction to Aristotle’s Protrepticus (late 350s BCE). They believe
that it would make sense for the narrator to be the recipient of philosophy’s
most famous protreptic argument, what I call the “perfect protreptic argument.”

That argument, I propose, deploys the non- disciplinary use of the term philos-
ophia to lever its audience into adopting the norms of the discipline, ones that
the remainder of the Protrepticus takes considerable pains to elucidate, nego-
tiate, and praise. My view is that philosophical protreptic is called for only
when something about a commitment to philosophia, in the disciplinary sense
of the word, seems wrong; yet there is a non- disciplinary and non- pejorative
meaning of philosophia; and these two meanings have enough continuities,
even if very few, to allow equivocation in an argument about them.

Aristotle’s argument has a simple basic form. If the members of one’s audi-
ence accept that they should philosophize, then they should philosophize; even
if they reject the claim that they should philosophize, still they should philoso-
phize; so no matter what, they should philosophize. At any rate, this is the
lowest common denominator of the witnesses to Aristotle’s argument. In this
form, however, the second premise does not make sense; we have as yet no

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 307
reason to appreciate the connection between rejecting the norm “you should
philosophize” and being governed by it. In par tic u lar, were we to take philoso-
phizing in its disciplinary sense, the premise would simply be false. Just as

I can reject some other skilled pursuit, for example, number theory or ship-
piloting, without thereby committing myself to that very pursuit, it would
seem that I can reject philosophizing without thereby committing myself to
it. So, too, were we to taking philosophizing in a technical “Platonic” sense (by
contemplating the really real), or as “loving wisdom” (by contrast to other lead-
ing apparent goods), or as “intellectual cultivation” (by contrast to other leading
cultivations), the premise would also be obviously false. Because Aristotle
must have intended the argument to seem at least somewhat plausible to many
readers of the dialogue— and the later commentators from whom we infer the
argument do not express incredulity at it— “philosophizing” must have meant
something else.

All witnesses say Aristotle’s premises and conclusion took a protreptic form:

“you should [not] philosophize” (χρὴ [μὴ] φιλοσοφεῖν or φιλοσοφητέον).51

Some leave it at that.52 But others get at the nub of the issue. Those who reject
the claim that they should philosophize admit, despite themselves, that they
should philosophize; after all, they think they should respond to the claim ef-
fectively and do so by philosophizing. Clement says that when you reject the
claim “you should philosophize,” you reveal that you disdain (καταγνοίη)

philosophizing, but disdaining requires knowing or recognizing or realizing

(ἐγνωκάς), and knowing or recognizing or realizing just is philosophizing

(Clem. Strom. 6.18.5). Lactantius says that rejecting the claim means saying
what to do in life, and yet philosophia just is such discussion about what to do
in life ( quid in vita faciendum vel non faciendum sit disputare, Lactant. Div.

inst. 3.16.396b). Alexander of Aphrodisias says that philosophizing involves

“investigating (ζητεῖν) this very thing, whether one ought to philosophize or
not” (Alex. Aphrod. In Top. 149,15).53 Though he seems not to suppose that
philosophizing is as narrowly defined as investigating whether one ought to
philosophize, he does not state whether he takes it to be any investigation at
all, or investigation into the sorts of thing a person ought to do, or something
else. But he also says, a bit circularly, that philosophizing involves participating

51 The term φιλοσοφητέον (“one should philosophize”) is already found in Pl. Euthyd.

288d; Isoc. Antid. 285.

52 Olymp. In Alc. 144.15–17 = Protrepticus fr. 2 Ross; Schol. in An. Pr. , cod. Paris. 2064
f. 263a = Protrepticus fr. 2 Ross; Anon. On the General Forms of the Syllogism (pp. ix– xii of CIAG 5.6, ed. Wallies), xi.19–21 (not in Ross).

53 This argument is picked up at Suda φ 414 (s.v. φιλοσοφεῖν). For the form of argument, see Kneale 1957, 62; Rohatyn 1977, 196; Castagnoli 2010, 187–96.

308 CH A PTER 10
in philosophical study (τὸ τὴν φιλόσοφον θεωρίαν μετιέναι), and that this
activity is “proper to humans” (οἰκεῖον τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ). Thus while “searching”

simpliciter could be proper to humans, Alexander might have in mind some-
thing more reflexive, namely searching into that which is proper to humans.

So, according to Lactantius and Alexander, the audience of Aristotle’s perfect
protreptic argument assumes that philosophizing is figuring out what life re-
quires of us— a notion of philosophizing that, notably, reflects the practices
we have hypothesized underwrote the term’s coinage. According to Clement,
not so dissimilarly, philosophizing involves knowing or recognizing or real-
izing, especially as the result of an investigation.

Two further witnesses contribute something distinct to this general agree-
ment. Elias (late sixth century CE) accepts that philosophizing is investigating

(ζητεῖν), but then he glosses the question about action with one about existence.

We should philosophize concerning whether we should or should not philoso-
phize, he says, “for if there is philosophizing (εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἔστι), we definitely
have to philosophize, given that it exists; but if there isn’t philosophizing (εἰ δὲ
μὴ ἔστι), even then we have to investigate why there isn’t philosophia, and in
investigating we philosophize, for searching is the cause of philosophia.”54 The
implication is that if philosophizing does exist, then for that very reason we
should philosophize. It is pos si ble, because we can investigate into its nonexis-
tence, and investigation is philosophizing. So we should do it.

Elias must assume that there is a goal of human life. Say that goal is eu-
daimonia. Then one must seek it. The way to seek it is by philosophizing. So
one must philosophize. In this way philosophizing is necessary for humans;
other wise, we could not pursue the happiness that is our goal and realization.

But suppose some pessimist says that philosophizing never works, there being
no investigative route to happiness. Yet it would be the human lot to assess this
claim, to investigate whether such investigation were in fact impossible. For
only with such investigation could we know whether to abandon the search
for the route to happiness. Of course we can investigate the possibility of phi-
losophia, and we do so in the pursuit of happiness. Thus we must philosophize
even then.

The perfect protreptic argument sounds imperfect if we think of philosophia
disciplinarily, if Aristotle is saying that deniers have to deal rigorously with

Heraclitus and Plato simply to deny the necessity of philosophia. This could
hardly convince the denier. But if we think of philosophia non- disciplinarily,
then the argument sounds much better. To deny something’s importance, es-

54 Elias Proleg. phil. 3.17–23; cf. Olymp. In Alc. 144.15–17 and David Proleg. phil. 9.2–12, the latter who actually goes through the arguments against Skepticism about the possibility of philosophia as knowledge of great things.

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 309
pecially something that has prima facie plausibility, takes propounding the
greater importance of something else, or diagnosing the mistake in one’s inter-
locutor’s argument. Either task takes dialectical argument concerning human
value or logical relations: that is, reasoning connected to what one should do
or to someone else’s reasoning. We long ago saw in Thucydides, Lysias, and

Aristophanes— and in slightly more formalized guise in Gorgias and in the

Socratic dialogues— this non- disciplinary notion of philosophy, a notion of
non- naïve argumentation. We see it in its starkest form in the Delphic philoso-
phos ginou. It is this notion that Aristotle appeals to in his perfect protreptic argument.

Aristotle does so, as it were, illicitly. For the Protrepticus does not deploy
its dozens of pages of fine- grained argument to encourage the barest reflec-
tion on one’s goals. To make the argument valuable, it would have to end up
at something more involved than the Delphic injunction to “be philosophical.”

It coaxes one into accepting philosophia of the most disciplinary sort: the rea-
soning about first princi ples as we see depicted in the fourteen books of the

Metaphysics. In effect, Aristotle’s Protrepticus has two stages of argument: (1) you should philosophize ; and (2) if you should philosophize , you
easy
easy
should philosophize . He deploys the “perfect” argument for the first stage;
hard
but as we have seen, he almost does not need to. Either by that time, or within
a few de cades, someone has inscribed philosophos ginou at Delphi, acknowl-
edging its universality as a norm. A few de cades later than that, Epicurus can
start his Letter to Menoeceus with an argument so logically simple as practi-
cally to be otiose:

Let nobody young delay philosophizing, nor being old weary of philosophizing.

For nobody is it too early or too late to concern himself with his soul’s health.

The one saying either that it is not yet the age to philosophize or that the age
has past is like the one saying that the age for happiness has not come or is no
longer. Thus one should philosophize, both young and old, the latter so as, when
growing old, to keep young on account of the grace of the things having been,
and the former so as, while young, to be old at the same time in being fearless
about the things to come. Thus one ought to care to do the things connected to
happiness: if they are pre sent, we have every thing; if they are absent, we do
every thing toward having it. (Epicurus Ep. Men. 1)

If philosophia conduces to a soul’s health, and to happiness, then one should
philosophize. Further, for those who think philosophizing is valuable but only
for the youth, Epicurus has an argument that it is also valuable for the el derly,
and vice versa. As with Aristotle’s Protrepticus, of course, Epicurus’s actual

310 CH A PTER 10
pro cess of philosophizing is much more involved and complicated than is im-
plied here. Indeed, his On Nature was in thirty- seven papyrus rolls! So, like

Aristotle, Epicurus uses the lever of the non- disciplinary (positive) form of philosophia to turn people toward the disciplinary (positive) form of philosophia—or with another meta phor, an exoteric bait and a switch to the esoteric— the more
so, I would argue, because the discipline is not just difficult, as all disciplines
are, but because it coexists with, and may even be the internal realization of,
the imputation of a sophomoric way of life.

A Fourth- Century Dialogue about Philosophia
and Its Ambivalence

My final piece of evidence about philosophia’s ambivalence in the fourth century BCE comes from a dialogue plausibly attributed to Plato, though some ascribe it instead to an anonymous early Academic.55 This short dialogue, the

Rival Lovers, has usually been studied, whenever it has been studied, in the way
that Heraclitus’s Pythagoras story has been studied—as a contribution to later
fourth- century BCE school debates about the right sort of intellectual life,
in this case on the side against the polymathic life of science. It more power-
fully articulates, however, the mixed attitudes toward philosophia in the time
of Heraclides and Aristotle that we have just studied, as estimable or not, as
disciplinary or not, as valuable or not.

The dialogue opens with a nod to the disciplinary conception of philoso-
phia. Socrates sits down next to an acquaintance in a schoolyard and notices
some attractive and well- born young men. They are drawing circles, bend-
ing their hands in imitation of vari ous celestial inclinations, and debating

(ἐρίζοντε) something, all this with real intensity (μάλ᾽ ἐσπουδακότε). They
appear to Socrates to be working through astronomical theories, apparently
those of Anaxagoras or Oenopides.56 Socrates asks his acquaintance about
their intensity: “is it something great and admirable, what ever they’re so in-
tense about?” The acquaintance laughs at the suggestion; really what they are

55 Platonic authorship: Yxem 1846, 6–7; Grote 1865, 447–53; Evans 1976; Davis 1984; Bruell 1987, 92, 106; Monserrat Molas 1999, 19–25; Pageau St- Hilaire 2014, 3–7. Possibly Platonic authorship: Annas 1985, 112; Hutchinson 1997, 618; Peterson 2011, 201–2, and 2018. Non- Platonic authorship: Schleiermacher 1836, 325–26; Stallbaum 1836, 265–68; Heidel 1896, 14, 59–63;

Werner 1912; Souilhé 1930, 13.2.107–12; Isnardi 1954, 137–38; Carlini 1962 and 1964; Merlan 1963; Ledger 1989, 144; Centrone 2005, 37; Männlein- Robert 2005; Thesleff 2009, 13, 129; Dillon 2012, 50; Brisson 2014, 15–17, 306.

56 On Anaxagoras, see chapter 6, pp. 158–64; on Oenopides, see Bodnár 2007.

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 311
doing is “harping on about the things in the sky, blathering— philosophizing”

(ἀδολεσχοῦσι . . . περὶ τῶν μετεώρων καὶ φλυαροῦσι φιλοσοφοῦντες).57 He
seems here to be recapitulating an observation made a century earlier, the very
observation that this book conjectures to have occasioned the coinage of the
word philosophos.

This brief scene captures brilliantly the external and internal faces of phi-
losophia, how philosophy looks to observers and its prac ti tion ers. The boys
have a characteristic appearance: they are given to vociferous disputation,
distinctive gesture, and, presumably, earnest or good- spirited visage. Their
talk, maybe technical, sounds aimless and indistinct. Socrates’s acquaintance
has been watching them a while and, though he has heard words concerning
ta meteôra bandied about, he observes mostly that they talk incessantly, in dis-
agreement, and not about the normal subjects concerning which people usually
pass the time. The internal content, by contrast, includes competing assess-
ments of some astronomical theory. The boys’ intensity of focus and shared
proj ect of explanation show that they see great significance in articulating and
accepting the truth about such cosmic matters. What from the outside looks
like “harping on” is surely from the inside the methodical, stepwise clarifica-
tion or correction of a conversation; and “blathering” may label the extensive
preliminary or adjunct discussions in preparation for addressing the key issue.

Despite being unable to hear the content of the conversation, much less con-
tribute to it, Socrates can infer it. This ability depends on philosophy’s histori-
cally extended disciplinarity. Talking philosophy can involve talking about
certain other people, those considered the canonical or most provocative phi-
los o phers. Those people’s theories or observations come under certain kinds
of scrutiny or elaboration. Thus Socrates can see that the boys’ diagrams and
gesticulations most likely refer to the leading theoretical astronomers of the
mid- fifth century BCE. As we saw when we looked at Plato’s Charmides and
especially his Protagoras (chapter 8), cooperative clarification and even self-understanding comes through agonistic questioning and examination. The
boys’ intensity and competition must be in the interest of joint understanding,
persuading, correcting, and explaining in turn. Socrates can see the displayed
vigor as expressions of enthusiasm and a seriousness of purpose rather than as
sparks of angry frustration or ambitions for glory. Socrates must have consid-
erable familiarity with philosophy to see in the boys’ gabbling and babbling a
conversation with one’s pre de ces sors concerning questions about the funda-
mental nature of the world.

57 Cf. Pl. Phdr. 270a1 (see above, chapter 6, p. 168) and the participial use of the verb philosophein to gloss the rest of the sentence in Hdt. 1.30 (see above, chapter 5, p. 131).

312 CH A PTER 10

Socrates’s companion in the dialogue does not have an internal, disciplinary
attitude toward philosophy; he cannot understand the boys’ activity from their

(and their fellow prac ti tion ers’) point of view. But why, after all, should he be
able to? He has spent his life in a dif fer ent discipline, training in wrestling
and sport ( RL 132c9, 132d3). From that sort of life, in which bodily strength
and girth matter, and identifiable victories in matches matter even more, the
anemic chattering of these boys is beyond silly; it is a waste of time. So much
the worse for them, he thinks, given their attractiveness and family creden-
tials. Socrates ends up with a certain esteem for this wrestler’s unprepossess-
ing attitude (132d1–6). Indeed, he has already been drawn to him, perhaps for
his sincerity and directness. Something else absorbs the wrestler’s judgments
of value, in an au then tic way; his disparagement of philosophizing simply re-
flects the wholeheartedness with which he pursues his own ambitions.58 Phi-
losophy amounts to its own integrated set of norms, and he simply does not
share them.

This was the opening of the dialogue; the disputation heats up with the
introduction of a second interlocutor. This one has an affinity for cultural af-
fairs, an intellectual bent (περὶ μουσικὴν διατετριφώς, RL 132d1–2). He con-
tradicts the wrestler: accepting that the boys are philosophizing, he disagrees
that their doing so is “shameful,” as he paraphrases his opponent. He then goes
even further: not only does he admire philosophy; he judges such admiration
an essential and universal part of being human: “If ever I should think philos-
ophizing is shameful, neither would I take myself to be human, nor anybody
else who thought that way” (133a8– b1). In effect, one must philosophize. The
imperative, like the (near-)contemporaneous one at Delphi, is categorical. As
is claimed by Aristotle’s perfect protreptic argument, or by Epicurus’s ages-
of- life argument, it cannot be avoided. So, the dialogue pre sents someone who
has internalized the value of philosophy. For what reason, one might won der—
and Socrates does won der. The story of the dialogue is that the intellectual
does not know. He does not appeal to the disciplinary explanation suggested
by the boys’ example (and articulated in Aristotle’s Protrepticus), that hash-
ing out prob lems in theoretical astronomy or other canonical issues has intrin-
sic and instrumental value. Nor does he appeal to human nature, to explain
its constitutive role in human existence. The suspicion is that he has come to
esteem a practice from the outside, in effect for its countercultural value, as
something people commonly disparage but serious people esteem, without

58 DL 3.4: Plato studied at the school depicted in this dialogue and was an able wrestler.

Sandra Peterson won ders whether the wrestler is Plato. Thrasylus thought the intellectual was Democritus (DL 9.37).

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 313
throwing himself into the practice itself, insofar as he is interested only in pre-
senting himself as serious.59

Anyway, the intellectual at least tries to explain his admiration for philoso-
phy. In response to Socrates’s question, “What is it?,” he quotes Solon’s “Ever
aging, learning plenty” (γυράσκω δ᾽ αἰεὶ πολλὰ διδασκόμενος). He interprets

Solon’s verse as making the sensible claim, one we have seen Epicurus to
promulgate, that learning is age- independent. Then, in a fallacious inference
reminiscent of Socrates’s joking about philosophical dogs in Republic Book 2

(chapter 8, p. XXX), the intellectual says that Solon is encouraging one’s “learn-
ing as much as pos si ble in life” (ὡς πλεῖστα ἐν τῷ βίῳ μάθῃ, RL 133c7). From
the proposition that one ought always to keep on learning, he equivocates in
the “keep on,” from “as one grows older” to “as one is learning.” Hardly a
disciplinary or methodical view, this amounts simply to equating philosophia
with a basic epistemic orientation, the idea that we are always benefitted by
knowing more. Plato’s Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not a
human life (Pl. Ap. 38a5–6); so maybe philosophia can really be understood as the desire for knowledge.

So we might think; but Socrates shows here the naïveté of this position. The
intellectual agrees that he has made philosophia distillable to polumathia. Yet this makes the idea less appealing, once he realizes that he shares Heraclitus’s
suspicions of polumathia ( RL 133c10–133d1). The bodily parallel, philogum-nastia, with its coordinate polu- definition, poluponia (“much effort”), sets a bad pre ce dent (133d6– e2). The wrestler tells him that a lot of effort (τῶν πολλῶν
πόνων) is worse for the health of the body than only a mea sured amount

(μετρίων, 134a8– b2); the same holds for food and every thing else (134c10– d2).

Thus too for the soul, it would seem: one should not learn “every thing or many
things” (135a9–10).60 So, if one wishes to praise philosophia, one should not
equate it with polumathia. The result is that philosophy is not simply learn-
ing; it is not simply a humble but optimistic epistemic attitude; it is not simply
unquenchable curiosity. It must be something more specific.

Socrates asks the intellectual to help him list the topics (τῶν μαθημάτων)

to be learned in philosophy ( RL 134a8–9). In his answer the intellectual aban-
dons the Solonic epistemic model and adopts a reputational model; and yet he
still avoids answering Socrates well. He identifies the phi los o pher as a lay-
man who participates in expert discussions better than any other layman: that
is, without the laborious effort of becoming expert himself, but with the ap-
pearance of knowledge surpassing all but the expert’s knowledge (135b1– d8,

59 Compare Clitophon’s external valuation of justice in the Clitophon (see Moore 2012).

60 An identical argument against broad learning is elsewhere attributed to Aristippus (DL

2.71).

314 CH A PTER 10

136a8– b2). In so doing the intellectual caps the quantity or quality of learning
at a level just above that of the next- best amateur and definitely below that of
the expert. He relativizes the topics to be learned by specifying them as those
in which his comparative advantage most yields him esteem. The intellectual
has hereby replaced a psychical model (self- improvement) with a social one

(improvement in popularity), replacing the intrinsic value of knowledge with
its (balanced) instrumental value. He appears to have in mind just the esteem
due to the Sophoi, those all- around advisors known as experts in nothing but
admired by all. He seems in fact to recapitulate the earliest coiners of the term
philosophos, using it to denote those prone to avid discussions abstracted from
the day’s issues, who might all the same become po liti cally or socially influ-
ential; but unlike those who seem to find such activity off- putting or at least
remarkable, he finds it enviable.

This new explanation of philosophia’s value brings the intellectual no
dialectical advantage. The previous model committed him to a detrimental
overwork, the opposite of benefit. His current attempt, meant to avoid the
harm of overwork, commits him now to uselessness, benefit’s other oppo-
site. As Socrates points out, the intellectual has imagined a phi los o pher as
a pentathlete, effective on average but a loser in any par tic u lar contest—
nobody will ever ask his advice ( RL 135e1–137b3). And he has ignored the content of philosophizing, insofar as he is satisfied with external appearance. He does not mention the theoretical astronomy practiced by the boys
of whom he is so fond or the questions of valuation and conversational
method on display in his conversation with Socrates himself. Perhaps he
does so from disdain for disciplinary specialization and a concomitant valu-
ation of the leisured ideal. Perhaps, like the wrestler, he does not see the
benefit in debating Anaxagoras’s theories or in clarifying the use of moral
or definitional inquiry.

Socrates continues the conversation by showing how philosophy would have
to be were it to be good, as the intellectual assumes it to be. By a stepwise
argument, he gets the intellectual to equate benefit with a person’s improve-
ment, which involves punishing what is bad about him, which in turn involves
distinguishing (γιγνώσκειν, διαγιγνώσκειν) what is bad from what is good. One
can rightly claim this skill, called “justice,” if one can make these distinctions
in any individual case; and one’s own good and bad qualities count as one of
those individual cases. This means that the ability to benefit, which is to ex-
ercise justice, involves the ability to benefit oneself— which Socrates says is
to exercise discipline ( sôphronein). And as in the general case justice means
knowing people, in the personal case discipline means “knowing oneself”

(ἑαυτὸν γιγνώσκειν). “This then,” Socrates says, “is what the Delphic inscrip-

A M BI VA LENCE A BOUT PHILOSOPHIA 315
tion urges” ( RL 138a8). Obeying the Delphic inscription is essential to being
good and beneficial. The intellectual claimed that philosophia is good and ben-
eficial. So in accepting the argument the intellectual must believe that practic-
ing philosophia is a matter of obeying the Delphic inscription.61

So on the intellectual’s understanding of philosophia as clarified by Socrates,
the name philosophos refers not to a disciplinary practitioner but to one who
obeys a Delphic inscription.62 What that means is that “being philosophical”

amounts to fulfilling the expectations of the commonplace Greek ethos. We
have no reason to find the intellectual utterly idiosyncratic in his view of phi-
losophy, and the existence of a dialogue depicting his comeuppance in fact sug-
gests its popularity. That Socrates’s examination of the intellectual’s views
does not direct his attention to disciplinarity means, too, that Socrates finds
something about his views respectable. Philosophy, if not taken as encyclope-
dic learning or leisured amateurism, can be something good that every body
should do: knowing oneself.63

The Rival Lovers, as I take it, speaks to an ambiguity in Greek concep-
tions of philosophia during its great century of revaluation and self- assertion, as both a meaningful, historically anchored discipline and a gnomic obligation for all human beings. As with all triumphs, there are the triumphalists,
those for whom the win takes the place of the practice itself. It is as easy to

61 The Charmides suggests a similar view; for detail, see Moore and Raymond 2019.

62 We must emphasize, with Peterson 2011, 201, that Socrates (or the author) does not pre sent his own final positive account of philosophia, but only part of a reductio argument for his interlocutor; contrast, e.g., Hutchinson 1997, 618. Brisson 2014, 15–17, 305, as part of his argument against Platonic authorship, seems to identify— quite bizarrely, to my mind— the intellectual with Socrates and/or Plato; he argues that the dialogue “does not hesitate to reduce philosophy to an accumulation of knowledge, and rejects it in favor of bodily exercise,” and yet he also asserts that Plato always vaunts the soul over the body. Yet Brisson is right that Socrates’s sympathy for the wrestler is remarkable (cf. Yates 2005, 37, and the provocative observation in Davis 1984, 80, that the boys who debate Anaxagoras and Oenopides move their arms like wrestlers).

63 On the connection here of philosophia and the goodness of self- knowledge, see Moore 2015b, 236–39. Also emphasizing the dialogue’s concern for self- knowledge is Souilhé 1930, 105–7, 125; Thesleff 2009, 362, 365; Pageau St- Hilaire 2014, 2. There is a textual prob lem concerning whether Socrates ever calls himself philosophos in the dialogue. At RL 137a2, the MSS
have ὡπολογήσαμεν καλὸν εἶναι τὴν φιλοσοφίαν καὶ αὐτοὶ φιλόσοφοι εἶναι (“we agreed that
philosophy is excellent and that we ourselves are phi los o phers”). Yet Socrates and the intellectual never did agree to this. If it went without saying, then Socrates is a philosophos, merging apparently disciplinary and non- disciplinary personae. But the focus of the conversation tells against its going without saying. (I note that the intellectual is never called and never calls himself philosophos, despite the claims of Bruell 1987.) Burnet 1901 retains the Greek but notes in apparatus the seclusion of the whole line by Forster (1765) and Schanz (1882); Lamb 1927
brackets; Souilhé 1930, Mitscherling in Cooper 1997, and Brisson 2014 exclude it from their translations. Carlini 1964 (following C. Schmidt) conjectures καὶ αὖ τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν (“and philosophizing too [we agreed to be excellent]”) in place of καὶ αὐτοῖ φιλόσοφοι εἶναι— I find this persuasive.

316 CH A PTER 10
mistake the value of philosophy as it is to mistake its disvalue. Philosophy
proper includes thinking through— and thus appraising the reasons in favor
of doing— philosophy: thus it includes the appearance, and real ity, that phi-
losophy always involves protreptics to itself. Indeed, if philosophy really is a
kind of talking that conduces to self- improvement, there is always a pair of
risks: that we do not see how it could possibly work and that we assume it to
be so easy that we do not go through the exercises and lessons necessary for
it. (Trying to know oneself runs the same risks of seeming impossibility and
conceits of ease, as I argue in my 2015 book, Socrates and Self- Knowledge.)

Presumably we can eradicate neither risk entirely. Indeed, it is presumably the
recognition of those twin risks—of hopelessness about the acquisition of wis-
dom and of wishful thinking that one has already acquired enough— that both
impelled the formation of the discipline and maintains its current energy. Just
as Rival Lovers offers up the prob lem of these two risks, the Pythagoras story
that we see in Heraclides’s On Diseases and elsewhere offers up reassurances
in the face of these risks, claiming that humans may attain an efficacious wis-
dom, even as doing so befits extraordinary distinction in investigation and
self- composure. Convincing people to pursue philosophy may require con-
vincing them that in doing so they would in fact be loving wisdom: all can feel
love, but doing so well— upholding a commitment to someone and a sunny dis-
position toward another through thick and thin—is hard; and wisdom has its
many exemplars, but exemplifying it in oneself— disciplining oneself against
distraction and avoiding self- deception—is even harder. But both are pos si-
ble; and so one ought to try.

Epilogue

Con temporary Philosophy and the History
of the Discipline

This book has aimed to historicize our interpretation of the concept phi-
losophia and thus of philosophy. It has investigated the meaning of the term
in its earliest situations of use. Won der and awe may have given rise to
the investigations typical of Western philosophy; or perhaps something else
did: the Greek demo cratic polis, currency minting, Ionian multiculturalism,
what ever. In any event, those investigations got consolidated and refined
only in some socio- linguistic setting. Cicero spoke imprecisely when he said
that though the name is new, philosophy is old; the name and the practice
grew up together, and only retrospectively can we spot rudiments of the
practice before the unifying name.

This study may have indirect relevance to con temporary discussions
about the meaning of philosophy. Diverse candidates get floated: thinking
about thinking, knowing at the deepest and most systematic level, concep-
tual analy sis, concept creation, social critique. This diversity should sur-
prise nobody. If each candidate meaning is offered as the best interpretation
of the efforts of prac ti tion ers over the discipline’s two- and- a- half millen-
nia, or even of prac ti tion ers in one’s immediate conversational circle, or
even of oneself, we can hardly avoid uncertainty, disagreement, and shifts
in emphasis. Each of us sees something else, takes something else as cen-
tral, and interprets the unmet ideals differently. Some will take a minimalist
line, trying to account as capaciously as pos si ble for all activities called
philosophy; others will take a maximalist line, trying to articulate the pre-
cise pro cesses and substances of philosophy. Consensus will fail even if
philosophy is to be defined along the via negativa, as what differentiates
it from other disciplines. Indeed, we prob ably do not see all the disagree-
ment, given the dominance of the institutional definition— “whatever people
do in university philosophy departments” or “what ever people publish in

318 EPILOGU E
university presses’ philosophy list”— with recapitulation in “Introduction to

Philosophy” classes and the interhireability of students from major gradu ate
programs.

I suspect that there is nothing that “philosophy” (or philosophia) naturally
or essentially or necessarily takes as its object, whether it be kosmos or being or self or thinking. I am less inclined to doubt Aristotle’s view that the activity
of philosophy amounts to explanation, especially fundamental explanation—
but that is because I take explanation to be constitutive of any discipline what-
soever, and the role of explanation in philosophy is even more salient insofar
as this discipline lacks other impor tant anchors, like rocks for geologists or
poems for theorists of poetry. At the same time, I think that philosophy is basi-
cally the practice of talking, with the goal of becoming a better person. This
method and this aim raise a central question: How is this self- improvement
through discussion and study supposed to work? There is nothing to turn to
for answers except what other philosophoi have done and talked about. Thus

I take philosophy to be, crucially and not propaedeutically, the interpreta-
tion of prior experiments in philosophy— its methods, concepts, arguments, and
ideals— from those you take to be your ilk, phi los o phers, such that by under-
standing them one might come to live better. Now, prob ably every discipline
has as a goal the flourishing of people. But the discipline of philosophy differs
in believing that understanding (or disposition) comes from the interpretation
of claims and views, not from understanding productive activities or natu ral
or artificial objects in the world. I thus take philosophy to be inseparable from
the history of philosophy.

The relevance to con temporary discussion of philosophy of an account of
the name’s coinage and early centuries of use is, if narrow, still impor tant. It
disabuses us of the notion that the term has always meant “lover of wisdom,”

or that this is even a meaningful or stably meaningful claim, or that this
is the “natu ral” sense of philosophy (even if it is a meaning, as posited or
interpreted later on). It cultivates an appreciation that the dubiety people feel
about philosophy has always been felt, a sense that the value of philosophy
was in dispute and contention from the start. It shakes up Hellenocentrism in
a certain way, in that we can accept the Greekness of the name and certain
canonical personages, but also in that we can accept that the ideas, practices,
and goals may well have been foreign, and continually modified by foreign in-
fluence, and could just as well have parallels in other civilizations with no
prejudice to those parallels (compare Justin E. H. Smith’s 2016 book, The Phi-
los o pher: A History in Six Types). Most importantly for me, it gives a humble
nobility to an origin story for (our) discipline connected with the sophoi, with
po liti cal action, with curiosity, with a contrarian spirit of self- cultivation, with

EPILOGU E 319
conversation and fellow feeling, with concentrated and enduring attention to
detail, validity, and truth, with personal responsibility, and with the hope for
a better life. No mere story of a word can vindicate a way of life, of course,
but when that story has been about ways of life themselves, and so has drawn
attention to them as proper objects of our deliberate concern, we might make
some pro gress.

APPENDIX: VERSIONS OF THE

PYTHAGORAS STORY

Sosicrates Successions (in Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent

Phi los o phers 8.8) (second century BCE)

Σωσικράτης δε ἐν Διαδοχαῖς φησιν αὐτὸν ἐρωτηθέντα ὑπὸ Λέοντος τοῦ

Φλιασίων τυράννου τίς εἴη, φιλόσοφον εἰπεῖν. καὶ τὸν βίον ἐοικέναι πανηγύρει·
ὡς οὖν εἰς ταύτην οἱ μὲν ἀγωνιούμενοι, οἱ δὲ κατ ̓ ἐμπορίαν, οἱ δέ γε βέλτιστοι
ἔρχονται θεαταί, οὕτως ἐν τῷ βίῳ οἱ μὲν ἀνδραποδώδεις, ἔφη, φύονται δόξης
καὶ πλεονεξίας θηραταί, οἱ δὲ φιλόσοφοι τὴς ἀληθείας.

For translation, see p. 4.

Diodorus Siculus Library of History 10 fr. 24 (fl. 60–30 BCE)

ὅτι Πυθαγόρας φιλοσοφίαν, ἀλλ’ οὐ σοφίαν ἐκάλει τὴν ἰδίαν αἵρεσιν.

καταμεμφόμενος γὰρ τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ κεκλημένους ἑπτὰ σοφοὺς ἔλεγεν ὡς
σοφὸς μὲν οὐδείς ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος ὢν καὶ πολλάκις διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν τῆς
φύσεως οὐκ ἰσχύων πάντα κατορθοῦν, ὁ δὲ ζηλῶν τὸν τοῦ σοφοῦ τρόπον τε
καὶ βίον προσηκόντως ἂν φιλόσοφος ὀνομάζοιτο.

For translation, see p. 69.

Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.3.8–9 (work: 45 BCE)

A quibus ducti deinceps omnes qui in rerum contemplatione studia ponebant,
sapientes et habebantur et nominabantur, idque eorum nomen usque ad Pythag-
orae manauit aetatem, quem, ut scribi auditor Platonis Ponticus Heraclides, uir
doctus in primis, Phliuntem ferunt uenisse eumque cum Leonte, principe Phli-
asiorum, docte et copiose disseruisse quaedam; cuius ingenium et eloquentiam
cum admiratus esset Leon, quaesiuisse ex eo qua maxime arte confideret; at
illum artem quidem se scire nullam, sed esse philosophum. Admiratum Le-
ontem nouitatem nominis quaesiuisse quinam essent philosophi, et quid inter
eos et reliquos interesset; Pythagoram autem respondisse similem sibi uideri
uitam hominum et mercatum eum qui haberetur maxumo ludorum apparatu
totius Graeciae celebritate; nam ut illic alii corporibus exercitatis gloriam et
nobilitatem coronae peterent, alii emendi aut uendendi quaestu et lucro du-
cerentur, esset autem quoddam genus eorum idque uel maxime ingenuum, qui

322 A PPEN DI X
nec plausum nec lucrum quaererent, sed uisendi causa uenirent studioseque
perspicerent quid ageretur et quo modo, item nos quasi in mercatus quandam
celebritatem ex urbe aliqua sic in hanc uitam ex alia uita et natura profectos
alios gloriae seruire, alios pecuniae; raros esse quosdam qui ceteris omnibus
pro nihilo habitis rerum naturam studiose intuerentur; hos se appellare sa-
pientiae studiosos (id est enim philosophos); et ut illic liberalissimum esset
spectare nihil sibi adquirentem, sic in uita longe omnibus studiis contempla-
tionem rerum, cognitionemque praestare.

For translation, see pp. 13–14.

Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Sayings 8.7 ext 2

(fl. 14–37 CE)

Atque ut ad vetustiorem Industriae actum transgrediar, Pythagoras perfec-
tissimae opus sapientiae a iuventa <scientiae> pariter et omnis honestatis
percipiendae cupiditate ingressus— nihil enim quod ad ultimum sui perven-
turum est finem non et mature et celeriter incipit— , Aegyptum petiit, ubi
litteris gentis eius adsuefactus, praeteriti aevi sacerdotum commentarios
scrutatus, innumerabilium saeculorum observationes cognovit. inde ad Per-
sas profectus, magorum exactissimae prudentiae se formandum tradidit, a
quibus siderum motus cursusque stellarum et uniuscuiusque vim propri-
etatem effectum benignissime demonstratum docili animo sorpsit. Cretam
deinde et Lacedaemona navigavit, quarum legibus ac moribus inspectis ad

Olympicum certamen descendit, cumque multiplicis scientiae maximam
inter totius Graeciae admirationem specimen exhibuisset, quo cognomine
censeretur interrogatus, non se sapientem— iam enim illud septem excellen-
tes viri occupaverant— sed amatorem sapientiae, id est Graece philosophon
edidit. in Italiae etiam partem, quae tunc maior Graecia appellabatur, per-
rexit, in qua plurimis et opulentissimis urbibus effectus studiorum suorum
adprobavit. cuius ardentem rogum plenis venerationis oculis Metapontus
aspexit oppidum, Pythagorae quam suorum cinerum nobilius clariusque
monumentum.

For translation, see p. 72.

Quintilian Institutes of Rhe toric 12.1.19 (work: 95 CE)

Nam et Pythagoras non sapientem se, ut qui ante eum fuerunt, sed studiosum
sapientiae uocari uoluit.

Pythagoras desired to be called not wise, like those who preceded him, but a
lover of wisdom.

A PPEN DI X 323

Nicomachus of Gerasa Introduction to Arithmetic 1.1 (60–120 CE)

Οἱ παλαιοὶ καὶ πρῶτοι μεθοδεύσαντες ἐπιστήμην κατάρξαντος Πυθαγόρου
ὡρίζοντο φιλοσοφίαν εἶναι φιλίαν σοφίας, ὡς καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ ὄνομα ἐμφαίνει,
τῶν πρὸ Πυθαγόρου πάντων σοφῶν καλουμένων συγκεχυμένῳ ὀνόματι,
ὥσπερ καὶ τέκτων καὶ σκυτοτόμος καὶ κυβερνήτης καὶ ἁπλῶς ὁ τέχνης τινὸς ἢ
δημιουργίας ἔμπειρος· ἀλλ ̓ ὅ γε Πυθαγόρας συστείλας πάντων τὸ ὄνομα ἐπὶ
τὴν τοῦ ὄντος ἐπιστήμην καὶ κατάληψιν καὶ μόνην τὴν ἐν τούτῳ γνῶσιν τῆς
ἀληθείας σοφίαν ἰδίως καλέσας εἰκότως καὶ τὴν ταύτης ὄρεξιν καὶ μεταδίωξιν
φιλοσοφίαν προσηγόρευσεν, οἷον σοφίας ὄρεξιν. ἀξιοχρεώτερος δέ ἐστι τῶν
ἄλλως ὁριζομένων, παρ ̓ ὅσον ἰδίου ὀνόματος καὶ πράγματος ἔννοιαν δηλοῖ·
καὶ ταύτην δὲ τὴν σοφίαν ὡρίζετο ἐπιστήμην τῆς ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν ἀληθείας. . . .

The ancients, the ones who first dealt methodically with knowledge, follow-
ing the leadership of Pythagoras defined philosophia as the love of wisdom

( philia sophias), as the very name even expresses. All those before Pythago-
ras who were called sophos were so titled in an unprincipled way, as with the
builder, the shoemaker, the pi lot, and in effect any person experienced in some
art or craft: but Pythagoras, at any rate, circumscribed the name for all these
to the knowledge and understanding of what is, and calling the recognition of
the truth in this the only wisdom properly so called, reasonably enough, and
its desire and pursuit of this philosophia, that is, desire for wisdom ( sophias orexis). He is more credible than those giving other definitions inasmuch as he
makes clear the sense of the proper term and the thing itself— and this sophia
he defined as knowledge of the truth in what there is. . . .

Aëtius 1.3.7 (first or early second century CE) = Ps- Plutarch Placita

Philosophorum 1.3 876e, Stobaeus 1.10.12
πάλιν δ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἄλλης ἀρχῆς Πυθαγόρας Μνησάρχου Σάμιος, ὁ πρῶτος φιλοσοφίαν
τούτῳ τῷ ῥήματι προσαγορεύσας.

And again, from another origin [sc. he deduces the princi ples of all things], Py-
thagoras son of Mnesarchus, a Samian, the first one to have called philosophia
by that name.

Apuleius Florida 15.22 (ca. 125– after 170 CE)

Tot ille doctoribus eruditus, tot tamque multiiugis calicibus disciplinarum toto
orbe haustis, vir praesertim ingenio ingenti ac profecto super captum hominis
animi augustior, primus philosophiae nuncupator et conditor. . . .

324 A PPEN DI X

Educated by so many masters, and after draining so many cups of knowledge of
such dif fer ent kinds throughout the world, that master of truly great genius [sc.

Pythagoras], more venerable than the human mind can encompass, the first to
give a name and foundation to philosophy. . . . (trans. Jones)

——— Apologia 4.7

Pythagoram, qui primum sese philosophum nuncuparit. . . .

Pythagoras himself, the first to name himself philosophos. . . .

Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 1.12

(second– third century CE)

φιλοσοφίαν δὲ πρῶτος ὠνόμασε Πυθαγόρας καὶ ἑαυτὸν φιλόσοφον, ἐν Σικυῶνι
διαλεγόμενος Λέοντι τῷ Σικυωνίων τυράννῳ (ἢ Φλιασίων, καθά φησιν

Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικὸς ἐν τῇ Περὶ τῆς ἄπνου)· μηδένα γὰρ εἶναι σοφὸν

{ἄνθρωπον} ἀλλ ̓ ἢ θεόν. θᾶττον δὲ ἐκαλεῖτο σοφία, καὶ σοφὸς ὁ ταύτην
ἐπαγγελλόμενος, ὅς εἴη ἂν κατ᾽ ἀκρότητα ψυχῆς ἀπηκριβωμένος, φιλόσοφος
δὲ ὁ σοφίαν ἀσπαζόμενος.

For translation, see pp. 17–18.

Clement Stromata 1.14.59.1; 1.14.61.4 (150–215 CE)

Φασὶ δὲ Ἕλληνες μετά γε Ὀρφέα καὶ Λίνον καὶ τοὺς παλαιοτάτους παρὰ
σφίσι ποιητὰς ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ πρώτους θαυμασθῆναι τοὺς ἑπτὰ τοὺς ἐπικληθέντας
σοφούς, . . . ὀψὲ δὲ Πυθαγόρας ὁ Φερεκύδου γνώριμος φιλόσοφον ἑαυτὸν
πρῶτος ἀνηγόρευσεν.

The Greeks say that, after Orpheus and Linus and the most ancient of the poets
of their period, the first to be admired for sophia were the so- called Seven

Sophoi. . . . And at a late date, Pythagoras, the pupil of Pherecydes, was the
first to refer to himself as philosophos.

——— Stromata 4.9.1
ᾗ μοι δοκεῖ καὶ Πυθαγόρας σοφὸν μὲν εἶναι τὸν θεὸν λέγειν μόνον . . . ἑαυτὸν
δὲ διὰ φιλίαν τὴν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν φιλόσοφον. διελέγετο γοῦν Μωυσεῖ, φησίν,
ὁ θεὸς ὡς φίλος φίλῳ.

For which reason it seems to me that Pythagoras says that god alone is
sophos . . . and that, because of his friendship ( philia) with god, he is himself philosophos.

A PPEN DI X 325

Iamblichus Protrepticus (“Exhortation to Philosophy”) 9

(245–325 CE)

[4,9–13] Ἀπὸ τοῦ βουλήματος τῆς φύσεως ἔφοδος εἰς προτροπὴν κατὰ τὴν

Πυθαγόρου ἀπόκρισιν, ἣν εἶπε τοῖς ἐν Φλιοῦντι πυνθανομένοις τίς ἐστι καὶ
τίνος ἕνεκα γέγονε· ταύτῃ γὰρ ἑπομένως συλλογιζόμεθα τὴν προτροπὴν
ὅλην.

[51,6–8] καὶ τοῦτό ἐστι τῶν ὄντων οὗ χάριν ἡ φύσις ἡμᾶς ἐγέννησε καὶ ὁ
θεός. τί δὴ τοῦτό ἐστι Πυθαγόρας ἐρωτώμενος, “τὸ θεάσασθαι” εἶπε “τὸν
οὐρανόν,” καὶ ἑαυτὸν δὲ θεωρὸν ἔφασκεν εἶναι τῆς φύσεως καὶ τούτου ἕνεκα
παρεληλυθέναι εἰς τὸν βίον.

[53,19–54,5] ὥσπερ γὰρ εἰς Ὀλυμπίαν αὐτῆς ἕνεκα τῆς θέας ἀποδημοῦμεν,
καὶ εἰ μηδὲν μέλλοι πλεῖον ἀπ’ αὐτῆς ἔσεσθαι (αὐτὴ γὰρ ἡ θεωρία κρείττων
πολλῶν ἐστι χρημάτων), καὶ τὰ Διονύσια δὲ θεωροῦμεν οὐχ ὡς ληψόμενοί τι
παρὰ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν ἀλλὰ καὶ προσθέντες, πολλάς τε ἄλλας θέας ἑλοίμεθα

<ἂν> ἀντὶ πολλῶν χρημάτων· οὕτω καὶ τὴν θεωρίαν τοῦ παντὸς προτιμητέον
πάντων τῶν δοκούντων εἶναι χρησίμων. οὐ γὰρ δήπου ἐπὶ μὲν ἀνθρώπους
μιμουμένους γύναιακαὶ δούλους, τοὺς δὲ μαχομένους καὶ θέοντας,
δεῖπορεύεσθαι μετὰ πολλῆς σπουδῆς ἕνεκα τοῦ θεάσασθαι αὐτούς, τὴν δὲ τῶν
ὄντων φύσιν καὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν οὐκ οἴεσθαι δεῖν θεωρεῖν ἀμισθί.

For translation, see p. 120.

——— On the Pythagorean Way of Life 12 (§58–59)

Λέγεται δὲ Πυθαγόρας πρῶτος φιλόσοφον ἑαυτὸν προσαγορεῦσαι, οὐ
καινοῦ μόνον ὀνόματος ὑπάρξας, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρᾶγμα οἰκεῖον προεκδιδάσκων
χρησίμως. ἐοικέναι γὰρ ἔφη τὴν εἰς τὸν βίον τῶν ἀνθρώπων πάροδον τῷ ἐπὶ τὰς
πανηγύρεις ἀπαντῶντι ὁμίλῳ. ὡς γὰρ ἐκεῖσε παντοδαποὶ φοιτῶντες ἄνθρωποι
ἄλλος κατ’ ἄλλου χρείαν ἀφικνεῖται (ὃ μὲν χρηματισμοῦ τε καὶ κέρδους χάριν
ἀπεμπολῆσαι τὸν φόρτον ἐπειγόμενος, ὃ δὲ δόξης ἕνεκα ἐπιδειξόμενος ἥκει
τὴν ῥώμην τοῦ σώματος· ἔστι δὲ καὶ τρίτον εἶδος καὶ τό γε ἐλευθεριώτατον,
συναλιζόμενον τόπων θέας ἕνεκα καὶ δημιουργημάτων καλῶν καὶ ἀρετῆς ἔργων
καὶ λόγων, ὧν αἱ ἐπιδείξεις εἰώθεσαν ἐν ταῖς πανηγύρεσι γίνεσθαι), οὕτως δὴ
κἀν τῷ βίῳ παντοδαποὺς ἀνθρώπους ταῖς σπουδαῖς εἰς ταὐτὸ συναθροίζεσθαι·
τοὺς μὲν γὰρ χρημάτων καὶ τρυφῆς αἱρεῖ πόθος, τοὺς δὲ ἀρχῆς καὶ ἡγεμονίας
ἵμερος φιλονεικίαι τε δοξομανεῖς κατέχουσιν. εἰλικρινέστατον δὲ εἶναι τοῦτον
ἀνθρώπου τρόπον, τὸν ἀποδεξάμενον τὴν τῶν καλλίστων θεωρίαν, ὃν καὶ
προσονομάζειν φιλόσοφον. καλὴν μὲν οὖν εἶναι τὴν τοῦ σύμπαντος οὐρανοῦ
θέαν καὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ φορουμένων ἀστέρων εἴ τις καθορῴη τὴν τάξιν· κατὰ
μετουσίαν μέντοι τοῦ πρώτου καὶ τοῦ νοητοῦ εἶναι αὐτὸ τοιοῦτον. τὸ δὲ

326 A PPEN DI X
πρῶτον ἦν ἐκεῖνο, ἡ τῶν ἀριθμῶν τε καὶ λόγων φύσις διὰ πάντων διαθέουσα,
καθ’ οὓς τὰ πάντα ταῦτα συντέτακταί τε ἐμμελῶς καὶ κεκόσμηται πρεπόντως,
καὶ σοφία μὲν ἡ τῷ ὄντι ἐπιστήμη τις ἡ περὶ τὰ καλὰ τὰ πρῶτα καὶ θεῖα καὶ
ἀκήρατα καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχοντα ἀσχολουμένη, ὧν μετοχῇ
καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἂν εἴποι τις καλά· φιλοσοφία δὲ ἡ ζήλωσις τῆς τοιαύτης θεωρίας.

καλὴ μὲν οὖν καὶ αὕτη παιδείας ἦν ἐπιμέλεια ἡ συντείνουσα αὐτῷ πρὸς τὴν
τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπανόρθωσιν.

For translation, see pp. 118–19.

——— On the Pythagorean Way of Life 8 (§44)

Σχεδὸν γὰρ ταῖς ἀγωγαῖς διαφέρειν τοὺς μὲν ἀνθρώπους τῶν θηρίων, τοὺς δὲ

Ἕλληνας τῶν βαρβάρων, τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους τῶν οἰκετῶν, τοὺς δὲ φιλοσόφους
τῶν τυχόντων, ὅλως δὲ τηλικαύτην ἔχοντας ὑπεροχήν, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν θᾶττον
τρέχοντας τῶν ἄλλων ἐκ μιᾶς πόλεως τῆς ἐκείνων ἑπτὰ κατὰ τὴν Ὀλυμπίαν
εὑρεθῆναι, τοὺς δὲ τῇ σοφίᾳ προέχοντας ἐξ ἁπάσης τῆς οἰκουμένης ἑπτὰ
συναριθμηθῆναι. ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἑξῆς χρόνοις, ἐν οἷς ἦν αὐτός, ἕνα φιλοσοφίᾳ
προέχειν τῶν πάντων· καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τὸ ὄνομα ἀντὶ τοῦ σοφοῦ ἑαυτὸν
ἐπωνόμασε.

For translation, see pp. 121–22

Eusebius Praeparatio evangelica 10.4.12–13 (work: 314–324 CE)

ἐνταῦθα που νέοι τῷ χρόνῳ οἱ ἑπτὰ γενόμενοι σοφοὶ ἐπὶ κατορθώσει
μνημονεύονται ἀγωγῆς τὴς ἠθικωτέρας, ὧν πλέον οὐδὲν τὼν βοωμένων
ἀποφθεγμάτων μνημονεύεται. ὀψὲ δε τι καὶ μᾶλλον τοῖς χρόνοις ὑποβεβηκότες
οἱ παρ᾽ Ἕλλησι φιλόσοφοι διαπρέψαι μνημονεύονται. ὧν Πυθαγόρας πρῶτος,

Φερεκύδου γνώριμος, τὸ φιλοσοφίαν ἀνευρὼν ὄνομα . . .

The Seven Sophoi, who belong to that time, are remembered for succeeding at
improving ethical conduct; nothing more is remembered than their celebrated
maxims. Later, after much time had passed, the philosophoi of the Greeks are
remembered to have come to eminence. First among them was Pythagoras,
the pupil of Pherecydes, who in ven ted the name philosophia . . .

———Preface to St. Jerome’s Chronicle 14,2–4 (work: ca. 311 CE)

Porro Liber et reliqui quos mox inferemus, post CC annum Cecropis fuerunt;

Linus scilicet, et Zetus, et Amphion, Musaeus, Orpheus, Minos, Perseus, Aes-
culapius, gemini Castores, Hercules, cum quo Apollo servivit Admeto, post
quos facta est Troianae urbis eversio: quam Homerus longo sequitur intervallo;

A PPEN DI X 327

Homerus autem Solone et Thalete Milesio, caeterisque, qui cum iis septem Sa-
pientes appellati sunt, multo prior reperitur. Deinde Pythagoras exstitit, qui
se non sapientem, ut priores, sed philosophum, id est, amatorem sapientiae,
dici voluit; quem secutus Socrates, Platonem erudivit: a quo famosa in partes
philosophia divisa est. Horum singulos juxta ordinem sequentis historiae suis
locis inseremus.

Again, Liber and the rest whom we will bring in next, lived 200 years after
the year of Cecrops; Linus certainly, and Zetus, and Amphion, Musaeus, Or-
pheus, Minos, Perseus, Asclepias, the twin Castors, Hercules, with whom

Apollo served Admetus, after which the fall of the Trojan city happened:

which Homer follows after a long interval; but Homer is found to have lived
long before Solon or Thales of Miletus and the others who together with them
have been called the Seven Sages. Then Pythagoras appeared, who wished it
to be said that he was not a Sage, as those earlier, but a phi los o pher, that is, a
lover of wisdom; Socrates followed him, who taught Plato; by whom philoso-
phy was divided into its well- known parts. We shall put each of these in its
place according to the order of the following history. (trans. Pearse)

Ambrose of Milan On Abraham the Patriarch 2.7.37

(work ca. 380 CE)

Quanto prior quam ipse pater philosophiae Plato, vel eius inventor nominis

Pythagoras!

Much earlier than the very father of philosophy, Plato, was the inventor of the
word, Pythagoras!

Augustine On the Trinity 14.1.2 (work: 400–428 CE)

Nonne terrebimur exemplo Pythagorae qui cum ausus non fuisset sapientem
profiteri, philosophum potius, id est amatorem sapientiae, se esse respondit, a
quo id nomen exortum ita deinceps posteris placuit ut quantalibet de rebus ad
sapientiam pertinentibus doctrina quisque uel sibi uel aliis uideretur excellere
non nisi philosophus uocaretur.

Pythagoras, since he did not venture to profess wisdom, answered that he was
rather a phi los o pher, that is, a lover of wisdom. Thus arose this name which
so pleased succeeding generations that from then on, no matter how greatly
anyone might seem either to himself or to others, to excel in subjects pertain-
ing to wisdom, yet he should only be called a phi los o pher. (trans. McKenna)

328 A PPEN DI X

——— City of God 8.2 (work: 413–426 CE)

Italicum genus auctorem habuit Pythagoram Samium, a quo etiam ferunt ipsum
philosophiae nomen exortum. Nam cum antea sapientes appellarentur, qui
modo quodam laudabilis vitae aliis; praestare videbantur, iste interrogatus, quid
profiteretur, philosophum se esse respondit, id est studiosum uel amatorem sa-
pientiae; quoniam sapientem profiteri arrogantissimum videbatur.

Pythagoras of Samos is said to be the founder of the Italian school and also the
originator of the word “philosophy.” Before his time, any person of outstand-
ing achievement was called a wise man. But when Pythagoras, who consid-
ered it arrogance to call one’s self wise, was asked his profession, he replied
that he was a phi los o pher, that is to say, a student or lover of wisdom. (trans.

Walsh, Zema, Monahan, and Honan)

Hermias Commentary on Plato’s “Phaedrus” 278b (ca. 410–450 CE)

Πάντων δὲ τῶν πρὸ Πυθαγόρου καὶ περί τι ἐπιστημόνων σοφῶν καλουμένων,
ὁ Πυθαγόρας ἐλθὼν τὸ θεῖον μόνον σοφὸν ἐκάλεσεν, ὡς ἐξαίρετον τὸ ὄνομα
τῷ θεῷ ἀπονείμας, τοῦς δὲ ὀρεγομένους σοφίας φιλοσόφους ἐκάλεσεν. Οὕτως
καὶ ἐν τῷ Συμποσίῳ σοφὸν ἐκάλεσε τὸν Ἕρωτα ὁ Σωκράτης, φιλόσοφον δὲ οὔ·

“θεῶν γὰρ, φησὶν, οὐδεὶς φιλόσοφος.” τίνες οὖν οἱ φιλόσοφοι; οἱ ορεγόμενοι
τῆς σοφίας.

Before Pythagoras, anyone expert in something was called sophos, but when

Pythagoras came he called the divine alone sophos, . . . and he called those desiring sophia philosophoi. Thus even in the Symposium Socrates calls Eros sophos, but not a philosophos— “For none of the gods,” he said, “is philosophos.” Thus who are the philosophoi?— the ones desiring sophia.

Ammonius Commentary on Porphyry’s “Isagoge” Proem 9,7–9, 16–18

(435/445–517/526 CE)

Ὁ μέντοι Πυθαγόρας φησι “φιλοσοφία ἐστὶ φιλία σοφίας” πρῶτος τῷ παρὰ
τοῖς παλαιοτέροις ἐπιστὰς ἁμαρτηματι. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι σοφὸν ὠνόμαζον
τὸν ἡντιναοῦν μετιόντα τέχνην . . . μεθίστησι τὴν προσηγορίαν ταύτην ἐπὶ τὸν
θεὸν ὡς μόνον ἐκεῖνον καλεῖσθαι σοφόν, τὸν θεόν φημι, σοφίαν τε καὶ τὴν
τῶν ὄντων ἀιδίων γνῶσιν.

A PPEN DI X 329

Pythagoras, however, says “Philosophia is the love of wisdom ( philia so-
phias),” being the first to charge an error against those in the past— for they
called sophos a person who practiced any technê whatsoever . . . he [by contrast] transfers this appellation to God, as he calls him alone sophos— God, I
mean— having sophia and recognition of eternal things.

Isidore of Seville The Etymologies 8.6.1.2 (560–636 CE)

Nomen Philosophorum primum a Pythagora fertur exortum. Nam dum antea

Graeci veteres sophistas, id est sapientes, aut doctores sapientiae semetipsos
iactantius nominarent, iste interrogatus quid profiteretur, verecundo nomine
philosophum, id est amatorem sapientiae se esse respondit, quoniam sapien-
tem profiteri arrogantissimum videbatur.

The term “phi los o pher” is reported to have originated with Pythagoras. In-
deed, before that, the older Greek sophists called themselves, ostentatiously,
the wise men, or teachers of wisdom; he [sc. Pythagoras], asked what he pro-
fessed to be, replied with a modest term, “phi los o pher,” that is, a lover of wis-
dom; and that professing to be wise seemed quite arrogant.

——— The Etymologies 14.6.31

Pythagoras Samius, a quo philosophiae nomen inventum est.

Pythagoras the Samian, who in ven ted the word philosophia.

CLASSICAL USES OF PHILOSOPH-

DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK

Name and source

Date

Pages

Heraclitus

B35/D40

>475

22, 26, 37–66, 261–62

Zeno

Against the Philosophoi

>430

151–53

[title]

[Hippocrates]

On Ancient Medicine 20.1
ca. 420s

135–42

Herodotus

History 1.30

425–415

128–32

Gorgias

Helen 13

441–380

143–47

Thucydides

History 2.40.1

>396 or 431

132–35, 168, 170

Anonymous

Dissoi Logoi 1.1, 9.1
ca. 400

204–6

Simon the Shoemaker

On Philosophy [title]

>399

153–55

Democritus

“Philosophia” [nickname]

>370?

155–56

Aristophanes

Ecclesiazusae 571

391

147–48

Prodicus

B6/D7 = Pl. Euthyd. 305c7

>395

211

Lysias

24.10

403–380

149

[8.11]

<300

149n73, 209

Alcidamas

On Nature

>369?

141, 268–69

On the Sophists

390

207–9
in Aristotle [two sayings]

>350?

115–16, 198, 207

[ Odysseus]

<300

209

332 CLASSICA L USES OF PHILOSOPH-

Antisthenes
in Diogenes Laertius, etc.

>365

31, 197, 203

[several sayings]

Aristippus
in Diogenes Laertius,

>356

203
etc. [six sayings]

Aeschines the Socratic

Telauges[?]

>350

203n25

Simmias

On Philosophy [title]

>370

268

Phaedo

Zopyrus

>360

195–97

Isocrates

Against the Sophists

390

210

Busiris

390–385

212

Panegyrius

380

215

To Demonicus

374–372

212

Evagoras

374–372

212

To Nicocles

374–372

212

Nicocles

374–372

212

Helen
ca. 370

211

Areopagiticus

355

212–13

Antidosis

354–353

149n73, 213–14

Plato

Apology

≥ 399

165–66, 301

Charmides

>347

223–28, 315n61

Gorgias

>347

301–2

Lysis

>347

246–49

Parmenides

>347

244

Phaedo

>347

192

Phaedrus

>347

231–44

Philebus

>347

245–46

Protagoras

>347

228–31

Republic

>347

250–56, 302

Rival Lovers

4th c.

310–16

Sophist

>347

192

Symposium

>347

249–50

Theaetetus

>347

191–92

CLASSICA L USES OF PHILOSOPH- 333

Xenophon

Anabasis

>350

177–78

Cyropedia

>350

177

Memorabilia

>350

166, 172–82

Oeconomicus

>350

186–89, 300

Poroi

>350

180

Symposium

>350

132n21, 182–86

Herodorus

Fr. 14 BNJ

400–350

198–200

Aristotle

Metaphysics

>323

276–80

Poetics

>323

275

Protrepticus [with POxy.

353

80n36, 302–9

3659?]

Heraclides

On Diseases

360–353

288–90, 305–6

De mos the nes

[ Erotikos] 50.5

350–330

132n21

[ Against Olympiodorus] 49

341/0

150n73

Aeschines

Against Ctesiphon 108, 257
ca. 330

43n20, 132n21

Against Timarchus 41
ca. 345

43n20, 132n21

Alexis

Galateia fr. 37
ca. 350?

297–98

Linus fr. 140

>275

299–300
unnamed play fr. 247

345–320?

298–99

Philemon

Philosophoi fr. 88

>262

174

Temple of Apollo at Delphi

Ai Khanoum inscription

350–261

291–97

PHIL- PREFIXED WORDS

APPEARING IN THIS BOOK

Adjectival form Second ele ment and LSJ entry

Page
aphilosophos
σοφός: “skilled in any craft or art, clever” 238
aphilotimos
τιμή: “worship, esteem, honor”

77, 79
philagathos
ἀγαθός: “good, well- born, gentle”

82
philaglaos
ἀγλαός: “splendid, shining, bright”

87
philaimatos
αἷμα: “blood”

87
philaitios
αἰτία: “responsibility, accusation, cause” 6, 88
philakrêtos
ἄκρατος: “unmixed”

254
philalethês
ἀληθής: “unconcealed, true”

253
philanthrôpos
ἄνθρωπος: “ human”

78
philaretos
ἀρετή: “goodness, excellence”

74
philarguros
ἄργυρος: “white metal, silver”

88
philautos
αὐτός: “self”

80–82
philêdonês
ἡδονή: “enjoyment, plea sure”

81
philêkoos
ἀκοή: “hearing, sound heard”

255–56
philêliastês
ἡλιαία: “supreme court”

91–92
philêretmos
ἐρετμόν: “oar”

84–85
phileris
ἔρις: “strife, quarrel”

80
philetairos
ἑταῖρος: “comrade, companion”

77, 247
philichthus
ἰχθῦς: “fish”

76
philippos
ἵππος: “horse”

74, 76, 248
philochrêmatos
χρήματα: “goods, property, money”

81–82
philodeipnos
δεῖπνον: “meal”

76
philodespotos
δεσπότης: “master, lord”

87
philodik(ai)os
δίκη: “custom, right, justice”

74, 78
philodoxos
δόξα: “expectation, notion, opinion”

255–56
philogeôrgos
γεωργός: “farming, farmer”

254
philoglukus
γλυκύς: “sweet”

254
philogumnast ês
γυμνασία: “exercise”

230, 248, 313
philogunaios
γυνή: “wife, woman”

92
philoinos
οἶνος: “wine”

254
philokalos
καλός: “beautiful”

74, 79, 133–34,

234–37, 250
philokerdês
κέρδος: “gain, profit”

87
philokertomos
κέρτομος: “mocking, delusive”

86

336 PHIL- PR EFI X ED WOR DS

Adjectival form Second ele ment and LSJ entry

Page
philokteanos
κτέανα: “possessions, property”

86
philokubos
κύβος: “cubical die”

91–92
philokuôn
κύων: “dog”

248
philologos
λόγος: “talk”

84
philoloidoros
λοίδορος: “railing, abusive”

78, 92
philomachos
μάχη: “ battle, combat”

87
philomathês
μάθημα: “lesson, learning”

255–56
philo(m)mêdês
μῆδος: “plans, prudence” or “genital” 85
philommeidês
μείδημα: “smile”

85
philomolpos
μολπή: “dance, song”

90
philomômos
μῶμος: “blame”

87
philomuthos
μῦθος: “word, speech”

279
philon(e)ikios
νίκη: “victory”

78, 87
philopaigmôn
παῖγμα: “play, sport”

86–87
philopais
παῖς: “child”

254
philophilos
φίλος: “beloved, dear, friend”

77, 247
philophrôn
φρήν: “mind” (non-standard case)

87
philoploutos
πλοῦτος: “wealth”

88
philopoiêtês
ποίημα: “poetry”

225
philoponos
πόνος: “toil”

74, 235, 254
philopotês
ποτής: “drink”

87, 91–92
philopragmôn
πρᾶγμα: “deed, act”

78
philopseudês
ψευδής: “lying, false”

85–86
philopsogos
ψόγος: “fault, blame”

88
philopsuchos
ψυχή: “soul”

82
philoptolemos
πόλεμος: “war, battle”

86
philortux
ὄρτυξ: “quail”

248
philositos
σῖτος: “grain, bread”

254
philoskômmôn
σκῶμμα: “jest”

92
philosophos
σοφός: “wise (person)”

passim
philostephanos
στέφανος: “crown”

85
philostorgos
στοργή: “affection”

80
philotechnos
τέχνη: “art, skill”

251–52
philotheamôn/- ros θέαμα: “sight, spectacle”

74, 77–78, 254–55
philothutês
θυσία: “sacrifice”

91–92
philotimos
τιμή: “worship, esteem, honor”

75, 81, 87, 254–55
philotoioutos
τοιοῦτος: “a such”

73–82
philoxenos
ξένος: “guest- friend”

86, 91–92
philozôos
ζωός: “living”

81–82
philupnos
ὕπνος: “sleep”

92

(For proper names and conjectured Mycenaean equivalents, see pp. 89–90.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adler, Ada, ed. 1928. Suda Lexicon. Leipzig: Teubner.

Adorno, Francesco, ed. 1989. Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini: Testi e lessico nei papiri di cultura greca e latina: Pt. 1 Autori noti. Vol. 1.1 [A– C]. Firenze: L. S.

Olschki.

Alieva, Olga. 2013. “Protreptic in the Socratics: In Search of a Genre.” In Socratica III: Studies on Socrates, the Socratics, and the Ancient Socratic Lit er a ture, edited by Alessandro Stavru and Fulvia de Luisa, 41–55. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Andrewes, Antony. 1956. The Greek Tyrants. London: Hutchinson.

Annas, Julia. 1985.“Self- Knowledge in Early Plato.” In Platonic Investigations, edited by Dominic J. O’Meara, 121–38. Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer i ca

Press.

Anonymous, ed. 1833. Diogenis Laertii De Vitis Philosophorum. Libri X Cum Indice

Rerum. Ad Optimorum Librorum Fidem Accurate Editi. Leipzig: C. Tauchnitz.

Anonymous, trans. 1758. Diogène Laërce: Les vies des plus illustres philosophes de
l’antiquité: Avec leurs dogmes, leurs systemes, leur morale, et leurs sentences les
plus remarquables. Amsterdam: J. H. Schneider.

Arnott, W. Geoffrey. 1996. Alexis: The Fragments: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.

Asheri, David, Alan B. Lloyd, and Aldo Corcella. 2007. A Commentary on Herodotus

Books I– IV, edited by Oswyn Murray and Alfonso Moreno. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.

Audring, Gert, ed. 1992. Xenophon: Ökonomische Schriften. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Aura Jorro, Francisco, ed. 1993. Diccionario micénico. 2 vols. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientifícas.

Bailey, Dominic. 2008. “Excavating Dissoi Logoi 4.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 35: 249–64.

Barker, Andrew. 2014. Ancient Greek Writers on Their Musical Past: Studies in Greek

Musical Historiography. Pisa: F. Serra.

Bar- Kochva, Bezalel. 2010. The Image of the Jews in Greek Lit er a ture: The Hellenistic Period. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Barnes, Jonathan. 1982. The Presocratic Phi los o phers. Rev. ed. London: Routledge.

Barney, Rachel. 2012. “History and Dialectic.” In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Carlos G. Steel, 69–104. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2016. “Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen.” In Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy, edited by Eric Schliesser, 1–25. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

338 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Baron, Christopher. 2013. Timaeus of Tauromenium and Hellenistic Historiography.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bartlett, Robert, ed. 1996. Xenophon: The Shorter Socratic Writings: “Apology of

Socrates to the Jury,” “Oeconomicus,” and “Symposium.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press.

Bartonek, Antonin. 1999. “Mycenaean Common Nouns in the Disguise of Proper

Names.” In Floreant Studia Mycenaea: Akten des X. Internationalen Mykenolo-
gischen Colloquiums vom 1.–5. Mai 1995 in Salzburg, edited by Sigrid Deger-

Jalkotzy, Stefan Hiller, and Oswald Panagl, 121–29. Vienna: Verlag der Öster-
reichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Beekes, Robert. 2010. Etymological Dictionary of Greek. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill.

Belfiore, Elizabeth. 2012. Socrates’ Daimonic Art: Love for Wisdom in Four Platonic

Dialogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Belloni, Luigi, ed. 2000. Erodoto: Il regno di Creso. Venice: Marsilio.

Benardete, Seth. 1965. “XPH and ΔEI in Plato and Others.” Glotta 43: 285–98.

———. 1969. Herodotean Inquiries. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Bergk, Theodor, ed. 1872. Aristophanis Comoediae. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner.

Bernard, Paul. 1967. “Aï Khanum on the Oxus: A Hellenistic City in Central Asia.”

Proceedings of the British Acad emy 53: 71–95.

Betegh, Gábor. 2009. “Tale, Theology and Teleology in the Phaedo.” In Plato’s Myths, edited by Catalin Partenie, 77–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

—— —. 2013. “Socrate et Archélaos dans les Nuées: Philosophie naturelle et éthique.” In Comédie et philosophie: Socrate et les «Présocratiques» dans les Nuées d’Aristophane, edited by André Laks and Rossella Saetta- Cottone, 87–106. Paris: Éditions Rue
d’Ulm.

— — —. 2014. “Pythagoreans, Orphism and Greek Religion.” In A History of Pythag-
oreanism, edited by Carl Huffman, 149–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

— — —. 2016. “Archelaus on Cosmogony and the Origins of Social Institutions.” Ox-
ford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 51: 1–40.

Billings, Joshua and Christopher Moore, eds. Forthcoming. The Cambridge Compan-
ion to the Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bischoff, Heinrich. 1932. “Der Warner bei Herodot.” Diss., Marburg.

Blaydes, F.H.M., ed. 1881. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 3, Ecclesiazusae. Halle: Orphanotropheum.

Bloomer, W. Martin. 1992. Valerius Maximus and the Rhe toric of the New Nobility.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Bod, Rens. 2013. A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Princi ples and Pat-
terns from Antiquity to the Pre sent. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bodnár, István. 2007. Oenopides of Chius: A Survey of the Modern Lit er a ture
with a Collection of the Ancient Testimonia. Berlin: Max- Planck- Institut für

Wissenschaftsgeschichte.

Boedeker, Deborah. 1974. Aphrodite’s Entry into Greek Epic. Leiden: Brill.

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 339

Boisacq, Émile. 1938. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. 3rd ed. Heidelberg: Winter.

Bollack, Jean, and Heinz Wismann, eds. 1972. Héraclite ou la séparation. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.

Bollansée, Jan. 1998a. “Writers on the Seven Sages (1005–1007).” In Die Fragmente
der griechischen Historiker Continued. Part IV. Biography and Antiquarian Lit er-
a ture. IV A. Biography. Fascicle 1. The Pre- Hellenistic Period, edited by Guido Schepens. Leiden: Brill.

— — —. 1998b. “Andron of Ephesos (1005).” In Die Fragmente der griechischen Histo-
riker Continued. Part IV. Biography and Antiquarian Lit er a ture. IV A. Biography.

Fascicle 1. The Pre- Hellenistic Period, edited by Guido Schepens. Leiden: Brill.

— — —. 1999. “Fact and Fiction, Falsehood and Truth: D. Fehling and Ancient Leg-
endry about the Seven Sages.” Museum Helveticum 56: 65–75.

Bouchard, Elsa. 2015. “Aphrodite Philommêdês in the Theogony.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 135: 8–18.

Bowen, Anthony, ed. 1998. Xenophon: Symposium. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.

Bowra, Cecil. 1961. Greek Lyric Poetry: From Alcman to Simonides. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Boys- Stones, George. 2004. “Phaedo of Elis and Plato on the Soul.” Phronesis 49: 1–23.

Bréal, Michael. 1897. Essai de sémantique (Science des significations). Paris: Hachette.

Bresson, Alain. 1979. Mythe et contradiction: Analyse de la VIIe Olympique de Pin-
dare. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Brisson, Luc, ed. 2014. Écrits attribués à Platon. Paris: Flammarion.

Broadie, Sarah. 2012. “A Science of First Princi ples.” In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Carlos G. Steel, 43–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

— — —, and Christopher Rowe, eds. 2002. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Bromberg, Jacques. 2012. “Academic Disciplines in Aristophanes’ Clouds (200–3).”

Classical Quarterly 62: 81–91.

Brown, Eric. Forthcoming. “Plato’s Socrates and his Conception of Philosophy.” In

The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by Richard Kraut. 2nd ed. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Brown, Malcolm, and James Coulter. 1971. “The Middle Speech of Plato’s Phaedrus.”

Journal of the History of Philosophy 9: 405–23.

Bruell, Christopher. 1987. “On the Original Meaning of Po liti cal Philosophy: An In-
terpretation of Plato’s Lovers.” In The Roots of Po liti cal Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, edited by Thomas L. Pangle, 91–110. Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press.

Brumbaugh, Robert. 1991. “Simon and Socrates.” Ancient Philosophy 11: 151–52.

Buck, Carl. 1949. A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo- European

Languages: A Contribution to the History of Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

340 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Burger, Ronna. 1980. Plato’s “Phaedrus”: A Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing.

Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Burkert, Walter. 1960. “Platon oder Pythagoras? Zum Ursprung des Wortes «Philoso-
phie».” Hermes 88: 159–77.

— — —. 1972. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Translated by Edwin L.

Minar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

— — —. 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Cul-
ture in the Early Archaic Age. Translated by Margaret E. Pinder. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

Burnet, John, ed. 1901. Platonis Opera, Vol. 2, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

— — —. 1930. Early Greek Philosophy. 4th ed. London: Macmillan.

Burnyeat, Myles. 1998. “Dissoi Logoi.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward Craig, 3.106–7. 10 vols. London and New York: Routledge.

— — —. 2007. “Other Lives.” London Review of Books, February 22, 2007, 3–6.

Burstein, Stanley. 1976. Outpost of Hellenism: The Emergence of Heraclea on the Black Sea. Berkeley: University of California Press.

— — —. 1985. The Hellenistic Age from the Battle of Ipsos to the Death of Kleopatra VII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bywater, Ingram. 1876. “Aristotle’s Dialogue ‘On Philosophy.’ ” Journal of Philology

7: 64–88.

— — — , ed. 1877. Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Cahn, Michael. 1989. “Reading Rhe toric Rhetorically: Isocrates and the Marketing of

Insight.” Rhetorica 7: 121–44.

Califf, D. J. 2003. “Metrodorus of Lampsacus and the Prob lem of Allegory: An Ex-
treme Case?” Arethusa 36: 21–36.

Calogero, Guido. 1938. “L’autenticità dell’ Ipparco Platonico.” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 7: 13–27.

Cambiano, Giuseppe. 2012. “The Desire to Know.” In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Alpha:

Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Carlos G. Steel. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1–42.

Cambon, Pierre, ed. 2006. Af ghan i stan, les trésors retrouvés: Collections du Musée National de Kaboul. Musée National des Arts Asiatiques- Guimet. 6 Décembre 2006–

30 Avril 2007. Paris: Editions de la Ré union des Musées Nationaux.

Cameron, Alister. 1938. The Pythagorean Background of the Theory of Recollection.

Menasha, WI: George Banta Publishing Com pany.

Canali De Rossi, Filippo, ed. 2004. Iscrizioni dello estremo oriente greco: Un reper-
torio. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt.

Caponigri, A. Robert, trans. 1969. Diogenes Laertius: Lives of the Phi los o phers. Chicago: Regnery.

Carlini, Antonio. 1962. “Alcuni dialoghi Pseudoplatonici e l’accademia di Arcesilao.”

Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 31: 33–63.

— — — , ed. 1964. Platone: Alcibiade, Alcibiade secondo, Ipparco, Rivali. Turin: Boringhieri.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 340

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 341

Cast, David. 2008. “Simon the Shoemaker and the Cobbler of Apelles.” Source: Notes
in the History of Art 28: 1–4.

Castagnoli, Luca. 2010. Ancient Self- Refutation: The Logic and History of the Self-

Refutation Argument from Democritus to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.

Catana, Leo. 2016. “Doxographical or Philosophical History of Philosophy: On Mi-
chael Frede’s Precepts for Writing the History of Philosophy.” History of Eu ro pean Ideas 42: 170–77.

Cavaignac, Eugène. 1919. “A propos d’un document nouveau sur les Orthagorides.”

Revue des études grecques 32: 62–66.

Centrone, B. 2005. “Die Anterastai und Platons erotische Dialoge.” In Pseudoplatonica: Akten des Kongresses zu den Pseudoplatonica vom 6.–9. Juli 2003 in Bam-
berg, edited by Klaus Döring, Michael Erler, and Stefan Schorn, 37–50. Stuttgart: F. Steiner.

Chantraine, Pierre, ed. 1949. Xénophon: Économique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

— — —. 1968. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue Grecque: Histoire des mots.

Paris: Klincksieck.

Cherniss, Harold. 1951. “Characteristics and Effects of Presocratic Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Ideas 12: 319–45.

Chiesara, Maria Lorenza, ed. 2001. Aristocles of Messene: Testimonia and Fragments.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Christ, Matthew. 1998. The Litigious Athenian. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Chroust, Anton- Hermann. 1947.“Philosophy: Its Essence and Meaning in the Ancient

World.” Philosophical Review 56: 19–58.

— — —. 1964. “Some Reflections on the Origin of the Term ‘Phi los o pher.’ ” New Scho-lasticism 28: 423–34.

— — —. 1973. Observations on Some of Aristotle’s Lost Works. Notre Dame: Univer-
sity of Notre Dame Press.

Cipriano, Palmira. 1990. I composti Greci con ΦΙΛΟΣ. Viterbo: Universita della Tus-cia Instituto di Studia Romanzi.

Clay, Diskin. 1979. “Socrates’ Prayer to Pan.” In Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to B. M. W. Knox, edited by Glen Bowersock, Walter Burkert, and Michael Putnam,

345–53. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Clements, Ashley. 2014. “The Senses in Philosophy and Science: Five Conceptions
from Heraclitus to Plato.” In A Cultural History of the Senses, Vol. 1, Antiquity, edited by Jerry Toner, 115–38. London: Bloomsbury.

Cobet, Carel Gabriel, ed. 1878a. Diogenis Laertii De Clarorum Philosophorum:

Vitis, Dogmatibus et Apophthegmatibus Libri Decem. Paris: Didot.

— — —. 1878b. Collectanea Critica Quibus Continentur Observationes Criticae in

Scriptores Graecos. Leiden: Brill.

Cockle, Helen, ed. 1984. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. 52, London: Egypt Explora-
tion Fund.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 341

9/18/19 1:20 PM

342 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Cole, Thomas. 1991. The Origins of Rhe toric in Ancient Greece. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Collins, James. 2015. Exhortations to Philosophy: The Protreptics of Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Collins, Randall. 2000. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellec-
tual Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Collobert, Catherine. 2002. “Aristotle’s Review of the Presocratics: Is Aristotle

Fi nally a Historian of Philosophy?” Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:

281–95.

Conche, Marcel, ed. 1987. Héraclite: Fragments. 2nd ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Conley, Thomas. 1985. “Dating the So- Called Dissoi Logoi: A Cautionary Note.” Ancient Philosophy 5: 59–65.

Connor, W. Robert. 1993. “The Histor in History.” In Nomodeiktes: Greek Studies in Honour of Martin Ostwald, edited by Ralph M. Rosen and Joseph Farrell, 3–15.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Consigny, Scott Porter. 2001. Gorgias, Sophist and Artist. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

Constantinidou, Soteroula. 2008. Log os into Mythos: The Case of Gorgias’ “Encomium
of Helen.” Athens: Kardamitsa.

Cook, Albert. 1975. “Heraclitus and the Conditions of Utterance.” Arion 2: 431–81.

Cooper, John. 1997. Plato: Complete Works. With the assistance of D. S. Hutchinson.

Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

— — —. 2004. “Plato, Isocrates, and Cicero on the In de pen dence of Oratory from

Philosophy.” In Knowledge, Nature, and the Good, 65–80. Prince ton: Prince ton

University Press.

— — —. 2007. “Socrates and Philosophy as a Way of Life.” In Maieusis: Essays in An-
cient Philosophy in Honour of Myles Burnyeat, edited by Dominic Scott, 20–43.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cornford, Francis. 1912. From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of West-
ern Speculation. London: Arnold.

Coulter, James. 1967. “Phaedrus 179a: The Praise of Isocrates.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 8: 225–36.

Couprie, Dirk. 2011. Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology: From Thales to

Heraclides Ponticus. New York: Springer.

Crisp, Roger, trans. 2014. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Cunliffe, Richard. 1963. A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Curd, Patricia. 1991. “Knowledge and Unity in Heraclitus.” The Monist 74: 531–49.

— — —. 2007. Anaxagoras: Fragments and Testimonia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 342

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 343

— — —. 2015. “Anaxagoras.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 edi-
tion), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https:// plato . stanford . edu / archives / fall2015 / entries

/ anaxagoras.

Darbo- Peschanski, Catherine. 2007a. L’historia: commencements grecs. Paris:

Gallimard.

— — —. 2007b. “The Origin of Greek Historiography.” In A Companion to Greek and

Roman Historiography, edited by John Marincola, 27–38. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Davies, Malcolm. 1989. “Sisyphus and the Invention of Religion (‘Critias’ TrGF 1 (43)

F 19 = B 25 DK).” British Institute of Classical Studies 36: 16–32.

Davis, Michael. 1984. “Philosophy and the Perfect Tense: On the Beginning of Plato’s

Lovers.” Gradu ate Faculty Philosophy Journal 10: 75–97.

De Cesaris, Giulia. 2018. “Iamblichus’ Investiture of Pythagoras.” Méthexis 30: 175–96.

Decleva Caizzi, Fernanda, ed. 1966. Antisthenis Fragmenta. Milan: Varese.

Deichgräber, Karl. 1935. “Original und Nachahmung: Zu Ps. Aristoteles Magna Moralia
und Ps. Hippokrates ΠAPAΓΓEΛIAI.” Hermes 70.1: 106–10.

Delatte, Armand, ed. 1922. La vie de Pythagore de Diogène Laërce. Bruxelles: M.

Lamertin.

De Sélincourt, Aubrey, trans. 1954. Herodotus: The Histories. London: Penguin Books.

Desideri, Paolo. 1991. “Cultura Eracleota: Da Erodoro a Eraclide Pontico, I.” In Pon-
tica I: Recherches sur l’histoire du Pont dans l’antiquité, edited by Bernard Rémy, 7–27. Saint- Étienne: Université Jean Monnet.

De Vogel, Cornelia. 1966. Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism: An Interpretation
of Neglected Evidence on the Phi los o pher Pythagoras. Assen: Van Gorcum.

De Vries, G. J. 1953. “Isocrates’ Reaction to the Phaedrus.” Mnemosyne 6: 39–45.

— — —. 1969. A Commentary on the “Phaedrus” of Plato. Amsterdam: Hakkert.

— — —. 1971. “Isocrates in the Phaedrus: A Reply.” Mnemosyne 24: 387–90.

Diels, Hermann. 1901. Herakleitos von Ephesos. Berlin: Weidmann.

Di Lanzo, Danilo. 2018. “Phaedo of Elis: The Biography, Zopyrus, and His Intellectual Profile.” In Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, edited by Alessandro Stavru and Christopher Moore, 221–34. Leiden: Brill.

Dilcher, Roman. 2013. “How Not to Conceive Heraclitean Harmony.” In Doctrine
and Doxography: Studies on Heraclitus and Pythagoras, edited by David Sider and

Dirk Obbink, 263–80. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Dillon, John. 2003. The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Acad emy, 347–274 B.C. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

— — —. 2012. “Dubia and Spuria.” In The Continuum Companion to Plato, edited by

Gerald A. Press, 49–52. London: Continuum.

— — —. 2014. “Pythagoreanism in the Academic Tradition.” In A History of Pythago-
reanism, edited by Carl Huffman, 250–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dillon, Matthew. 1997. Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece. London: Routledge.

Dinan, Andrew C. 2005. “Fragments in Context: Clement of Alexandria’s Use of Quo-
tations from Heraclitus.” PhD Diss. Catholic University of Amer i ca.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 343

9/18/19 1:20 PM

344 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Dindorf, Wilhelm, ed. 1826. Aristophanis Comoediae. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dittenberger, Wilhelm, ed. 1915. Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum. 4 vols. Leipzig: S. Hirzel.

Dodds, E. R., ed. 1959. Plato: Gorgias. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dorandi, Tiziano, ed. 2013. Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2018. “Socrates in the Ancient Biographical Tradition: From the Anonymous

PHib. 182 to Diogenes Laertius.” In Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, edited by Alessandro Stavru and Christopher Moore, 787–98. Leiden: Brill.

Dorion, Louis- André, ed. 2003. Xénophon: Mémorables. Introduction générale. Livre I.

Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

— — — . 2004. Platon: Charmide, Lysis. Paris: Flammarion.

— — — . 2011. Xénophon: Mémorables. Livre IV. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Dougan, Thomas, and Robert Henry, eds. 1934. M. Tulli Ciceronis Tusculanarum Dis-
putationum Libri Quinque: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary and
a Collation of Numerous MSS. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Douglas, Alan, ed. 1990. Tusculan Disputations II & V: With a Summary of III & IV.

Warminster: Aris & Phillips.

— — —. 1995. “Form and Content in the Tusculan Disputations.” In Cicero the Phi loso pher: Twelve Papers, edited by J. G. F. Powell, 197–218. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Dover, Kenneth, ed. 1968. Aristophanes: Clouds. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

— — —. 1974. Greek Popu lar Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Berkeley: University of California Press.

— — —. 1976. “The Freedom of the Intellectual in Greek Society.” Talanta 7: 24–54.

— — —. 1986. “Ion of Chios: His Place in the History of Greek Lit er a ture.” In Chios: A Conference at the Homereion in Chios, 1984, edited by John Boardman and C. E.

Vaphopoulou- Richardson, 27–37. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Drozdek, Adam. 2005. “Anaxagoras’ Cosmic Mind.” Estudios clásicos 127: 23–35.

— — —. 2011. Athanasia: Afterlife in Greek Philosophy. Zu rich: Olms.

Dumont, Jean- Paul, ed. 1988. Les Présocratiques. Paris: Gallimard.

Dunbabin, Thomas. 1948. The Western Greeks: The History of Sicily and South Italy from the Foundation of the Greek Colonies to 480 B.C. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dunn, Francis. 2005. “On Ancient Medicine and Its Intellectual Context.” In Hip-
pocrates in Context, edited by P. J. Van der Eijk, 49–67. Leiden: Brill.

Dušanić, Slobodan. 1999. “Isocrates, the Chian Intellectuals, and the Po liti cal Context of the Euthydemus.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 119: 1–16.

Ebert, Theodor. 2001. “Why Is Evenus Called a Phi los o pher at Phaedo 61c?” Classical Quarterly 51: 423–34.

Edmonds, John. 1931. Elegy and Iambus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press.

Edmunds, Lowell. 2006. “What Was Socrates Called?” Classical Quarterly 56: 414–25.

Edwards, Michael. 2007. “Alcidamas.” In A Companion to Greek Rhe toric, edited by Ian Worthington, 47–57. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 344

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 345

Emlyn- Jones, C. J. 1980. The Ionians and Hellenism: A Study of the Cultural Achieve-
ment of Early Greek Inhabitants of Asia Minor. London: Routledge.

Engels, Johannes. 2010. Die Sieben Weisen: Leben, Lehren und Legenden. Munich:

Verlag C. H. Beck.

Enos, Richard. 2012. Greek Rhe toric before Aristotle. Rev. ed. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.

Evans, Dale Wilt. 1976. “Plato’s Minos, Hipparchus, Theages and Lovers: A Philosophical Interpretation.” PhD Diss., Pennsylvania State University.

Farnell, Lewis. 1932. The Works of Pindar, Vol. 2, Critical Commentary. London: Macmillan.

Faulkner, Andrew, ed. 2008. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.

Fehling, Detlev. 1985. Die Sieben Weisen und die frühgriechische Chronologie: Eine
traditionsgeschichtliche Studie. Bern: P. Lang.

Fennell, Charles, ed. 1893. Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes. New ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fernandez- Galiano, Manuel, ed. 1956. Pindaro: Olimpicas. 2nd ed. Madrid: C. Bermejo.

Filonik, Jakub. 2013. “Athenian Impiety Trials: A Reappraisal.” Dike 16: 11–96.

Finkelberg, Aryeh. 2017. Heraclitus and Thales’ Conceptual Scheme: A Historical

Study. Leiden: Brill.

Floyd, Edwin. 1990. “The Sources of Greek Ἵστωρ ‘Judge, Witness.’ ” Glotta 68:

157–66.

— — —. 2012. “The Etymology and Early Use of Greek Sophos ‘Wise.’ ” Presented
at the International Linguistic Association, New York City, NY, November 2012.

Ford, Andrew. 1993. “Platonic Insults: Sophistic.” Common Knowledge 2: 33–48.

— — —. 1994. “Protagoras’ Head: Interpreting Philosophic Fragments in Theaetetus.”

American Journal of Philology 115: 199–218.

— — —. 2002. The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Clas-
sical Greece. Prince ton: Prince ton University Press.

— — —. 2008. “The Beginnings of Dialogue: Socratic Discourses and Fourth- Century

Prose.” In The End of Dialogue in Antiquity, edited by Simon Goldhill, 29–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fornara, Charles. 1971. “Evidence for the Date of Herodotus’ Publication.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 91: 25–34.

Fortenbaugh, William. 2014. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary, Vol. 9.2, Sources on Discoveries and Beginnings, Proverbs et al. (Texts 727–741). Leiden: Brill.

Fowler, Robert. 1997. “Polos of Akragas: Testimonia.” Mnemosyne 50: 27–34.

— — —. 2011. “Mythos and Log os.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 131: 45–66.

Fränkel, Hermann. 1938. “A Thought Pattern in Heraclitus.” American Journal of Phi-
lology 59: 309–37.

Frede, Michael. 2000. “The Phi los o pher.” In Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical

Knowledge, edited by Jacques Brunschwig and G.E.R. Lloyd, 3–19. Translated by

Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 345

9/18/19 1:20 PM

346 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

— — —. 2004. “Aristotle’s Account of the Origins of Philosophy.” Rhizai 1: 9–44.

Freeman, Kathleen. 1938. “Portrait of a Millionaire— Callias Son of Hipponicus.”

Greece and Rome 8: 20–35.

Freese, John, trans. 1926. Aristotle: Rhe toric. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Friedländer, Paul. 1964. Plato, 2: The Dialogues, First Period. Translated by Hans Mey-erhoff. New York: Pantheon Books.

Friedrich, Paul. 1982. The Meaning of Aphrodite. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Frisk, Hjalmar. 1954. Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg: Winter.

Fronterotta, Francesco. 2013. Eraclito: Frammenti. Milan: BUR Classici greci e latini.

Fuentes González, Pedro Pablo, and Javier Campos Daroca. 2000. “Hérodore
d’Héraclée.” In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, edited by Richard Goulet,

3.671–75. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Führer, Rudolf. 1997. “Zur handschriftlichen Anordnung der inschriftlichen

7- Weisen- Sprüche.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 118: 153–61.

Gadamer, Hans- Georg. 1982. “On the Natu ral Inclination of Human Beings toward Phi-
losophy.” In Reason in the Age of Science, translated by Frederick G. Lawrence,

139–50. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gagarin, Michael. 1986. Early Greek Law. Berkeley, CA: University of California

Press.

Gauthier, René Antoine, and Jean Yves Jolif, eds. 1959. Aristote: L’Éthique à Nico-maque: Introduction, traduction et commentaire. Louvain: Publications Universi-
taires de Louvain.

Gemin, Marco. 2017. “L’influenza di Anassagora sull’oratoria di Pericle.” Rhetorica

35: 123–36.

Gentili, Bruno, ed. 2013. Pindaro: Le olimpiche. Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Gera, Deborah Levine. 1997. Warrior Women: The Anonymous “Tractatus de Muli-
eribus.” Leiden: Brill.

— — —. 2000. “Two Thought Experiments in the Dissoi Logoi.” American Journal of Philology 121: 21–45.

Gernet, Louis, and André Boulanger. 1970. Le génie grec dans la religion. 2nd ed. Paris: La Re nais sance du Livre.

Gerson, Lloyd. 2005. Aristotle and Other Platonists. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

— — —. 2009. Ancient Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Giannattasio Andria, Rosa. 1989. I frammenti delle “Successioni dei filosofi.” Naples: Arte Tipografica.

Gifford, Mark. 2001. “Dramatic Dialectic in Republic Book 1.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20: 35–106.

Gigon, Olof. 1935. “Untersuchungen zu Heraklit.” Diss., Basel.

Gildenhard, Ingo. 2007. Paideia Romana: Cicero’s “Tusculan Disputations.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary 30. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Philological Society.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 346

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 347

Gildersleeve, Basil L., ed. 1885. Pindar: Olympian and Pythian Odes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gill, Mary Louise. 2012. Philosophos: Plato’s Missing Dialogue. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gilula, Dwora. 1983. “Four Deadly Sins? (Arist. Wasps 74–84).” Classical Quarterly 33: 358–62.

Godlovitch, Stan. 2000. “What Philosophy Might Be About: Some Socio- Philosophical

Speculations.” Inquiry 43: 3–19.

Goggin, Maureen, and Elenore Long. 1993. “A Tincture of Philosophy, a Tincture
of Hope: The Portrayal of Isocrates in Plato’s Phaedrus.” Rhe toric Review 11: 301–24.

Gomme, Arnold. 1945. A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, Vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Book 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Goodell, Thomas. 1914. “ΧΡΗ and ΔΕΙ.” Classical Quarterly 8: 91–102.

Gostoli, Antonietta, ed. 2007. Omero: Margite. Pisa: F. Serra.

Gottschalk, H. B. 1980. Heraclides of Pontus. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Goulet- Cazé, Marie- Odile. 1996. “Religion and the Early Cynics.” In The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy, edited by Robert Bracht Branham and

Marie- Odile Goulet- Cazé, 47–80. Berkeley: University of California Press.

— — —. 1997. “Les titres des oeuvres d’Eschine chez Diogène Laërce.” In Titres et
articulations du texte dans les oeuvres antiques: Actes du Colloque International
de Chantilly, 13–15 décembre 1994. Collection des études Augustiniennes série an-
tiquité, edited by J.- C. Fredouille, M.- O. Goulet- Cazé, P. Hoffmann, P. Petitmengin,
and S. Deléani, 167–90. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes.

Graham, Daniel. 1997. “Heraclitus’ Criticism of Ionian Philosophy.” Oxford Studies
in Ancient Philosophy 15: 1–50.

— — —. 2006. Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy.

Prince ton: Prince ton University Press.

— — —. 2008. “Socrates on Samos.” Classical Quarterly 58: 308–13.

— — — . 2010. The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and

Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.

Granger, Herbert. 2004. “Heraclitus’ Quarrel with Polymathy and Historiê.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 134: 235–61.

— — —. 2007. “The Theologian Pherecydes of Syros and the Early Days of Natu ral

Philosophy.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 103: 135–63.

Gray, Vivienne. 1992. “Xenophon’s Symposion: The Display of Wisdom.” Hermes 120: 58–75.

Griffin, Audrey. 1982. Sikyon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Griswold, Charles. 1986. Self- Knowledge in Plato’s “Phaedrus.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Grote, George. 1867. Plato, and the Other Companions of Sokrates. 3 vols. London: John Murray.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 347

9/18/19 1:20 PM

348 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Guarducci, Margherita. 1974. Epigrafia greca. Vol. 3. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato.

— — —. 1987. L’epigrafia greca dalle origini al tardo impero. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato.

Guthrie, W. K. C. 1952. Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement.

London: Methuen.

— — —. 1957. “Aristotle as a Historian of Philosophy: Some Preliminaries.” Journal
of Hellenic Studies 77: 35–41.

— — —. 1962. A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 1, The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 1971. A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 3, The Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 1978. A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 5, The Later Plato and the Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hackforth, Reginald, ed. 1945. Plato’s Examination of Plea sure: A Translation of the

“Philebus.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hadot, Pierre. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Translated by Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Halliwell, Stephen, trans. 1997a. Aristophanes: Birds, Lysistrata, Assembly- Women,

Wealth. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

— — —. 1997b. “Philosophical Rhe toric or Rhetorical Philosophy? The Strange Case
of Isocrates.” In The Rhe toric Canon, edited by Brenda Deen Schildgen, 107–25.

Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.

Hammond, N. G. L. 1956. “The Family of Orthagoras.” Classical Quarterly 6: 45–43.

Hasluck, Frederick. 1907. “Inscriptions from the Cyzicus District, 1906.” Journal of

Hellenic Studies 27: 61–67.

Havelock, Eric. 1963. Preface to Plato. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

— — —. 1983. “The Linguistic Turn of the Presocratics.” In Language and Thought in

Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Kevin Robb, 7–82. La Salle, IL: Hegeler Institute.

Hawes, Greta. 2014. Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Heberlein, Friedrich. 1980. Pluthygieia: Zur Gegenwelt bei Aristophanes. Frankfurt: Haag und Herchen.

Heidel, W. H. 1896. “Pseudo- Platonica.” PhD Diss., University of Chicago.

— — —. 1940. “The Pythagoreans and Greek Mathe matics.” American Journal of Phi-
lology 61: 1–33.

Henrichs, Albert. 1967. “Zwie Fragmente über die Erziehung (Antisthenes).” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 1: 45–53.

Hense, Otto. 1907. “Die Kyzikener Spruchsammlung.” Berliner Philologische Wochen-
schrift 24: 765–68.

Hershbell, Jackson P. 1988. “Plutarch’s Portrait of Socrates.” Illinois Classical Studies 13: 365–81.

Hicks, R. D., trans. 1925. Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 348

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 349

Hiebert, Fredrik, and Pierre Cambon, eds. 2008. Af ghan i stan: Hidden Trea sures from the National Museum, Kabul. Washington, DC: National Geographic.

Higgins, William. 1977. Xenophon the Athenian: The Prob lem of the Individual and
the Society of the Polis. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Hine, Harry. 1980. “Seneca and Anaxagoras on Snow.” Hermes 108: 503.

Hock, Ronald. 1976. “Simon the Shoemaker as an Ideal Cynic.” Greek, Roman, and

Byzantine Studies 17: 41–53.

Hoffman, David. 2006. “Structural Log os in Heraclitus and the Sophists.” Advances
in the History of Rhe toric 9: 1–32.

Hölscher, Uvo. 1993. “Paradox, Simile, and Gnomic Utterance in Heraclitus.” In The

Pre- Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A. P. D. Mourelatos, 229–

38. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press.

Holt, Frank. 1999. Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bactria. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Hooker, James. 1987. “Homeric φίλος.” Glotta 65: 44–65.

Horky, Phillip Sidney. 2009. “Persian Cosmos and Greek Philosophy: Plato’s Associ-
ates and the Zoroastrian Magoi.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 37: 47–103.

— — —. 2013. Plato and Pythagoreanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press

— — —. 2016. “Empedocles Demo craticus: Hellenistic Biography at the Intersection of Philosophy and Politics.” In Bios Philosophos: Philosophy in Ancient Greek Biography, edited by Mauro Bonazzi and Stefan Schorn, 37–71. Leuven: Brepols.

How, W. W., and J. Wells. 1912. A Commentary on Herodotus. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Howland, Jacob. 2004. “Plato’s Reply to Lysias: Republic 1 and 2 and Against Eratos-thenes.” American Journal of Philology 125: 179–208.

Howland, R. L. 1937. “The Attack on Isocrates in the Phaedrus.” Classical Quarterly 31: 151–59.

Huber, Joachim. 1974. Zur Erklärung und Deutung vom Aristophanes’ “Ekklesiazu-
sen.” Heidelberg: Huber.

Hudson, John, ed. 1720. Flavii Josephi Quae Reperiri Potuerunt Opera Omnia Graece
et Latine. 2 vols. Oxford: E Theatro Sheldoniano.

Huffman, Carl. 2008. “Heraclitus’ Critique of Pythagoras’ Enquiry in Fragment 129.”

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 35: 19–47.

— — —. 2014. “The Peripatetics on the Pythagoreans.” In A History of Pythagorean-
ism, edited by Carl Huffman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 274–95.

Hülsz Piccone, Enrique. 2013. “Heraclitus on Log os: Language, Rationality, and the

Real.” In Doctrine and Doxography: Studies on Heraclitus and Pythagoras, edited
by David Sider and Dirk Obbink. Berlin: De Gruyter, 281–301.

— — —. 2014. Review of Eraclito: Frammenti by Francesco Fronterotta. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2014.07.35. https:// www . bmcreview . org / 2014 / 07 / 20140735 . html.

Hunt, A. S. 1911. Cata logue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands

Library, Manchester, Vol. 1, Literary Texts. Manchester: University of Manchester Press.

Huß, Bernhard. 1999. Xenophons “Symposion”: Ein Kommentar. Stuttgart: Teubner.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 349

9/18/19 1:20 PM

350 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Hussey, Edward. 1982. “Epistemology and Meaning in Heraclitus.” In Language and

Log os: Studies in Ancient Philosophy Presented to G. E. L. Owen, edited by Mal-
colm Schofield and Martha Nussbaum, 33–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

— — —. 2012. “Aristotle on Earlier Natu ral Science.” In The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle, edited by Christopher Shields, 17–45. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hutchinson, D. S. Introduction to Rival Lovers. In Plato: Complete Works, edited by John Cooper, 618–19. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Hutchinson, D. S., and Monte Ransome Johnson. 2018. “Protreptic and Apotreptic: Ar-
istotle’s Dialogue Protrepticus.” In When Wisdom Calls: Philosophical Protreptic in Antiquity, edited by Olga Alieva, Annemaré Kotzé, and Sophie Van der Meeren,

111–54. Turnhout: Brepols.

— — — , eds. Forthcoming. Aristotle: Protrepticus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huxley, George. 1965. “Ion of Chios.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 6:

29–46.

— — —. 1968. “Glaukos of Rhegion.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 9: 47–54.

Ilievski, Petar H. 1983. “Some Structural Peculiarities of Mycenaean- Greek Personal

Names.” In Res Mycenaeae: Akten des VII. Internationalen Mykenologischen Col-
loquiums vom 6.–10. April 1981 in Nürnberg, edited by Alfred Heubeck and Günter

Neumann, 202–15. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Institut Fernand- Courby, ed. 1971. Nouveau Choix D’inscriptions Grecques. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Intrieri, Maria. 2013. “Intessere relazioni. Osservazioni sull’itinerario di philia (I. Dalle origini al V sec. a.C.).” Historiká 3: 213–72.

Inwood, Brad, ed. 2001. The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Translation with an In-
troduction. Rev. ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Isnardi, Margherita. 1954. “Note al dialogo pseudoplatonico Anterastai.” Parola del passato 9: 137–43.

Jackson, Kassandra. 2010. “Father- Daughter Dynamics in the Iliad: The Role of

Aphrodite in Defining Zeus’ Regime.” In Brill’s Companion to Aphrodite, edited
by Amy Smith and Sadie Pickup, 151–63. Leiden: Brill.

Jacoby, Felix. 1947. “Some Remarks on Ion of Chios.” Classical Quarterly 41: 1–17.

Jaeger, Werner. 1947. The Theology of the Early Greek Phi los o phers. Translated by Edward S. Robinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

— — —. 1962. Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development. 2nd ed.

Translated by Richard Robinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Janko, Richard, ed. 1987. Aristotle: Poetics. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Jebb, Richard Claver house. 1893. The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeus. 2nd ed.

London: Macmillan.

Jennings, Victoria, and Andrea Katsaros. 2007. The World of Ion of Chios. Leiden: Brill.

Johnson, R. 1959. “Isocrates’ Methods of Teaching.” American Journal of Philology

80: 25–36.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 350

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 351

Johnstone, Mark. 2014. “On Log os in Heraclitus.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 47: 1–29.

Joly, Robert. 1956. Le thème philosophique des genres de vie dans l’antiquité classique.

Brussels: Palais des Académies.

Jordan, William. 1990. Ancient Concepts of Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Kahn, Charles. 1960. Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology. New York:

Columbia University Press.

— — —. 1979. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

— — —. 2001. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Kassel, Rudolf. 1971. Der Text der aristotelischen Rhetorik. Berlin: De Gruyter.

— — — , ed. 1976. Aristotelis Ars Rhetorica. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Ker, James. 2000. “Solon’s Theôria and the End of the City.” Classical Antiquity 19: 304–29.

Kerferd, G. B. 1950. “The First Greek Sophists.” Classical Review 64: 8–10.

— — —. 1976. “The Image of the Wise Man in Greece in the Period before Plato.” In

Images of Man in Ancient and Medieval Thought, edited by Gérard Verbeke and

Fernand Bossier, 17–28. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

— — —. 1981. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kingsley, Peter. 1990. “The Greek Origin of the Sixth- Century Dating of Zoroaster.”

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 53:

245–65.

— — —. 1995. “Meetings with Magi: Ira nian Themes among the Greeks, from Xanthus
of Lydia to Plato’s Acad emy.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 5: 173–209.

Kirk, Geoffrey. 1961. “Sense and Common- Sense in the Development of Greek Phi-
losophy.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 81: 105–17.

— — —. 1962. Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Kirk, Geoffrey, John Raven, and Malcolm Schofield. 1977. The Presocratic Phi los o-
phers: A Critical History with a Se lection of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kneale, William. 1957. “Aristotle and the Consequentia Mirabilis.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 77: 62–66.

Knudsen, Rachel Ahern. 2012. “Poetic Speakers, Sophistic Words.” American Jour-
nal of Philology 133: 31–60.

Konstan, David. 1985. “The Politics of Aristophanes’ Wasps. ” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 115: 27–46.

— — — , trans. 2006. Aspasius: On Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” 1–4, 7–8. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Konstantakos, Ioannis M. 2005. “Amasis, Bias and the Seven Sages as Riddlers.” Würz-
burger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 29: 11–46.

Kosmin, Paul J. 2014. The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 351

9/18/19 1:20 PM

352 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

— — —. 2018. Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kranz, Walther. 1934. “Vorsokratisches I and II.” Hermes 69: 114–19 and 226–28.

Kucharski, Paul. 1964. “Anaxagore et les idées biologiques de son siècle.” Revue phi-
losophique de la France et de l’Étranger 89: 137–66.

Kurke, Leslie. 2011. Aesopic Conversations: Popu lar Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose. Prince ton: Prince ton University Press.

Laks, André. 2002. “Philosophes présocratiques: Remarques sur la construction d’une
catégorie de l’historigraphie philosophique.” In Qu’est-ce que la philosophie pré-
socratique? , edited by André Laks and Claire Louguet, 17–38. Villeneuve- D’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

— — —. 2018. “Diogenes Laertius and the Pre- Socratics.” In Diogenes Laertius:

Lives of the Eminent Phi los o phers, edited by James Miller, 588–92. New York:

Oxford University Press.

Lallot, Jean. 1971. “Une invective philosophique (Héraclit, fr. 129 et 35 D.- K.).” Revue des études anciennes 73: 15–23.

Lamb, W. R. M., trans. 1927. Plato: Charmides. Alcibiades. Hipparchus. Lovers.

Theages. Minos. Epinomis. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.

Lambert, W. G. 1957. “Ancestors, Authors, and Canonicity.” Journal of Cuneiform Stud-
ies 11: 1–14.

— — —. 1962. “A Cata logue of Texts and Authors.” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 16: 59–77.

Lampert, Laurence. 2010. How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato’s

“Protagoras,” “Charmides,” and “Republic.” Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.

Landau, Oscar. 1958. Mykenisch- griechische Personennamen. Göteborg: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Landfester, Manfred. 1966. Das griechische Nomen “ Philos ” und seine Ableitungen.

Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag.

Lang, Mabel. 1978. Socrates in the Agora. Prince ton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Lassalle, Ferdinand. 1858. Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos.

Leipzig: E. Schirmer.

Lattimore, Richmond. 1939. “The Wise Advisor in Herodotus.” Classical Philology

34: 24–35.

Leahy, Desmond. 1968. “The Dating of the Orthagorid Dynasty.” Historia 17: 1–23.

Leão, Delfim F. 2010a. “Investidura de tales como sophos em Atenas?” Humanitas 62: 23–32.

— — —. 2010b. “The Seven Sages and Plato.” In Il quinto secolo. Studi di filosofia antica in onore di Livio Rossetti, edited by Stefania Giombini and Flavia Marcacci, 403–14. Passignano sul Trasimeno: Aguaplano.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 352

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BI BLIOGR A PH Y 353

Ledger, Gerard R. 1989. Re- Counting Plato: A Computer Analy sis of Plato’s Style. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Lee, H. D. P. 1936. Zeno of Elea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lefebvre, David. 2011. “Avoir un èthos et être philotoioutos. Sur le sens de la notion d’ èthos dans les Éthiques d’Aristote.” In Aristote: Rationalités. Cahiers de l’ERIAC. Série “Rencontres philosophiques,” edited by Annie Hourcade and René

Lefebvre, 155–72. Mont- Saint- Aignan: Publications des Universités de Rouen et
du Havre.

Legrand, Philippe- Ernest, ed. 1932. Hérodote: Histoires. Tome I. Livre I. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Lehnus, Luigi. 1972. “Note stesicoree ( Pap. Oxy. 2506 e 2619).” Studi Classici e Orientali 21: 52–55.

Lenzi, Alan. 2008. “The Uruk List of Kings and Sages and Late Mesopotamian Schol-
arship.” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 8: 137–69.

Lerner, J. D. 2003. “Correcting the Early History of Ay Kanom.” Archaeologische Mit-
teilungen aus Iran (und Turan) 35/36: 373–410.

Lesher, James. 1983. “Heraclitus’ Epistemological Vocabulary.” Hermes 111: 155–70.

— — —. 1994. “The Emergence of Philosophical Interest in Cognition.” Oxford Stud-
ies in Ancient Philosophy 12: 1–34.

— — — . 2001. Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

— — —. 2016. “Verbs for Knowing in Heraclitus’ Rebuke of Hesiod (DK 22B57).” An-
cient Philosophy 36: 1–12.

Levi, Adolfo. 1940. “On ‘Twofold Statements.’ ” American Journal of Philology 61: 292–306.

Levine, David. 2016. Profound Ignorance, Plato’s “Charmides,” and the Saving of Wis-
dom. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Lévy, Isidore. 1926. Recherches sur les sources de la légende de Pythagore. Paris: E.

Leroux.

Linforth, Ivan. 1936. “Diodorus, Herodorus, Orpheus.” In Classical Studies Presented
to Edward Capps on His Seventieth Birthday, 217–22. Prince ton: Prince ton University Press.

Livingstone, Niall. 2001. A Commentary on Isocrates’ “Busiris.” Leiden: Brill.

— — —. 2007. “Writing Politics: Isocrates’ Rhe toric of Philosophy.” Rhetorica 25: 15–34.

Lloyd, G.E.R. 1970. Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle. London: Chatto & Windus.

— — —. 2002. The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece
and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2006. Review of Hippocrates: On Ancient Medicine by Mark J. Schiefsky.

Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80: 365–66.

— — —. 2009. Disciplines in the Making: Cross- Cultural Perspectives on Elites, Learning, and Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 353

9/18/19 1:20 PM

354 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Lobel, Edgar, ed. 1957. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Vol. 24. London: Egypt Exploration Fund.

Lolos, Yannis A. 2011. Land of Sikyon: Archaeology and History of a Greek City- State.

Prince ton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Long, Herbert, ed. 1964. Diogenis Laertii Vitae Philosophorum. Oxford: Clarendon

Press.

Longrigg, James. 1963. “Philosophy and Medicine: Some Early Interactions.” Harvard

Studies in Classical Philology 67: 147–75.

López Cruces, Juan Luis, and Pedro Pablo Fuentes González. 2000. “Isocrate d’Athènes.”

In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, edited by Richard Goulet, 3.891–938. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Louden, Bruce. 2011. “Phaeacians.” The Homer Encyclopedia, edited by Margalit Finkelberg, 2.649–51. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell.

Luz, Menahem. 2014. “The Erlangen Papyrus 4 and Its Socratic Origins.” International

Journal of the Platonic Tradition 8: 161–91.

Lyonnet, Bertille. 2012. “Questions on the Date of the Hellenistic Pottery from Cen-
tral Asia (Ai Khanoum, Marakanda and Koktepe).” Ancient Civilizations from

Scythia to Siberia 18: 143–73.

Macan, Reginald, ed. 1895. Herodotus: The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Books. London: Macmillan.

MacDowell, Douglas, ed. 1971. Aristophanes: Wasps. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

— — — . 1982. Gorgias: Encomium of Helen. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press.

— — —. 1986. The Law in Classical Athens. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Mackenzie, M. M. 1988. “Heraclitus and the Art of Paradox.” Oxford Studies in An-
cient Philosophy 6: 1–37.

Mairs, Rachel. 2014a. “The Found er’s Shrine and the Foundation of Ai Khanoum.”

In Foundation Myths in Ancient Socie ties: Dialogues and Discourses, edited by

Naoíse Mac Sweeney, 103–28. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

— — —. 2014b. The Hellenistic Far East: Archaeology, Language, and Identity in

Greek Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Malingrey, Anne- Marie. 1961. “Philosophia”: Étude d’un groupe de mots dans
la littérature grecque, des Présocratiques au IVe siècle après J.- C. Paris:

Klincksieck.

Mallan, Claude. 2005. “Il était une fois la philosophie.” Archives de philosophie 68: 107–26.

Männlein- Robert, Irmgard. 2005. “Zur literarischen Inszenierung eines Philoso-
phiekonzeptes in den pseudoplatonischen Anterastai.” In Pseudoplatonica:

Akten Des Kongresses Zu Den Pseudoplatonica Vom 6.–9. Juli 2003 in Bamberg,
edited by Klaus Döring, Michael Erler, and Stefan Schron, 119–34. Stuttgart: F.

Steiner.

Mansfeld, Jaap. 1979. “The Chronology of Anaxagoras’ Athenian Period and the Date
of His Trial: Part I: The Length and Dating of the Athenian Period.” Mnemosyne

32: 39–69.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 354

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 355

— — —. 1980. “The Chronology of Anaxagoras’ Athenian Period and the Date of

His Trial: Part II: The Plot against Pericles and His Associates.” Mnemosyne 33:

17–95.

— — —. 1983. “Cratylus 402a– c: Plato or Hippias?” In Atti del Symposium Heraclit-eum 1981, edited by Livio Rossetti, 43–55. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo.

— — —. 1985. “Myth Science Philosophy: A Question of Origins.” In Hypatia: Essays
in Classics, Comparative Lit er a ture, and Philosophy Presented to Hazel E. Barnes
on Her Seventieth Birthday, edited by William M. Calder, Ulrich K. Goldsmith,
and Phyllis B. Kenevan, 45–65. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University

Press.

— — —. 1986. “Aristotle, Plato, and the Preplatonic Doxography and Chronography.”

In Storiografia e dossografia nella filosofia antica, edited by Giuseppe Cambiano, 1–59. Turin: Tirrenia Stampatori.

— — —. 1987. “Theophrastus and the Xenophanes Doxography.” Mnemosyne 40:

286–312.

— — —. 1989. “Fiddling the Books: Heraclitus on Pythagoras (DK 22 B 129).” In

Ionian Philosophy, edited by K. J. Boudouris, 229–34. Athens: International As-
sociation for Greek Philosophy.

Marcovich, Miroslav, ed. 1967. Heraclitus: Greek Text with a Short Commentary. Merida: Los Andes University Press.

— — — , ed. 1999. Diogenis Laertii Vitae Philosophorum. Leipzig: Teubner.

Mariss, Ruth. 2002. Alkidamas: Über diejenigen, die schriftliche Reden schreiben, oder über die Sophisten. Eine Sophistenrede aus dem 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr., einge-leitet und kommentiert. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag.

Martin, Richard. 1993. “The Seven Sages as Performers of Wisdom.” In The Cultures
within Ancient Greek Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration, edited by Carol

Dougherty and Leslie Kurke, 108–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2012. “The Myth before the Myth Began.” In Writing down the Myths, edited
by Joseph F. Nagy, 45–66. Turnhout: Brepols.

Martinez- Seve, Laurianne. 2014. “The Spatial Organ ization of Ai Khanoum, a Greek

City in Af ghan i stan.” American Journal of Archaeology 118: 267–83.

Mazzara, Giuseppe. 1999. Gorgia: La retorica del verosimile. Sankt Augustin: Aca-
demia Verlag.

McAdon, Brad. 2004. “Plato’s Denunciation of Rhe toric in the Phaedrus.” Rhe toric Review 23: 21–39.

McCoy, Marina Berzins. 2009. “Alcidamas, Isocrates, and Plato on Speech, Writing,
and Philosophical Rhe toric.” Ancient Philosophy 29: 45–66.

McDiarmid, J. B. 1953. “Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes.” Harvard Studies in

Classical Philology 61: 85–156.

McKirahan, Richard D., ed. 2010. Philosophy before Socrates: An Introduction with

Texts and Commentary. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

McNeal, Richard, ed. 1986. Herodotus: Book 1. Lanham, MD: University Press of

Amer i ca.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 355

9/18/19 1:20 PM

356 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

McOsker, Michael. 2017. “Anonymous, On Sokrates ( P. Hibeh II 182) (1133).” In Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Continued. Part IV. Biography and Antiquarian Lit er a ture. IV A. Biography. Fascicle 8. Anonymous Biographical Papyri, edited by James H. Brusuelas, Dirk Obbink, and Stefan Schorn. Leiden: Brill.

Megino Rodríguez, Carlos. 2008. “Propuesta de atribución de dos fragmentos del pa-
piro de Viena PVindob. G 26008.” Emerita 76: 87–104.

Meineke, Augustus, ed. 1860. Aristophanis Comoediae. Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz.

Meissner, Torsten, and Olga Tribulato. 2002. “Nominal Composition in Mycenaean

Greek.” Transactions of the Philological Society 100: 289–330.

— — —. 2006. S- Stem Nouns and Adjectives in Greek and Proto- Indo- European: A

Diachronic Study in Word Formation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mejer, Jørgen. 1978. Diogenes Laertius and His Hellenistic Background. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

— — —. 2009. “Heraclides’ Intellectual Context.” In Heraclides of Pontus: Discussion, edited by William W. Fortenbaugh and Elizabeth Pender, 27–40. New Brunswick,

NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Mendel, Gustave. 1909. “Cata logue des monuments grecs, romains et byzantins du

Musée Impérial Ottoman de Brousse.” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 33:

245–435.

Menn, Stephen. 2002. “Plato and the Method of Analy sis.” Phronesis 47: 193–223.

— — —. n.d. “The Aim and the Argument of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.” Accessed May 10, 2019. https:// www . philosophie . hu - berlin . de / de / lehrbereiche / antike / mitarbeiter / menn

/ contents.

Merkelbach, Reinhold, and Josef Stauber, eds. 1998. Steinepigramme aus dem
griechischen Osten. Vol. 3. Leipzig: Teubner.

Merlan, Philip. 1954. “Isocrates, Aristotle and Alexander the Great.” Historia 3: 60–81.

— — —. 1963. “Das Prob lem der Erasten.” In Horizons of a Phi los o pher: Essays in Honor of David Baumgardt, edited by Joseph Frank, 297–313. Leiden: Brill.

Milne, Marjorie Josephine. 1924. “A Study in Alcidamas and His Relation to Con-
temporary Sophistic.” PhD Diss., Bryn Mawr College.

Minar, Edwin. 1942. Early Pythagorean Politics in Practice and Theory. Baltimore: Waverly Press.

Mirhady, David C. 2004. “Alcidamas on the Sophists,” review of Alkidamas by Ruth

Mariss. Classical Review 54: 331–33.

— — — , and Yun Lee Too, trans. 2000. Isocrates I. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Monserrat Molas, Josep. 1999. “Rivals i amants: rivals d’amor. Comentari al platònic

Anterastai.” Anuari de la Societat Catalana de Filosofia 11: 19–55.

Montiglio, Silvia. 2000. “Wandering Phi los o phers in Classical Greece.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 120: 86–105.

Moore, Christopher. 2008. “Socratic Persuasion.” PhD Diss., University of Minnesota.

— — —. 2012. “Socrates and Clitophon in the Platonic Clitophon.” Ancient Philosophy 32: 257–78.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 356

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 357

— — —. 2013a. “Deception and Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus.” Ancient Philosophy 33: 97–110.

— — —. 2013b. “Socrates among the Mythographers,” review of Myth and Philosophy
in Plato’s “Phaedrus” by Daniel Warner. Polis 30: 106–17.

— — —. 2014a. “Arguing for the Immortality of the Soul in the Palinode of Plato’s Phaedrus.” Philosophy and Rhe toric 47: 179–208.

— — —. 2014b. “How to ‘Know Thyself’ in Plato’s Phaedrus.” Apeiron 47: 390–418.

— — —. 2014c. “Socrates Psychagogos ( Birds 1555, Phaedrus 261a7).” In Socratica III, edited by Livio Rossetti, Alessandro Stavru, and Fulvia de Luisa, 41–55. Sankt Augustin: Akademie Verlag.

— — —. 2015a. “Promêtheia (Forethought) until Plato.” American Journal of Philology 136: 381–420.

— — —. 2015b. Socrates and Self- Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2016. “Spartan Philosophy and Sage Wisdom in Plato’s Protagoras.” Epochê 30: 281–305.

— — —. 2017. “Heracles the Phi los o pher (Herodorus Fr. 14).” Classical Quarterly

67: 1–22.

— — —. 2018a. “Heraclitus and ‘Knowing Yourself.’ ” Ancient Philosophy 38: 1–21.

— — —. 2018b. “Xenophon on ‘Philosophy’ and Socrates.” In Xenophon and Plato:

Comparative Studies, edited by Gabriel Danzig, David M. Johnson, and Donald Mor-
rison, 128–64. Leiden: Brill.

— — —. 2018c. “Xenophon’s Socratic Education in Memorabilia Book 4.” In Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, eds. Alessandro Stavru and Christopher Moore, 500–520.

Leiden: Brill.

— — —, and Christopher C. Raymond, eds. 2019. Plato: Charmides. Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Analysis. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Moran, Richard. 2018. The Exchange of Words: Speech, Testimony, and Intersubjec-
tivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morgan, Kathryn A. 2000. Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2004. “The Education of Athens: Politics and Rhe toric in Isocrates and Plato.”

In Isocrates and Civic Education, edited by Takis Poulakos and David Depew, 125–

54. Austin: University of Texas Press.

— — —. 2015. Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy in the Fifth

Century B.C. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morgan, Llewelyn. 2015. “An Archaeological Whodunnit.” Lugubelinus (blog). September 21, 2015. https:// llewelynmorgan . wordpress . com / 2015 / 09 / 21 / an - archaeological

- whodunnit.

Morpurgo Davies, Anna. 2000. “Greek Personal Names and Linguistic Continuity.”

Proceedings of the British Acad emy 104: 15–39.

Morrison, J. S. 1956. “Pythagoras of Samos.” Classical Quarterly 6: 135–56.

— — —. 1958. “The Origins of Plato’s Philosopher- Statesman.” Classical Quarterly

8: 198–218.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 357

9/18/19 1:20 PM

358 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Mosshammer, Alden. 1976. “The Epoch of the Seven Sages.” California Studies in

Classical Antiquity 9: 165–80.

Most, Glenn W. 1992. “Some New Fragments of Aristotle’s Protrepticus?” In Studi su codici e papiri filosofici. Platone, Aristotele, Ierocle. Studi e testi per il corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini 6, 189–216. Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore.

— — —. 1999. “The Poetics of Early Greek Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Compan-
ion to Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Anthony A. Long, 332–62. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2007. “Ἄλλος δ᾽ ἐξ ἄλλου δέξεται: Presocratic Philosophy and Traditional

Greek Epic.” In Literatur und Religion: Wege zu einer mythisch- rituellen Poetik
bei den Griechen, edited by Anton Bierl, Rebecca Lämmle, and Katharina Wes-
selmann, 271–302. Berlin: De Gruyter.

— — —. 2018. “Diogenes Laertius and Nietz sche.” In Diogenes Laertius: Lives of the

Eminent Phi los o phers, edited by James Miller, 619–22. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mourelatos, Alexander. 1965. “The Real, Appearances and Human Error in Early Greek

Philosophy.” Review of Metaphysics 19: 346–65.

— — —. 2008. The Route of Parmenides. Rev. ed. Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides.

Muir, John, ed. 2001. Alcidamas: The Works and Fragments. London: Bristol Classi-
cal Press.

Müller, Carl Werner. 1965. Gleiches zu Gleichem: Ein Prinzip frühgriechischen Den-
kens. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Munn, Mark. 2000. The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Murphy, David. 2013. “Isocrates and the Dialogue.” Classical World 106: 311–53.

Murray, Penelope. 1981. “Poetic Inspiration in Early Greece.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 101: 87–100.

Naddaf, Gerard. 2009. “Allegory and the Origins of Philosophy.” In Log os and Muthos: Philosophical Essays in Greek Lit er a ture, edited by William Wians, 99–131. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Nails, Debra. 2002. The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socrat-
ics. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Narain, A. K. 1974. “On the Greek Epigraphs from Ai Khanoum.” Studies in Indian

Epigraphy 1: 97–103.

— — —. 1987. “On Some Greek Inscription from Af ghan i stan.” Annali dell’istituto uni-versitario orientale di Napoli 47: 269–92.

Natali, Carlo. 2013. Aristotle: His Life and School. Edited by D. S. Hutchinson. Princeton: Prince ton University Press.

Nauck, August, ed. 1884. Iamblichi De Vita Pythagorica Liber. St. Petersburg: Eggers

& S. et I. Glasunof.

Nehamas, Alexander. 1990. “Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato’s Demarca-
tion of Philosophy from Sophistry.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 7: 3–16.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 358

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 359

Nestle, Wilhelm. 1942. Von Mythos zum Log os . Die Selbstentfaltung des griechischen Denkens von Homer bis auf die Sophistik und Sokrates. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Kröner.

Nightingale, Andrea. 1995. Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philoso-
phy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2004. Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2007. “The Phi los o phers in Archaic Greek Culture.” In The Cambridge Com-
panion to Archaic Greece, edited by H. A. Shapiro, 169–98. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Norlin, George, trans. 1928. Isocrates. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Noussia- Fantuzzi, Maria. 2010. Solon the Athenian: The Poetic Fragments. Leiden: Brill.

Nussbaum, Martha. 1972. “ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I & II.” Phronesis 17: 1–16, 153–70.

Nutting, H. C., trans. 1909. Cicero: Tusculan Disputations I, II, V. Boston: Allyn and Bacon Press.

O’Brien, Denis. 1968. “The Relation of Anaxagoras and Empedocles.” Journal of Hel-
lenic Studies 88: 93–113.

Oikonomides, A. N. 1980. “The Lost Delphic Inscription with the Commandments of
the Seven and P. Univ. Athen. 2782.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 37: 179–83.

— — —. 1987. “Rec ords of The Commandments of the Seven Wise Men in the 3rd century B.C.” Classical Bulletin 63: 67–76.

Ollier, François, ed. 1961. Xénophon: Banquet. Apologie de Socrate. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Osborne, Catherine. 2004. Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Osthoff, Hermann. 1878. Das Verbum in der Nominalcomposition im deutschen,
griechischen, slavischen und romanischen. Jena: H. Costenoble.

O’ Sullivan, Lara. 2008. “Athens, Intellectuals, and Demetrius of Phalerum’s Socrates.”

Transactions of the American Philological Association 138: 393–410.

O’ Sullivan, Neil. 1995. “Pericles and Protagoras.” Greece and Rome 42: 15–23.

— — —. 2005. “Alcidamas.” In Classical Rhe torics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies
and Sources, edited by Michelle Ballif and Michael G. Moran, 14–18. Westport,

CT: Praeger.

— — —. 2008. “The Authenticity of [Alcidamas] Odysseus: Two New Linguistic Con-
siderations.” Classical Quarterly 58: 638–47.

Page, Carl. 1990. “The Unjust Treatment of Polemarchus.” History of Philosophy Quar-
terly 7: 243–67.

Pageau St- Hilaire, Antoine. 2014. “La double signification de la philosophie politique
socratique dans les Amoureux Rivaux.” Ithaque 14: 1–24.

Paley, F. A., trans. 1868. The Odes of Pindar. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 359

9/18/19 1:20 PM

360 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Palmer, John. 1998. “Xenophanes’ Ouranian God in the Fourth Century.” Oxford Stud-
ies in Ancient Philosophy 16: 1–32.

— — —. 2000. “Aristotle on the Ancient Theologians.” Apeiron 33: 181–205.

— — —. 2012. Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Pape, Wilhelm, and Gustav Benseler. 1863–70. Wörterbuch der griechischen Eigen-
namen. Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg.

Parker, Victor. 1992. “The Dates of the Orthagorids of Sicyon.” Tyche 7: 165–75.

— — —. 1994. “Some Aspects of the Foreign and Domestic Policy of Cleisthenes of

Sicyon.” Hermes 122: 404–24.

Patzer, Andreas. 1986. Der Sophist Hippias als Philosophiehistoriker. Freiburg: K. Alber.

Pearson, Lionel. 1952. “Prophasis and Aitia.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association: 205–23.

Pendrick, Gerard, ed. 2002. Antiphon: The Fragments. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.

Peterson, Sandra. 2011. Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 2018. “Notes on Lovers.” In Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, edited by Alessandro Stavru and Christopher Moore, 412–31. Leiden: Brill.

— — —. 2019. “Plato’s Reception of Socrates: One Aspect.” In Brill Companion to the

Reception of Socrates, edited by Christopher Moore, 98–123. Leiden: Brill.

— — —. Forthcoming. “Philosophia e Socrate negli scritti di Senofonte.” Magazzino
di filosofia n. 34.

Pfeiffer, Rudolph. 1968. History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Philip, James. 1966. Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Planeaux, Christopher. 1999. “Socrates, Alcibiades, and Plato’s τὰ Ποτειδεατικά. Does
the Charmides Have an Historical Setting?” Mnemosyne 52: 72–77.

Pomeroy, Sarah B., ed. 1994. Xenophon: Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Com-
mentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Posch, Walter. 1995. Baktrien zwischen Griechen und Kuschan: Untersuchungen
zu kulturellen und historischen Problemen einer Übergangsphase. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Pouilloux, Jean, and François Salviat. 1983. “Lichas, Lacédémonien, archonte à Tha-
sos, et le livre VIII de Thucydide.” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des

Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres 127: 376–403.

— — —. 1985. “Thucydide après l’exil et la composition de son histoire.” Revue de phi-lologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes 59: 13–20.

Poulakos, Takos. 2001. “Isocrates’ Use of Doxa.” Philosophy and Rhe toric 34: 61–78.

Powell, C. Thomas. 1987. “Why Aristotle Has No Philosophy of History.” History of

Philosophy Quarterly 4: 343–57.

Powell, John. 1938. A Lexicon to Herodotus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 360

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 361

Pradeau, Jean- François, ed. 2002. Héraclite: Fragments. Paris: Flammarion.

Prince, Susan, ed. 2014. Antisthenes of Athens: Texts, Translations, and Commentary.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Pritzl, Kurt. 1985. “On the Way to Wisdom in Heraclitus.” Phoenix 39: 303–16.

Proust, Marcel. 1927. Le temps retrouvé. Paris: Gallimard.

Rabe, Hugo, ed. 1896. Anonymi et Stephani in Artem Rhetoricam Commentaria. Com-
mentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. Vol. 21. Part 2. Berlin: G. Reimer.

Ramage, Edwin. 1961. “An Early Trace of Socratic Dialogue.” American Journal of

Philology 82: 418–24.

Ramnoux, Clémence. 1959. Héraclite, ou l’homme entre les choses et les mots. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Rankin, H. D. 1983. Sophists, Socratics, and Cynics. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books.

Rawlinson, George, trans. 1862. The History of Herodotus. London: J. Murray.

Reale, Giovanni. 1987. A History of Ancient Philosophy: From the Origins to Socrates.

Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Redard, Georges. 1953. Recherches sur chrê , chrêsthai. Paris: H. Champion.

Redfield, James. 1985. “Herodotus the Tourist.” Classical Philology 80: 97–118.

Reich, Klaus and Otto Apelt, eds. 1967. Diogenes Laertius: Leben und Meinungen
berühmter Philosophen: Buch 1–10. Hamburg: F. Meiner.

Reiner, Erica. 1961. “The Etiological Myth of the ‘Seven Sages.’ ” Orientalia 30: 1–11.

Reinhardt, Karl. 1942. “Heraklits Lehre vom Feuer.” Hermes 77: 1–27.

Rendich, Franco. 2010. Dizionario etimologico comparato delle lingue classiche in-
doeuropee. Rome: Palombi.

Rettig, G. F. 1879. “Xenophons Symposion als Kunstwerk griechischen Geistes.” Philologus 38: 269–321.

Richardson, Nicholas J. 1975. “Homeric Professors in the Age of the Sophists.” Pro-
ceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 201: 65–81.

Riedweg, Christoph. 2004. “Zum Ursprung des Wortes ‘Philosophie’ oder Pythago-
ras von Samos als Wortschöpfer.” In Antike Literatur in neuer Deutung, edited by

Anton Bierl, Arbogast Schmitt, Andreas Willi, and Joachim Latacz, 147–82. Mu-
nich: Saur.

— — —. 2005. Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence. Translated by Steven Rendall. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Robb, Kevin. 1991. “The Witness in Heraclitus and in Early Greek Law.” The Monist

74: 638–76.

Robert, Louis. 1968. “De Delphes a l’Oxus: Inscriptions grecques nouvelles de la

Bactriane.” Comptes rendus de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 112:

416–57.

Robinson, T. M., ed. 1979. Contrasting Arguments: An Edition of the “Dissoi Logoi.”

Salem, NH: Ayer.

— — — , ed. 1987. Heraclitus: Fragments. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Rogers, Benjamin, trans. 1906. The Birds of Aristophanes. London: George Bell & Sons.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 361

9/18/19 1:20 PM

362 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Rohatyn, Dennis. 1977. “The Protreptic Argument.” International Logic Review 8:

192–204.

Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich. 1904. Die Sieben- und Neunzahl im Kultus und Mythus
der Griechen. Leipzig: Teubner.

Rosenthal, Franz. 1937. “Arabische Nachrichten über Zenon den Eleaten.” Orientalia

6: 21–67.

Roskam, Geert. 2011. “Plutarch against Epicurus on Affection for Offspring.” In Vir-
tues for the People: Aspects of Plutarchan Ethics, edited by Geert Roskam and Luc Van der Stockt, 175–204. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Rossetti, Livio. 1980. “Ricerche sui ‘dialoghi socratici’ di Fedone e di Euclide.” Hermes 108: 183–200.

— — —. 2004. “The Sokratikoi Logoi as a Literary Barrier: Toward the Identification of a Standard Socrates through Them.” In Socrates: 2400 Years since His Death (399

B.C.–2001 A.D.), edited by Vassilis Karasmanis, 81–94. Athens: Eu ro pean Cultural Centre of Delphi.

— — —. 2011. “L’ Euthydème de Xénophon.” In Le dialogue socratique, 55–99. Paris: Encre Marine/Les Belles Lettres.

— — —. 2013. “When Pythagoras Was Still Living in Samos (Heraclitus, Frg. 129).”

In On Pythagoreanism, edited by Gabriele Cornelli, Richard D. McKirahan, and

Constantinos Macris, 63–76. Berlin: De Gruyter.

— — —. 2015a. La filosofia non nasce con talete e nemmeno con Socrate. Bologna:

Diogene Multimedia.

— — —. 2015b. “Phaedo’s Zopyrus (and Socrates’ Confidences).” In From the Socratics to the Socratic Schools: Classical Ethics, Metaphysics, and Epistemology, ed-
ited by Ugo Zilioli, 82–98. New York: Taylor & Francis.

— — —. 2018. “Phi los o pher Socrates? Philosophy at the Time of Socrates and the Re-
formed Philosophia of Plato.” In Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, edited by Alessandro Stavru and Christopher Moore, 268–98. Leiden: Brill.

Rothwell, Kenneth. 1990. Politics and Persuasion in Aristophanes’ “Ecclesiazusae.”

Leiden: Brill.

Rougemont, Georges, ed. 2012. Inscriptions grecques d’Iran et d’Asie Central. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.

— — —, and Denis Rousset, eds. 1971. Nouveau choix d’inscriptions grecques.

Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Rowe, Christopher, ed. 1986. Plato: Phaedrus. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.

Rowett, Catherine. 2014. “The Pythagorean Society and Politics.” In A History of

Pythagoreanism, edited by Carl Huffman, 112–30. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.

Rubincam, Catherine. 1998. “Did Diodorus Siculus Take Over Cross- References from

His Sources?” American Journal of Philology 119: 67–87.

Rusten, J. S. 1985. “Two Lives or Three: Pericles on the Athenian Character (Thucydides

2.40.1–2).” Classical Quarterly 35: 14–19.

Ryan, Paul. 2012. Plato’s “Phaedrus”: A Commentary for Greek Readers. Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 362

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BI BLIOGR A PH Y 363

Sacks, Kenneth. 1990. Diodorus Siculus and the First Century. Prince ton: Prince ton University Press.

Sage, Paula Winsor. 1985. “Solon, Croesus and the Theme of the Ideal Life.” PhD Diss.,

Johns Hopkins University.

Sandbach, F. H. 1958. “Ion of Chios on Pythagoras.” Proceedings of the Cambridge

Philological Society 5: 36.

Santoni, Anna. 1989. Senofonte: Memorabili. Milan: Rizzoli.

Sassi, Maria Michela. 2018. The Beginnings of Philosophy in Greece. Translated by Michele Asuni. Prince ton: Prince ton University Press.

Sauge, André. 2014. “Le poète contre le philosophe: primauté de la vie sur l’être. Sopho-
cle: Antigone, Choeur, 332 suivants; Heidegger: Einführung in die Metaphysik. . . .”

Syntaktika 47: 1–32.

Schepens, Guido. 2014. “History and Historia: Inquiry in the Greek Historians.” In A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, edited by John Marincola, 39–55.

Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Schepens, Guido, and Els Theys. 1998. “Xanthos of Lydia (1001).” In Die Fragmente

Der Griechischen Historiker Continued Part IV. Biography and Antiquarian Lit-
er a ture. IV A Biography. Fascicle 1. The Pre- Hellenistic Period, edited by Guido Schepens. Leiden: Brill.

Schiappa, Edward. 1999. The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece.

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

— — —. 2005. “Dissoi Logoi.” In Classical Rhe torics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and Sources, edited by Michelle Ballif and Michael G. Moran, 146–48. West-
port, CT: Praeger.

Schibli, Hermann. 1990. Pherekydes of Syros. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Schiefsky, Mark. 2006. Hippocrates: On Ancient Medicine. Leiden: Brill.

Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1836. Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato. Translated by William Dobson. Cambridge: J. & J. J. Deighton.

Schofield, Malcolm. 1975. “Doxographica Anaxagorea.” Hermes 103: 1–24.

— — —. 1980. An Essay on Anaxagoras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— — —. 1991. “Heraclitus’ Theory of Soul and Its Antecedents.” In Psy chol ogy, edited by Stephen Everson, 13–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Scholz, Peter. 2003. “Philosophizing before Plato: On the Social and Po liti cal Condi-
tions of the Composition of the Dissoi Logoi.” In Ideal and Culture of Knowledge in Plato: Akten der 4. Tagung der Karl- und- Gertrud- Abel- Stiftung vom 1.–3. Sep-tember 2000 in Frankfurt, edited by Wolfgang Detel, Alexander Becker, and Peter

Scholz, 201–30. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

— — —, and Alexander Becker, eds. 2004. “Dissoi Logoi”: Zweierlei Ansichten: Ein
sophistischer Traktat. Sankt Augustin: Akademie Verlag.

Schorn, Stefan. 2014. “Pythagoras in the Historical Tradition: From Herodotus to Dio-
dorus Siculus.” In A History of Pythagoreanism, edited by Carl Huffman, 296–314.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schuster, Paul. 1872. Heraklit von Ephesus: Ein Versuch dessen Fragments in ihrer
ursprunglichen Ordnung wiederherzustellen. Leipzig: Teubner.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 363

9/18/19 1:20 PM

364 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Schütrumpf, Eckart, ed. 2008. Heraclides of Pontus: Texts and Translations. New

Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Sellars, John. 2001. “Socraticorum Maximus: Simon the Shoemaker and the Prob lem
of Socrates.” Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 11: 253–69.

— — —. 2003. “Simon the Shoemaker and the Prob lem of Socrates.” Classical Philol-
ogy 98: 207–16.

Seymour, Thomas D., ed. 1889. Selected Odes of Pindar. Boston: Ginn & Com pany.

Shapiro, Susan. 1996. “Herodotus and Solon.” Classical Antiquity 15: 348–64.

Sharp, Kendall. 2004. “From Solon to Socrates: Proto- Socratic Dialogues in Herodo-
tus.” In La costruzione del discorso filosofico nell’età dei Presocratici, edited by Maria Michela Sassi, 82–102. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.

Sider, David. 1980. “Did Plato Write Dialogues before the Death of Socrates?” Apeiron 14: 15–18.

— — —. 2005. The Fragments of Anaxagoras. 2nd ed. Sankt Augustin: Akademie

Verlag.

Sigurdarson, Eiríkur. 2003. “Studies in Historia.” PhD Diss., University of Cambridge.

Silvermintz, Daniel. 2008. “The Double Arguments.” In The Sophists: An Introduction, edited by Patricia O’Grady, 147–53. London: Duckworth.

Skalet, Charles. 1928. Ancient Sicyon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Slater, William. 1969. Lexicon to Pindar. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Slings, S. R. 2000. “Lit er a ture in Athens, 566–510 BC.” In Peisistratos and the Tyranny: A Reappraisal of the Evidence, edited by Heleen Sancisi- Weerdenburg, 55–

75. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben.

Smith, J. R., trans. 1903. Xenophon: Memorabilia. Boston: Ginn & Com pany.

Smith, Justin E. H. 2016. The Phi los o pher: A History in Six Types. Prince ton: Princeton University Press.

Smyth, Herbert Weir. 1956. Greek Grammar. Revised by Gordon M. Messing. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Snell, Bruno. 1943. Leben und Meinungen der Sieben Weisen. Munich: Heimeran.

— — —. 1944. “Die Nachrichten über die Lehren des Thales und die Anfänge der
griechischen Philosophie- und Literaturgeschichte.” Philologus 96: 170–82.

Solin, Heikki. 2003. Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom: Ein Namenbuch. 2 vols.

Berlin: De Gruyter.

Sommerstein, Alan, trans. 1998. Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.

Souilhé, Joseph, ed. 1930. Platon: Oeuvres complètes. 14 vols. Paris: Les Belles

Lettres.

Spatharas, Dimos. 2001. “Gorgias: An Edition of the Extant Texts and Fragments with

Commentary and Introduction.” PhD Diss., University of Glasgow.

Stadter, Philip. 1991. “Pericles among the Intellectuals.” Illinois Classical Studies 16: 111–24.

Stallbaum, Gottfried, ed. 1836. Plato: Opera Omnia: Meno, Euthyphro, Erastai, Hip-
parchus. Gotha: Hennings.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 364

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 365

Stamatopoulou, Zoe. 2016. “Constructing Periander in Plutarch’s Symposium of
the Seven Sages.” CHS Research Bulletin 5. http:// nrs . harvard . edu / urn - 3:hlnc

. essay:StamatopoulouZ . Constructing _ Periander . 2016.

Starkie, W.J.M., ed. 1897. The Wasps of Aristophanes. London: Macmillan.

Stavru, Alessandro. 2018. “Aristoxenus on Socrates.” In Socrates and the Socratic

Dialogue, edited by Alessandro Stavru and Christopher Moore, 623–64. Leiden:

Brill.

Stein, Heinrich, ed. 1871. Herodoti Historiae. 2 vols. Berlin: Weidmann.

Stevenson, J. G. 1974. “Aristotle as Historian of Philosophy.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 94: 138–43.

Steward, John. 1892. Notes on the “Nicomachean Ethics” of Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Stokes, Michael. 1971. One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy. Washington, DC:

Center for Hellenic Studies.

Strassler, Robert B., ed. 2007. The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. Translation by Andrea Purvis. New York: Pantheon.

Strauss, Leo. 1970. Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the “Oeco-
nomicus.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Sulimani, Iris. 2011. Diodorus’ Mythistory and the Pagan Mission: Historiography and

Culture- Heroes in the First Pentad of the “Bibliotheke.” Leiden: Brill.

Sullivan, Robert. 2001. “Eidos/ idea in Isocrates.” Philosophy and Rhe toric 34: 79–92.

Szegedy- Maszak, Andrew. 1978. “Legends of the Greek Lawgivers.” Greek, Roman, and

Byzantine Studies 19: 199–209.

Taifacos, Ioannis. 2008. “Klearkhos of Soloi.” In The Encyclopedia of Ancient Natu-
ral Scientists: The Greek Tradition and Its Many Heirs, edited by Paul T. Keyser
and Georgia L. Irby- Massie, 477. New York: Routledge.

Taylor, C. C. W., trans. 2006. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics: Books II– IV. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Tell, Håkan. 2007. “Sages at the Games: Intellectual Displays and Dissemination of

Wisdom in Ancient Greece.” Classical Antiquity 26: 249–75.

— — —. 2011. Plato’s Counterfeit Sophists. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic

Studies.

— — —. 2015. “Solon and the Greek Wisdom Tradition.” Trends in Classics 7: 8–23.

Thesleff, Holger. 1961. An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic Period. Åbo: Åbo Akademi.

— — —. 2009. Platonic Patterns: A Collection of Studies. Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides.

Thomas, Rosalind. 1989. Oral Tradition and Written Rec ord in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, Dorothy. 1960. “The House of Simon the Shoemaker.” Archaeology 13:

234–40.

Thorburn, John. 2005. “Philocleon’s Addiction.” Classics Ireland 12: 50–61.

Timmerman, David. 1998. “Isocrates’ Competing Conceptualization of Philosophy.”

Philosophy and Rhe toric 31: 145–59.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 365

9/18/19 1:20 PM

366 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Timmerman, David, and Edward Schiappa. 2010. Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory
and the Disciplining of Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tissot, Francine. 2006. Cata logue of the National Museum of Af ghan i stan 1931–1985.

Paris: UNESCO.

Todd, Stephen, trans. 2000. Lysias. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Tomin, Julius. 1997. “Plato’s First Dialogue.” Ancient Philosophy 17: 31–45.

Tribulato, Olga. 2015. Ancient Greek Verb- Initial Compounds: Their Diachronic De-
velopment within the Greek Compound System. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Tsitsiridis, Stavros. 2013. Beiträge zu den Fragmenten des Klearchos von Soloi. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Tulli, Mauro. 2000. “Carmide fra poesia e ricerca.” In Plato: Euthydemus, Lysis, Charmides. Proceedings of the V Symposium Platonicum, edited by T. M. Robinson and

Luc Brisson, 259–64. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Tuozzo, Thomas M. 2011. Plato’s “Charmides”: Positive Elenchus in a “Socratic” Dia-
logue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Turner, James. 2014. Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities.

Prince ton: Prince ton University Press.

Tziatzi- Papagianni, Maria. 1994. Die Sprüche der sieben Weisen: Zwei byzantinische

Sammlungen. Leipzig: Teubner.

— — —. 1997. “Eine gekürzte Fassung der delphischen Sprüche der sieben Weisen.”

Hermes 125: 309–29.

Untersteiner, Mario. 1963. Zenone, testimonianze e frammenti. Introduzione, traduzi-
one e commento. Florence: La Nuova Italia.

Ussher, R. G., ed. 1986. Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae. Bristol: Bristol Classical

Press.

Vahlen, Johannes, ed. 1903. De Scholiis in Aristotelis Rhetoricam. Berlin: Schade.

Van der Eijk, Philip. 2009. “The Woman Not Breathing.” In Heraclides of Pontus: Dis-
cussion, edited by William W. Fortenbaugh, Elizabeth E. Pender, and Eckart Schüt-
rumpf, 237–50. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Van Dijk, Jan. 1962. “Die Inschriftenfunde.” In Vorläufiger Bericht über die von dem deutschen archäologischen Institut und der deutschen Orient- Gesellschaft aus

Mitteln der deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft Unternommenen Ausgrabungen
in Uruk- Warka: Winter 1959–60, edited by Heinrich Jakob Lenzen, 44–52. Berlin:

Gebr. Mann.

— — —, and Werner Mayer. 1980. Texte Aus Dem Rēš- Heiligtum in Uruk- Warka. Berlin: Gebr. Mann.

Van Hook, LaRue. 1919. “Alcidamas versus Isocrates.” Classical Weekly 12: 89–94.

Van Leeuwen, Jans, ed. 1905. Aristophanis Ecclesiazusae. Leiden: Sijthoff.

Verdenius, W. J. 1947. “Notes on the Presocratics.” Mnemosyne 13: 271–89.

— — —. 1955. “Notes on Plato’s Phaedrus.” Mnemosyne 8: 265–89.

— — —. 1972. Pindar’s “Seventh Olympian Ode”: A Commentary. Amsterdam:

Noord- Hollandsche U.M.

— — —. 1983. “The Princi ples of Greek Literary Criticism.” Mnemosyne 36: 14–59.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 366

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 367

Verhasselt, Gertjan. Forthcoming. “The Seven Sages and the Inscription of Aï Kha-
noum.” In Clearchus of Soli: Text, Translation, and Discussion, edited by David C.

Mirhady.

Vernant, Jean Pierre. 1982. The Origins of Greek Thought. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Vernhes, Jean- Victor. 2014a. “Une étymologie pour σοφός?” Connaissance hellénique

137 (March 2014), https:// ch . hypotheses . org / 834.

— — —. 2014b. “Retour sur l’étymologie de σοφός ou Le marteau et le sabot.” Con-
naissance hellénique 139 (November 2014), https:// ch . hypotheses . org / 1070.

Vitali, Renzo. 1971. Gorgia: Retorica e filosofia. Urbino: STEU.

Vlastos, Gregory. 1950. “The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras.” Philosophical Review

59: 31–57.

Von Fritz, Kurt. 1940. Pythagorean Politics in Southern Italy: An Analy sis of the

Sources. New York: Columbia University Press.

— — —. 1945. “NOYΣ, ΝΟΕΙΝ, and Their Derivatives in Pre- Socratic Philosophy (Ex-
cluding Anaxagoras): Part I. From the Beginnings to Parmenides.” Classical Philol-
ogy 40: 223–43.

Von Velsen, Friedrich, ed. 1883. Aristophanis Ecclesiazusae. Leipzig: Teubner.

Voss, Otto. 1896. “De Heraclidis Pontici Vita et Scriptis.” Diss., University of Rostock.

Walzer, Richard. 1939. Eraclito: Raccolta dei frammenti e traduzione italiana. Firenze: G.C. Sansoni.

Wardy, Robert. 1996. The Birth of Rhe toric: Gorgias, Plato, and Their Successors. London: Routledge.

Wareh, Tarik. 2012. The Theory and Practice of Life: Isocrates and the Phi los o phers.

Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Watkins, Calvert. 2000. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo- European Roots.

2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Watson, J. S., trans. 1857. Xenophon’s Minor Works. London: Henry G. Bohn.

Węcowski, Marek. 2004. “The Hedgehog and the Fox: Form and Meaning in the Pro-
logue of Herodotus.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 124: 143–64.

Wehrli, Fritz. 1969. Die Schule des Aristoteles: Vol 7: Herakleides Pontikos. 2nd ed.

Basel: Schwabe & Co.

Werner, Daniel. 2012. Myth and Philosophy in Plato’s “Phaedrus.” Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.

Werner, Wilhelm. 1912. “De Anterastis Dialogo Pseudoplatonico.” PhD Diss.,

Darmstadt.

Wersdörfer, H. 1940. Die Φιλοσοφία des Isokrates im Spiegel ihrer Terminologie.

Leipzig: Harrassowitz.

West, Martin. 1963. “Three Presocratic Cosmologies.” Classical Quarterly 13: 154–76.

— — —. 1971. Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

— — —. 1985. “Ion of Chios.” British Institute of Classical Studies 32: 71–77.

West, Stephanie. 1991. “Herodotus’ Portrait of Hecataeus.” Journal of Hellenic Stud-
ies 111: 144–60.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 367

9/18/19 1:20 PM

368 BIBLIOGR A PH Y

Wheelwright, Philip E. 1959. Heraclitus. Prince ton: Prince ton University Press.

White, Mary. 1958. “The Dates of the Orthagorids.” Phoenix 12: 1–14.

Whitehead, David. 1983. “Competitive Outlay and Community Profit: Φιλοτιμία in

Demo cratic Athens.” Classica et Mediaevalia 34: 55–74.

Wickkiser, Bronwen Lara. 2008. Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in

Fifth- Century Greece: Between Craft and Cult. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press.

Wiersma, W. 1933. “The Seven Sages and the Prize of Wisdom.” Mnemosyne 1: 150–54.

Wiese, Hermann. 1963. “Heraklit bei Klemens von Alexandrien.” Diss., Christian-

Albrechts- Universität zu Kiel.

Wilamowitz- Moellendorff, Ulrich von. 1880. Philologische Untersuchungen: Aus Ky-
dathen. Berlin: Weidmann.

— — —. 1922. Pindaros. Berlin: Weidmann.

Wilcox, Joel. 1991. “Barbarian Psyche in Heraclitus.” The Monist 74: 624–37.

Wilcox, Stanley. 1943. “Criticisms of Isocrates and His Φιλοσοφία.” Transactions and

Proceedings of the American Philological Association 74: 113–33.

Williams, Gareth D. 2012. The Cosmic Viewpoint: A Study of Seneca’s Natu ral Ques-
tions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wiltshire, David. 2007. “The Semantics of Χρή in Aeschylus.” MA Thesis, University
of North Carolina.

Winans, Samuel, ed. 1881. Xenophon: Symposium. Boston: J. Allyn.

Wöhrle, Georg. 2014. The Milesians: Thales. Translated by Richard D. McKirahan. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Woldinga, G. J. 1938. Xenophons “Symposium”: Prolegomena en Commentaar. Hil-
versum: J. Schipper.

Wolfsdorf, David Conan. 1998. “The Historical Reader of Plato’s Protagoras.” Classical Quarterly 48: 126–33.

— — —. Forthcoming a. “Remarks on the Unity of the Dissoi Logoi.” In Early Greek Ethics, edited by David C. Wolfsdorf. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

— — —. Forthcoming b. “ ‘ Sophia’ and ‘ Epistêmê’ in the Archaic and Classical Periods.” In Philosophy of Knowledge: A History. Vol. 1. Edited by N. D. Smith, 11–29.

New York: Bloomsbury.

Woodbury, Leonard. 1981. “Anaxagoras and Athens.” Phoenix 35: 295–315.

— — —. 1985. “Ibycus and Polycrates.” Phoenix 39: 193–220.

Yates, Velvet. 2005. “Anterastai: Competition in Eros and Politics in Classical Athens.”

Arethusa 38: 33–47.

Yonge, C. D., trans. 1901. Diogenes Laërtius: The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Phi-
los o phers. London: George Bell & Sons.

Yunis, Harvey, ed. 2011. Plato: Phaedrus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yxem, Ernst Ferdinand. 1846. Über Platons “Kleitophon.” In Jahresbericht Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium, 1–35. Berlin: A. W. Hahn.

Zeller, Eduard. 1931. Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy. Revised by Wilhelm Nestle, translated by L. R. Palmer. 13th ed. London: Routledge.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 368

9/18/19 1:20 PM

BIBLIOGR A PH Y 369

Zevort, Charles, trans. 1847. Diogène de Laerte: Vies et doctrines des philosophes de l’antiquité. Paris: Charpentier.

Zhmud, Leonid. 2013. “Pythagorean Communities: From Individuals to a Collective

Portrait.” In Doctrine and Doxography: Studies on Heraclitus and Pythagoras, ed-
ited by David Silver and Dirk Obbink, 33–52. Berlin: De Gruyter.

— — —. 2017. “Heraclitus on Pythagoras.” In Heraklit im Kontext, edited by En-
rica Fantino, Ulrike Muss, Charlotte Schubert, and Kurt Sier, 171–86. Berlin: De

Gruyter.

125-81268_Moore_CallingPhilosophersNames_5P.indd 369

9/18/19 1:20 PM

INDEX

Abderites, 156. See also Democritus of
agriculture, 39, 105, 144, 183–84, 186–87, Abdera; Hecataeus of Abdera; Protagoras

189, 202, 272
of Abdera

Ai Khanoum, inscription at, 291–97
abstraction, 7, 101–2, 105, 135, 138, 225, Aischines of Sicyon, 20n53

237–38, 252, 298; and emotional Alcibiades (Plato), 258
control, 202; “philosophizing” and,

Alcidamas: and history of philosophy as

168, 171–72, 176–77, 204–5; research a discipline, 206–9, 268–69, 272; and and, 51, 207–8; sophia and, 54, 94, 101–2,
the prob ably spurious Odysseus, 209;

275–76

Pythagoras in, 115–16, 140; and “soph-The Acad emy, 28–30, 271; and defense ist” as laudatory term, 207, 209; uses of
of philosophia, 29–30; as expression
philosophos in, 5, 28–29, 150, 157, 194,
of a vision of philosophy, 28–29, 194,

198n7, 209

221, 273; Heraclides as member of, 9, Alcmaeon, 109, 161, 267, 276, 279

28; and historical consciousness, 3; and

Alexander of Aphrodisias, 195
historiography of philosophy, 30, 32–33; Alexis, 30, 297–301
and philosophia as discipline, 29–30,

Al- Mubassir, 152

194, 216, 273, 282–87; and Pythagoras Alyattes, 103, 129
as subject of discussion, 22; and use of

Amasis, 92n81, 129–30
philosophia as term, 260
ambiguity: and ambivalence toward

Adeimantus, 240, 250, 256, 302
philosophia, 77–78; in Heraclitus, 50,

Adler, Ada, 152

58–61, 63–64; and Platonic vs. Isocratean advice: as competitive arena, 123–24; and
notions of philosophia, 233n22; poetry
mantic forecasting, 129n9, 139, 142,
or gnomic language and, 229; in Rival

169–70; as meddling, 165–66; po liti cal Lovers, 315–16
advisory roles ( see under politics); practi-
ambition, 109n13, 118; and philosophizing,
cal or personal, 104, 127–28, 149; sage

172–73; philosophoi and excessive, 1, 6,
advice about good life, 127–28; sophoi as

61, 72–73, 77–79, 78–79, 123–24, 146–47,
advisors, 100–104, 123–24, 150, 266, 314;

150; phil- prefixed terms related to exces-

“wise advisor” trope, 24, 105
sive, 254–55

Aeschines (orator), 149, 247
ambivalence toward philosophia: ambiguity

Aeschines of Sphettus (Socratic), 20n53,
and, 77–78; and polymathy in Heraclitus,

114n36, 154n92, 203n25, 247

38–41; and protreptics, 288–90

Aëtius, 3–4; Placita Philosophorum,

Ambrose of Milan, 3–4, 256; On Abraham untranslated text, 323
the Patriarch, 327

Against the Philosophoi (Zeno), 151–53

Ammonius, Commentary on Porphyry’s

Against the Sophists (Isocrates), 207,

Introduction, 328–29

210–11, 213–14

Anabasis (Xenophon), 177

Agariste of Sicyon, 20n53

Anacharsis of Scythia, 131

“Ages of Man” (Solon), 97–98
anachronism, 1, 210–11; and sophia, 80n36

372 I N DEX

Anaxagoras, 28, 67, 115, 141, 229n15; as Aristodemus of Sparta, 95–96, 98
archetypal figure, 158–65; in Diogenes

Aristophanes, 102n125, 153, 175; Clouds, Laertius, 170; and early uses of philo-

138–39, 148n70, 164, 188; Ecclesiazu-sophos in Athens, 167; and Euripides,
sae, 127, 135, 147–48; and phil- prefixed

170; impiety charges against, 159–60, name- calling in Wasps, 22–23, 27, 39n6,

170; as initiator of natu ral philosophy in

90–93, 306; po liti cal advice roles in, Athens, 159n6; Pericles as student and

102n125, 128, 147–48; and sophoi, 265
defender of, 159–60, 170; as philoso-Aristotle, 3–4, 167; as corroboration of phos, 67, 158–65, 170; in Plato, 162–64,

Pythagoras story, 22; and diachronic con-

270; and rhetorical pedagogy, 168–70;
versation, 271–73; and documentation of
and Socrates, 28, 158–64; in Xenophon, Pythagoreanism, 117–22; and etymology

162–64
of philosophos, 80n36; and Heraclides’s

Anaximander of Miletus, 3, 114, 263–64,
version, 27; and historical consciousness,

277

260–61; and history of philosophy, 117,

Andron of Ephesus, 95–96

271–73; and history of the philosophoi,

Antidosis (Isocrates), 213–14, 260, 267, 271

276–80; “perfect protreptic argument”

Antiochus I Soter, 291, 295n19
of, 306–12; philosophos, use of term by, Antiphon, 92, 155–56, 156n98, 180–82,

260–61; and philosophy as a discipline,

184, 189

260–61, 273–76; and philosophy as Antisthenes, 31–32, 114, 182–84, 194–95, cooperative or communal effort, 271–73;

197–203, 256, 302–5
and phil- prefixed names as pejorative, 27,

Aphrodite, “smiling” as epithet of, 85

77–81; on the Pythagoreans and philoso-

Apologia (Apuleius), 324
phia, 279; synonyms used for “intellec-

Apology (Plato), 158, 161, 164, 242; and tual prac ti tion ers” by, 273–74
meaning of philosophos, 104; and

Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of

Socrates’s denial of “wise man” label,

His Development (Jaeger), 21

165–66

“art of words,” 166; and Anaxagoras in
aporia, 48n36, 242, 273, 279

Xenophon, 166–67; as philosophia,
apotreptics, 30, 290, 301–6

167–70; prohibition against teaching, 179;
appearances, 46–47
as suspect pedagogy, 166–69, 175–76,

“appropriation” of term philosophia, 23,

178–80

256–59

Asia Minor, 3, 129

Apuleius, 3–4; Apologia, untranslated
aspiration, 45; as hubristic, 105–6; philoso-text, 324; Florida, untranslated text,
phizing and po liti cal, 168, 189; philoso-

323–24
phoi andres, 62; phil- prefix as striving,
archaeological rec ord, 31–32, 103–4, 201–2;

26; protreptics and encouragement of,

Ai Khanoum inscription, Af ghan i stan,

290; “sage- wannabes,” 1, 6–7, 158; and

291–95; Delphi inscriptions, 291–97; and self- identification or self- appellation, 45,
potsherd etched “Simon,” 154n91; Uruk

63, 105; to status as sophos, 64–65, 72, List of Kings and Sages, Anu’s Bīt Rēs

105, 111–12, 131, 146–47; youth and, 179
temple, 104
atheism, 162–64, 167

Archelaus, 67, 159n6, 160, 166, 171

Athens: Anaxagoras and introduction of

Archilochoi (Cratinus), 265–66
natu ral philosophy to, 159–60, 164, Archilochus, 96–97, 115, 261

166; literary production in, 154; Pericles

Areopagiticus (Isocrates), 212–13
and defense of Athenian philosophein,

Aristippus, 194, 202–3, 297, 300, 302,

132–35, 168, 215; and philosophizing,

304–5

158, 166, 168–69; and philosophoi subset

I N DEX 373
of society, 172, 189–90; as setting for Chaldaea, 8
comedies, 147, 297

Chamaeleon, 9n18
athletes or athletic competition, 5, 305;
charity, 272
festival analogy, 13–14, 18, 74, 117–21,

Charmides, 182, 224–27

280n67; at Olympia, 74, 120–22

Charmides (Plato), 15, 223–30, 233–34, 239, Augustine, 3–4; City of God, untranslated

248, 273, 295, 311
text, 328; On the Trinity, untranslated

Charondas, 109
text, 327–28

Chilon, 71, 95–96, 103, 115, 268
autodidacticism, 71, 173, 184n68, 205

Chion (Academic), 9n18

Autolycus, 182, 185

Cicero, 3–4, 10, 27; and Aristotle, 121; and association of Pythagoras with Seven

Sophoi, 67–68; and connection between

Babylon, 8, 94; precursors for Seven Sages
sophoi and philosophoi, 67–69; and
in, 8, 94, 98–99, 104

Heraclides, 16, 18–19, 119, 289; and Bactria, inscription at Ai Kahnoum, 291–95

Iamblichus, 117–22; and “philosophy” as
beauty, 118–19, 153, 274; as an object neologism, 13–14, 317; and transmission of knowledge, 252; “beautify” in
of Heraclides’s Pythagoras story, 3–4,

Thucydides, 133; of Charmides, 223–24;

14, 16, 18–19, 26–27, 67, 119; Tusculan equated with wisdom, 236, 250; mania

Disputations (Book 5), 13–14; Tusculan
and love for, 236

Disputations (Book 5), untranslated text,
belief, phil- prefixed terms related to, 255

321

Berossus, 99

Cineas, 291–92, 294–95

Bias of Priene, 69, 71, 102–3, 129, 261, 263

City of God (Augustine), 328

“blame,” 87

Clearchus, 291–95

“blood,” 87

Cleisthenes, 20n53
boys, phil- prefixed terms related to, 254

Clement of Alexandria, 57–58, 307–8; and breath, lack of, 11–12, 15–16, 305

Heraclitus’s self- identification as philoso-

Bryson of Heraclea, 9
phos, 61–63; on “research” as essential

Burkert, Walter, 20–24, 221; glosses of practice, 26, 48n35; as source, 37–38, phil- prefix by, 87–88; and Plato’s use

41–48; Stromata, 265; Stromata, untrans-of philosophia, 29; and Pythagoreans as
lated text, 324–25; use of philosophos
named group, 107; and skepticism about

(anêr) in, 42
reliability of Heraclides’s Pythagoras

Cleobulus, 101
story, 20–24, 26–28, 66, 83

Clitophon (Plato), 258

Busiris (Isocrates), 114–15, 212, 267

Clouds (Aristophanes), 138–39, 148n70,

164, 188
coinage of philosophos, 26, 104, 109n13; Callias (Aeschines of Sphettus), 229, 244, Aristophanes’s phil- prefixed name-

262
calling and, 90–93; Aristotle’s theory of

Callias of Alopece, 182–85, 187, 228–30
phil- prefix, 73–83; Burkert’s theory of, Callicles, 134, 301

22–23; and first appearance, 94; as group Cephalus of Clazomenae (in Plato’s
name, 107; and Herodotus’s use, 128;

Parmenides), 244
and identification of distinctive group in

Cephalus of Syracuse (in Plato’s Republic),

Athens, 172, 190; and identification of

239

Pythagoreans as a group, 122–24, 142; cereal, phil- prefixed terms related to, 254
lexical preconditions for, 26; mistakenly

Chaerephon, 95, 224
attributed to Pythagoras, 22, 71–73; and

374 I N DEX
coinage of philosophos (cont.)

freewheeling ( adoleschia), 170; Aristotle
need for gloss or definition, 5, 18–19, and philosophia via diachronic con-

24; phil- compounds and, 66; Plato and,
versation, 271–73; “art of words” and

256–59; and social contexts for new term,
philosophical, 166–69, 175–76, 178–80;

8, 25–27, 105. See also etymologies as competition, 191–92, 226–31; as coop-color names, of metals, 302, 304
erative and mutually beneficial, 226–29,
comedies: connotations of philosophos in,

244–46, 271–73, 311–12; and dialogue as

3, 31, 92, 290–91, 297–303; philosophoi philosophical form, 9–10, 158; as exer-as figures in, 290, 300–301; phil- prefixed cise, 230; with friend or beloved, 240–41; words in, 92; and the quotable Socrates,
history of philosophy as diachronic,

153

271–73; as mutually beneficial, 257; pas-Commentary on Plato’s Phaedrus (Hermias),
sive listeners as audience for philosophi-
untranslated text, 328
cal, 123, 256; as pedagogical method, 29,

Commentary on Porphyry’s Introduction

169, 213, 215, 230, 273; philosophia and (Ammonius), untranslated text, 328–29
conversationality, 29, 118, 128, 181, 227,
commercial philosophy, 109n13, 113, 118,

240, 248, 285; philosophy and present-

129n9, 165–66, 180–85, 180n61, 230n16, tense, 269–70; in Plato’s Phaedrus, 223;

264
and poetic expertise, 224–26; as po liti cal
competition, 74; among the Sophoi, 101;
deliberation, 132–35; as quest for agree-
analogies to athletes, 18, 213, 312–14; dement and understanding, 191–92; and
bate or oratory, 145–47, 146, 210, 213–14, real ity, 244–45; and revelation of the

226; and jealousy, 159; public oratory
soul, 224–25; rules and forms of, 244–45,
and, 146, 194, 206, 216; with the sophoi,

311; rules for symposium, 145, 191n76,

261–62; sophoi and advice- giving,

229, 230; rules or norms of, 257; and

123–24; and sophos status, 95–96; for self- improvement, 223–28, 244–46; and students among schools or pedagogues,
self- knowledge, 223–28, 270; Socrates

29–30, 232–33
and learning through, 189; with the soul,
conceits of knowledge, 214, 222

201, 224–25; thought as, 201
connotations of philosophos: as ambivalent

Cooper, John, 29
or ambiguous, 30–31, 58–61, 78; Anax-cooperation, philosophy and, 226–29,
agoras and negative, 158–65; in comedy

244–46, 263, 271–73, 311–12
or satire, 3, 31, 92, 290–91, 297–303; Cornford, Francis, 38, 58
criticism or censure linked to phil- pre-
cosmology, 10, 21, 40; Anaxagoras and, fix, 27, 79, 81, 84, 87–88, 90, 253–56;

168–70; Empedocles and, 142, 145–46; as disparaging, 188–90; as laudatory,

Gorgias and, 145–46; Heraclides and,

63, 231–32; as negative, 38, 61, 78, 190;

10; Hippocratic critique of cosmologi-
as positive, 45, 64–65, 72–73, 291–97; cal approach, 135–38, 142; Pericles and, and shift in valence, 25, 83; and shifts in

168–69; philosophia and study of, 138, meaning, 27–28

142, 145, 148, 150, 166, 168–70, 172;
consolation or reassurance, 316

Pythagoras and, 40; as Pythagorean
contextualist approach, 3
practice, 10; Socrates and, 161–63, 166,
continuity of philosophia, as concept, 1, 19,

168–70

161, 222–23, 232, 257, 272–73, 306, 311.

Cratinus, 153, 265, 278n54

See also lineages, sophos

Cratylus (Plato), 170, 264–65, 270–71
conversation, 29–30; Acad emy and formal-

Critias: and philosophos as an insult,
ized, 273; Anaxagoras and rhetorical

166–67, 178–80, 182; in Plato’s Charmi-pedagogy, 169; Anaxagoras and value of
des, 224–28

I N DEX 375

Croesus, 127, 129–32

Sage maxims at Temple of Apollo, 30,

Croton, 5n12, 107–9, 121–22

291–97

“cultivator of one’s intellect,” as proposed

Demetrius of Phalerum, 94–96, 292; on original meaning of philosophos, 1–2,

Anaxagoras’s purported trial for impiety,

5–6, 23, 62, 73, 107, 127, 131–32, 134,

159

149–50, 153, 157, 171, 178, 190, 201, 221, democracy, 108, 206, 283, 303, 317

300, 306, 307

Democritus of Abdera, 9, 114, 128, 155–56, Curd, Patricia, 45–46, 49–51

276, 304
curiosity, 255–56, 313

De mos the nes, 78n32, 149–50n73, 200
derision: Pythagoreans as group derisively
named philosophoi, 105–7

Damon of Cyrene, 69n9

Derveni papyrus, 31, 171

Damon of Oa, 160, 170
desire: modification of, 20, 194, 196, 200; dating, 127, 297; chronology and authentica-philosophia as desire for sophia that one
tion of texts, 37–38; relative, of Heraclitus’s
lacks, 248–49; phil- prefixed terms and
and Pythagoras’s lives, 37; of shifts in
affection or, 80–81
valence of phil- prefix, 83
dialogue as philosophical form, 9–10, 158
death, 15–16, 105, 139, 178, 192, 257;

Dicaearchus, 14n38, 103, 109n10, 295n23
ambiguity about, 12; Empedocles’s,

“dice” or gaming, 91–92

11, 140n46, 305; fear of, 8; Heracles’s Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Diels and
philosophizing until, 199; Pythagoras’s

Kranz), 41–42
overcoming of, 13, 112; Socrates’s, 28, Diels, Hermann, 42

154n87, 157, 192–93, 197
dietetics, 14n38, 71, 128, 300
debate or public oratory: and “art of speech,”

Diodorus Siculus, 3–4; Library of His-

168–69; and civic issues, 146–47; as tory, untranslated text, 321; and non-competition, 144–46, 240; Empedocles Heraclidean version of Pythagoras story,
and rhe toric, 141, 206; extemporaneous,

67–73, 289; and phil- prefixed names, 73;

206–9; forensic, 7, 127, 144, 149, 203,
as relatively unstudied account of phi-

226–27; Gorgias and, 143–47; Isocrates losophia, 67; and the Seven Sages, 68–69, and pedagogy for po liti cal speech-

94, 98–99; and sophoi as precursors for making, 210–16; logographoi and speech
philosophoi, 69
writing, 210; and pedagogical method,

Diogenes Laertius, 4, 10; on Empedocles as

168–69; Pericles and rhe toric as po liti cal
representative of Pythagoreans, 140–41;
instrument, 168–69; persuasion and,
and Greek origins of word philosophia,

144–45, 240–41, 245, 270, 290; philo-

17–18; Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers, sophia and po liti cal speech, 150, 185–86,
untranslated text, 324; versions of Py-

210–17; philosophia as distinct from, 149; thagoras’s self- appellation, 17–20
philosophical rhe toric, 145–46; Pythago-

Diogenes of Apollonia, 276
ras and, 109n10; quick- minded, 143–48,

Diopeithes, 159

204–5, 231; research and preparedness Diotima, 250
for, 143; skill in, and po liti cal influence,
discipline, philosophy as a, 1–3, 8–9,

172, 185–86; social value of, 185–86;

20–21, 25–26, 30, 32–33, 291, 305–18,
speech as bewitching power, 109n10;

311; and Academic use of term philoso-
speechwriting, 210, 243
phia, 28–29; and Alcidamas, 268; and deceit, 85–86, 209, 240–41

Aristotle’s historiography, 260–61; and

Delphi: competition of the sophoi at,

Aristotle’s history of the philosophoi,

95–96; Pythagoras associated with, 108;

276–80; association of sophos lineages

376 I N DEX
discipline, philosophy as a (cont.)

entertainment and philosophos- group
with history of, 7, 262–67, 285; and words, 182–85
commitment to norms, 32; Hippias and,
envy, 244

262, 266; and historical consciousness,

Epaminondas, 115–16

282–87; Isocrates and, 212–13; Plato and Epicharmus, 199, 271
formulation of, 23, 29–30; protreptics Epicurus, 300, 309–10, 312–13
and promotion of, 258–59; and Simmias
epistemic charity, 272
of Thebes, 267–69; sophoi as precursor
epistemic humility, 232, 272
for philosophoi, 67–69; and Xenophon,
epithets formed with phil- prefix, 84–90

267–68
equivalence (“an equal number”) as
discipline of the self: Antisthenes and heroic

Pythagorean concept, 304
self- mastery, 197–203; and modification

Eroticus (Demosthenean corpus), 149
of desire, 194, 196, 200; and philosophia, etymologies, 5, 7; Aristotle and, 80n36,

224; philosophia and self control, 98,

276; Diogenes Laertius on Greek origins

175–76, 202, 238–39; Pythagoreanism of philosophia, 17–18; Hippias and, 265; and, 71, 300; as the virtue of sôphrosunê,

“love of wisdom” as implausible, 102,

102, 195n1, 199, 223–25, 239, 256–57

107; “lover of wisdom, ” 1–2, 5, 29, 66–67;

Dissoi Logoi, 28–29, 114, 194, 203–7, 213,
of names of gods, 264; of philosophos

228, 231, 260
in Aristotle’s Protrepticus, 80n36; for
dogs: “lovers or friends” of, 248; philoso-
philosophos in Plato’s Phaedrus, 241–42;
phoi as, 251, 313
of phil- prefixed terms, 83–88, 254–56;

Dorandi, Tiziano, 18–19

Plato and deployment of, 104, 222–23;

“drinking,” 91–92

Plato and reconstructive etymology of
philosophos, 250, 258, 289; playful etymologies as rhetorical strategy, 254; and
ease, conceits of, 316
punning, 85; Socrates and, 245–56, 260;
effluences, 143
sophos’s relationship to philosophos, 27
egoism, 133; aspiration as hubristic, 105–6;

The Etymologies (Isidore of Seville), un-
and aspirations of grandeur, 168; philau-
translated text, 329
tia and, 72–73, 80–82

Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle), 76–77

Egypt, 8, 100n118; Pythagoras and, 71–72,

Eudemus, or On the Soul (Aristotle), 12n34

113–15, 212, 267

Euripides, 9, 138n36, 170, 205

Egypt Exploration Society, 302

Eusebius of Caesarea, 4, 5, 42; Praeparatio elders: Aristotle on the many bad qualities
evangelica, untranslated text, 326; Pref-
of, 82n43; civic order as responsibility of,
ace to St. Jerome’s Chronicle, untrans-

59, 109, 114; as enchanted by Pythagoras, lated text, 326–27

109n10; philosophizing as valuable for, 309

Euthydemus, 172–76, 178, 181–83

Empedocles of Acragas, 44, 122, 137, Euthydemus (Plato), 204, 210–11

139, 140–43, 141n52, 161, 196–97, 201,

Evagoras (Isocrates), 212

206–7, 266, 267, 275, 281, 289, 305; in excess: philosophoi and excessive ambition,

On Ancient Medicine, 137; as orator, 141;

1, 6, 61, 72–73, 77–79, 78–79, 123–24, and links to Pythagoras, 140–42; in Plato,

146–47, 150; phil- prefixed words and,

270–71; Pythagoras in, 111–12; as sophos

76–77, 90–92, 247, 254–55
in Aristotle, 276
exercise, “lovers or friends” of, 248
emulation, 67, 70–71, 94, 178, 212, 215,
exile: of Anaxagoras, 159–60, 166, 264; of

224–25, 249

Empedocles, 141n52; of Solon, voluntary,

Encomium of Helen (Isocrates), 211, 267

130

I N DEX 377
experience, direct: and polumathia, 39; and

183n66; sophoi and recognition of value,
wisdom, 46–47, 57, 105

97; as yellow and red in color, 304n44
expertise: Aristotle and philosophia as

Gorgias (Plato), 22, 29, 143, 259, 301
expertise with re spect to real ity, 279–80;

Gorgias of Leontini, 27, 67–68n1, 74n24,
and coinage of philosophos, 104; and his-

127, 135, 141–42, 164, 179, 184, 194, 204, tores, 59–62; poiêtikos as poetic, 225–26;

207, 215, 245, 309; Empedocles as influ-sophia as, 328; sophoi and, 263; sophos ence on, 140–47, 143; Nestor as nickname as, 68, 93–94, 97, 101–2
for, 155; and philosophical debate, 145–47, eyes, 46, 49, 144, 195

196, 203; philosophos- group word in,

143–44; rhe toric and, 200–201, 206

Gottschalk, H. B. , 16, 122
farming. See agriculture
greed or avarice, 86
festival analogy, 4–5, 13–14, 18, 74, 117–21,

Guthrie, W. K. C., 38, 46, 58

280n67
first princi ples, 274–75, 277–78, 279n61, 309
fish, 76

Hades, 12–13, 139, 265–66, 272–73

Florida (Apuleius), untranslated text,
happiness, 29, 180–82, 197–98, 211, 246,

323–24

308–10

Florilegium (Stobaeus), 292
heavens, study of the, 120, 163
food, 252n48, 313; as concern of philoso-

Hecataeus of Abdera, 68n5, 295n23
phoi, 174, 299–300; phil- prefixed terms Hecataeus of Miletus, 40, 50, 102, 111,
related to, 254

261–62; as polymath, 38, 40, 111, 262

Ford, Andrew, 283
hedonism, 198, 245, 301
forensic speech: debate or public oratory, 7,

Helen (Gorgias), 127–28, 135, 143–47, 211

144, 149, 226–27

Helen (Isocrates), 211, 213–14, 267
frauds or impostors, phi los o phers as, 39,

Heracleotes, 9n18

61–62, 177, 184n68

Heracles, 199; in Alexis’s Linus, 199,

Freaks, 1

299–300
friendship, 80, 240–41, 246–49, 263

Heraclides of Pontus (Gottschalk), 16

Heraclides Ponticus, 3–4; Aristotle and,

27; Burkert’s discrediting and rejection

Galateia (Alexis), 297–98
of, 20–24; Empedocles in, 141; fragmen-Galen, 10, 15, 152n82
tary nature of extant works of, 21; and
genitals, 85
pre- existing narrative (Sicyon- version

Genres of Dialogue (Nightingale), 23, 171
author), 19–20; as Pythagorean, 21; reli-geography: geo graph i cal distribution of
ability as source, 117, 119; as source, 17,

Seven Sages, 102–4; geo graph i cal evi-

289; sources for, 110
dence and Sicyon- version author, 19–20;

Heracliteans, 270
map of places mentioned, xxii– xxiii

Heraclitus of Ephesus, 9, 22, 271, 272; and geometry, 71, 114, 138, 183n66
ambiguity, 50, 58–61; and art of speech, Glaucon, 153, 250–54, 256

111–12; Clement’s reliability as trans-
glosses on philosophos: and coinage of term,
mitter of, 41–45; and competition with

5, 18–19, 24; Pythagoras and explanation sophoi, 261–63; epistemology of, 51–57;
of self- appellation, 22, 73; Socrates and
log os in, 47–57; philosophos as term in, novel uses or, 248–49

63–64; and philosophy as a discipline,
gold: as analogy in Heraclitus, 48; and

261–62; in Plato, 270; and plurality or pro cess of refinement or purification,
diversity, 60–61; and polumathia, 40–41,

378 I N DEX

Heraclitus of Ephesus (cont.)

lineages, 262–67; by Plato and contem-

62–63, 110–11, 261–62, 313; and Pythago-poraries, 267–71. See also discipline,
ras as fraud, 111; and “research,” 48n35,
philosophy as a

51–57; and self- distinction, 261; and use History (Herodotus), 128–32
of philosophoi, 260

Homer, 270; phil- prefixed terms in, 83–89;

Hermias, 3–4; Commentary on Plato’s
as a sophos, 115, 261; use of term sophos Phaedrus, 328
in, 96–97

Herodorus of Heraclea, 198–99

Homeric Hymn to Selene (Homeric corpus),

Herodotus, 27, 31, 62–63, 113–14, 148, 185,

59

205, 208, 265; Croesus- Solon exchange honor: excessive striving for, 75, 78–79; in, 127–32, 135–36; philosophein in, phil- prefixed terms related to, 254

128–32
horses, 74, 204; horse manship as a kind

Hesiod, 9, 30, 265–66, 275, 299; Heraclitus of sophia, 97n98, 101n122; “lovers or
and critique of Hesiod and polymathy,
friends” of, 74, 247–48; training of, 212

38–41, 50; histôr as used in, 59; as hospitality, 86
polymath, 111, 262; and punning with
hubris, 105; and self- appellation as philoso-
phil- prefixed terms, 85; sophizein as used
phos, 70–71; of self- styled phi los o phers, in, 96; as sophos, 261; in sophos lineages,

176

261n3

Huffman, Carl, 60
hidden things, investigation into, 138–40,
humility, epistemic, 70, 249, 313

276
hunger, phil- prefixed terms related to, 254

Hippasus of Metapontum, 111n21, 276

Hutchinson, Doug, 31–32, 118, 120–21,

Hippasus of Phlius, 19–20n53

303–4, 306

Hippias, 165, 167, 175, 184–85, 260–67, 272,

278–79, 289; and history of philosophy as a discipline, 262–67; and non- use of term

Iamblichus of Chalcis, 3–4, 21, 27, 31–32, philosophos, 260; Plato as influenced

117–23, 117–24, 159, 289; Protrepticus, by, 262; Plato on, 262–63; reputation of, untranslated text, 325; On the Pytha-

262–63; and sophos lineages, 262–67
gorean Way of Life, untranslated text,

Hippias Major (Plato), 167, 190, 230, 263

117–18, 325–26

Hippias Minor (Plato), 229n15

Ibycus, 100n114, 109

Hippolytus: as source about Empedocles,
identity: self- labeling as philosophos, 9,

140n45; as source for Heraclitus, 37n1

13–20, 16, 24, 73, 110, 118–19

Hippothales, 225n8, 246
ignorance, 55, 133, 166, 204; amathia, histôr/ histores: and expertise, 59–62; and

248–50; aporia, 48n36, 242, 273, 279; in social arbitration, 59–61; women as,

Heraclitus, 52–55

59–60. See also pollôn histôr

Iliad (Homer), 59, 97n95
historia, study of, 39–40, 46–47, 50, 60–61, impiety, 159–60, 162, 170, 301

207–8, 268n29
impossibility, seeming, 316
historical consciousness, 25–26, 262n4,
inquiry. See “research”

270–71; Hippias and, 262

Institutes of Rhe toric (Quintilian), untrans-
historicizing approach, 3
lated text, 322
historiography of philosophy, 2, 30, 269; intellect, cultivation of: as proposed original

Aristotle’s chronology and, 273–76;
meaning of philosophia, 1–2, 5–6, 23,

Aristotle’s diachronic conversation and,

62, 73, 107, 127, 131–32, 134, 149–50,

271–73; and evidence of meaning shift

153, 157, 171, 178, 190, 201, 221, 300, for sophos, 93–94; Hippias and sophos

306, 307

I N DEX 379

Introduction to Arithmetic (Nicomachus of

90, 105; Pythagoras and self- labeling as

Gerasa), untranslated text, 323
philosophos, 9, 13–20, 16, 24, 73, 110,

Ionia, 40, 50, 113; as cradle of natu ral phi-

118–19; as self- applied, 7, 260; Socrates losophy, 159; as multicultural, 317; and
and self- labeling as philosophos, 186–90;

Persian threat, 12, 40, 94, 103, 129n6
and synecdoche, 74. See also phil- pre-

Ion (Plato), 190, 225–26, 225n10
fixed terms

Ion of Chios, 112–13, 154, 160, 214
lacking, 27–28
iron, 304

“ladder of love,” 250
irony or ironical uses: in Heraclitus, 38,

Laks, André, 41–45

44n25, 46n29, 58, 64; in Ion of Chios, learning: phil- prefixed terms related to,

112; in Xenophon, 185n70

254–55

Ischomachus, 186–89
legal decision making: being philêliastês,

Isidore of Seville, 3–4; The Etymologies,

91–92; pollôn histôr as judges, 59–60
untranslated text, 329
legislation, 69, 103, 172, 185, 212

Isocrates, 28–29, 114–15, 149, 150, 157, 180,
legislative practice, philosophos and, 69,

194, 207, 210–16; on Gorgias, 143; and

103, 109, 127–28, 144, 168, 182, 185, 200, pedagogy for po liti cal speech- making,

212

210–16; in Plato’s Phaedrus, 243–44; on Leon of Phlius, 4, 13–14, 24

Pythagoras, 267; and separation from

Letter to Menoeceus (Epicurus), 309

Socratic tradition, 216–17

Leucippus, 276

- istês suffix, 7n15

Library of History (Diodorus Siculus),
untranslated text, 321

“lies,” 85–86

Jaeger, Werner, 21

Life of Zeno of Elea (Al- Mubassir), 152
jealousy, 71, 159, 216, 233–34
lineages, sophos: and continuity, 19, 70n12;

“jeering,” 86

Hippias and, 262–67, 278–79; and John Malalas, 198–99
historical consciousness of philosophy, 7,

Johnson, Monte, 31–32, 118, 120–21, 303–4,

262–67, 285, 287, 289; in Plato, 263–65,

306

270–71; Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans

Julian the Apostate, 196
in, 19; Successions of Sosicrates, 4–5, 321
justice, 39, 74, 105, 304, 314; philêliastês Linear B, 27, 31, 89–90

(jury obsessed) as epithet, 92; wisdom
linguistic evidence, and assessment of Hera-
and, 98
clides’s account, 22
linguistics, as methodology, 22, 73–74, 78,

94, 128, 268n29, 283–84

Kahn, Charles, 42

Linus (Alexis), 298–300

Kirk, Gregory, 38, 58

Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers (Diogenes
knowledge: “learning” as phil- prefixed

Laertius), 4, 17–20, 324
term, 255
logical argumentation, philosophos and
kosmos, 6–8, 10, 55–56, 105, 162–63, 206, practice of, 128

289, 318
log os, 47–57, 261–62; in Heraclitus, 47–57

Kranz, Walther, 38, 41–42, 57–58

Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagorean-
ism (Burkert), 21
love, 6, 75, 80, 85, 89, 184–85, 232–40,
labels: and coinage of neologisms, 6, 57;

245–52, 267, 274–75, 298; Socrates on and identity constitution, 7, 258, 282;
philosophizing and, 23, 185. See also
and norm- policing, 1–2, 76–81, 87–88,
philein; phil- prefixed terms

380 I N DEX

“love of wisdom,” 48, 300, 323, 328–29; as Melissus, 143, 211, 267, 276, 279
attribute of philosophoi, 1, 5; and coinage Memorabilia (Xenophon): and differentia-of philosophos, 107; as etymological
tion of Socrates from Anaxagoras, 162,
invention, 2; as gloss of philosophos,

164, 178–80, 182; and philosophein

66; Greek instances of term, 6n13; as
philosophia, 171–76; and philosophos
implausible etymology, 107; as insult to
as disparaging term, 178–80; self- styled

Pythagoras or pollôn histores, 2; “ladder
phi los o phers in, 176–78; and “sketches,”

of love” and commitment to virtue, 250;

154n88
as misrepre sen ta tion, 104, 150, 191; Plato Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Valerius
and, 29, 222, 249–50, 260; psychologi-Maximus), 71, 322
cal translation, 105–6; and research or
memory, 13, 71, 161, 204–6, 237; in Dissoi inquiry, 48–49, 62

Logoi, 204–5

Lysias, 27, 127, 128, 140, 196, 209, 231–33,

Menexenus, 190, 246–48

239–40, 243, 288, 309

Meno, 270

Lysis (Plato), 22, 30, 116, 154n87; and ety-Meno (Plato), 190
mologies of philosophia, 222, 246–50
metals: colors of, 302, 304; gold, 48–49, 97,

183n66; metallurgy, 97; mining, 48, 139; silver, 88, 97, 302, 304
madness, 302, 303, 305; of Anaxagoras, 162; Metaphysics (Aristotle), 274–81

Aristotle on, 304; love and mania, 236;
metempsychosis, 12–14, 12n35, 71
phil- prefix and manias, 76, 81, 90–91
meteorology or meteorological talk, 8, 40,

Magna Graeca, 107–8

43–44, 138–40, 144–47, 166, 169–70, Marcovich, Miroslav, 42–48

172, 203–4, 216; Anaxagoras and, Margites (Epic Cycle), 96–97

161–63; in Gorgias, 143–47; Pythagoras martial language to describe philosophy,
and, 40, 118–20

197–98, 239–40
methodological, philosophy as. See

“master,” 87
systematization
mathe matics, 114n39, 138, 213, 221, 237;

Metrodorus of Lampsacus, 171

Pythagoreans and, 116, 279n61

Minor Socratics, 28
maxims: Ai Khanoum, inscription at,
miracles: Empedocles and, 274n44; mantic

291–97; Clearchus and, 291–95; collec-forecasting, 112, 129n9, 139, 142, 169–70; tion or consolidation of, 282, 295–96;
and medicine, 15, 274n44; Pythagoras

Dicaearchus’s list of, 14n38, 295n23;
and, 141, 274n44, 279

“Hard it is to be good, ” 229; about learn-
moderation, 77–78; virtues of restraint,
ing or polymathy, 255; philosophos ginou,

202–3

30, 291–97, 309, 326; Pindar and, 98,
morphosemantics, 8, 78–79, 89, 249, 250

101–3; poetry and gnomic language, 226;

Most, Glenn W. , 41–45

Sosiades’s list and princi ples of order-

Mouraviev, Serge, 42
ing, 6n14, 292–94; at Temple of Apollo, muses, 233, 240–41, 245

Delphi, 30, 291–97

Mycenaean pi- ro- prefix, 27, 31, 88–90

Maximus of Tyre, 3–4

Myth of Er (Plato), 12n34
medicine: compared to rhe toric by Socrates,
mythography, 40, 99, 198, 282–83; and

169; Egyptian influence on, 114; philo-

Seven Sages as trope, 103–4
sophical approach to, 135–38, 140; philosophos and practice of, 127–28, 137n32.

See also On Ancient Medicine
name- calling: and Aristophanes’s use of phil-

Meletus, 161, 166, 183n66
prefix in Wasps, 22–23, 27, 39n6, 89–93,

I N DEX 381

306; and caricature of personal qualities,

On Diseases or Causes of Diseases (Hera-

87–88; and consolidation of identity, 1;
clides), 10–18, 119, 122, 141, 260, 288; as Mycenaean pi- ro- prefix and, 88–90;
protreptic, 15–16, 135–38, 150, 288–89,
norm- policing and labels, 1–2, 76–81,

302, 305–6

87–88, 90, 105; Philosophia as nickname On Non- Being (Gorgias), 143–47, 268n32
of Democritus of Abdera, 155–56

On Philosophy (Simon the Shoemaker),
natu ral science, philosophia and study of,

153–55

128, 137–39

On Proverbs (Clearchus), 295

Neanthes of Cyzicus, 140n46

On Pythagoreanism (Iamblichus), 119
neologisms, and need for explanation or

On Riddles (Clearchus), 295
gloss, 5, 215, 222

On Sophists (Isocrates), 207, 210–11

Nestle, Wilhelm, 38, 57–58

On the Pythagoreans (Heraclides), 10
nicknames: evidence for practice, 155;

On the Pythagorean Way of Life (Iambli-

Philosophia as nickname of Democritus
chus), 121; untranslated text, 117–18,
of Abdera, 155–56

325–26

Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 22, 73–74,

On the Sophists (Alcidamas), 207–9

76, 80, 253

On the Things in Hades (lost works), 12n35

Nicomachus of Gerasa, 21, 69n9; Introduc-

On the Trinity (Augustine), 327–28
tion to Arithmetic, untranslated text, 323

“On the Woman Not Breathing” (Hera-

Nightingale, Andrea, 23–24, 28, 29, 171, clides). See On Diseases

184, 221
opinions, debatable views, 231, 260–61,
noos/nous, 39, 52n42, 62, 111, 155, 169, 261

280–81
norm- policing: Aristotle on phil- prefixed
oratory. See debate or public oratory
terms as slurs, 76–79; labels and name-

Orpheus, 30, 265–66, 299, 324, 327; as calling as, 1–2, 76–81, 87–88, 90, 105; philosophos, 112
philosophoi and transgression of social

Oxyrhynchus papyri, 30–31, 201–2, 290–91,
norms, 57n54; phil- prefixed names and,

302, 304–5

70–71, 79–80, 105–6, 122–24; phil- prefixed terms and censuring tone, 76–80,

86–88

Palamedes, 143, 209, 268

“not- sophos” explanation, 19, 22, 24, 122

Panegyricus (Isocrates), 215–16

Pantheia of Acragas, 11
papyrological discoveries: biographical

“oar- loving” (seafaring), 84–85
sketch of Socrates, 197; Derveni, 31, 171;

Ode to Scopas (Simonides), 101

Oxyrhynchus (Egyptian), 30–31, 201–2, Odysseus (Alcidamas), 92n80, 209

290–91, 302, 304–5; Strausboug and Odysseus as one of Seven Sophoi, 67
insight into Empedocles, 31

Odyssey (Homer), 59, 86
paradoxes, 105, 139; eristic, 204; Heraclides Oeconomicus (Xenophon), 172, 186–89
as paradoxologist, 21n55; used against

Oenopides of Chios, 139, 310

Pythagoreans, 151; Zeno’s, 51–52, 151–52

Olympian Odes (Pindar), 98–100

Parmenides, 51, 62–63, 141, 143, 151–52,
omniscience, 214, 241–42

244–46, 267–71

On Abraham the Patriarch (Ambrose of

Parmenides (Plato), 29–30, 244–46

Milan), untranslated text, 327

Pausanias, 11, 16, 132n23, 266n25

On Ancient Medicine (Hippocratic author),
pedagogy, 172; Anaxagoras and rhetorical

27, 127, 128, 135–36, 141, 145–46, 169,
pedagogy, 169; and “art of words, ” 166–72,

186, 282, 301

178–80; autodidacticism, 173, 184n68,

382 I N DEX
pedagogy (cont.)

early Greek use of philein sophian, 6n13;

205; competition for students among the
gloss by Socrates in Plato’s Republic, 251;
schools, 232–33; conversation as method
in Heraclitus, 62n66
of, 169, 213, 215, 230, 273; education as philês- prefixed terms, 90–77
preparation for politics, 175; as fraudulent

Philodemus, 156n98
or overpromised, 210; Isocrates and
philosophein (philosophizing): as activity
po liti cal speech- making, 210–16; phil-
of sophoi, 128–32; Athenians and, 158; prefixed terms related to learning, 254–55;
conversation and, 269; as cooperative,
and po liti cal influence, 109, 175, 210–16;

311–12; as dithering over decisions,
as profession of philosophoi, 180–81, 211;

134, 298–99; in Herodotus, 128–32; as prohibition of philosophia as topic, 179;
idiosyncratic be hav ior, 10, 40, 107, 116, Socrates as commercial failure, 180–81;

174, 182, 259, 310–11; and moderation, and sophos lineages, 264–68; and trans-

202; as narrowly defined speech, 146;
mission of cultural norms, 236; wisdom
as oratory tricks, 149n73; and po liti cal
as innate, 100–101
ambition, 168, 189; and po liti cal delibera-

Peisianax of Acragas, 11
tion, 132–35; and prob lem solving, 149; Pelopidas, 115–16
reading as, 173–75; as research or inquiry,

Periander of Corinth, 71, 102–3, 129

149; Socrates accused of, 158, 165–67; Pericles: and defense of Athenian philoso-Socrates on love and, 185; as solitary
phein, 132–35, 168, 215; Funeral Oration practice, 269; as specific practice,
in Thucydides, 127, 132–35, 168, 215, 235,

132–35; as “taming,” 202; in Thucydides,

256; as an ideal worthy of emulation, 185;

132–35
as student and defender of Anaxagoras,
phi los o phers. See philosophoi (phi los o phers)

159–60, 170
philosophia (philosophy): and Acad emy

Persia, 40, 72, 102–3, 127, 160n10, 283, 295
and defense or redemption of, 29–30; as
persuasion: belief and compulsion, 144; and

“art of words, ” 167–70; as beautiful talk,
debate or public oratory, 144–45, 240–41,

240; as a collaborative endeavor, 280–81;

245, 270, 290; and research into all topics, as commercial venture ( see commercial

169; rhe toric and, 201
philosophy); competing meanings and vi-

Phaedo (Plato), 16, 43, 161–64, 192, 259, sions of, 194–97, 216–17, 221–23, 267 ( see

268, 300
also specific individuals); continuity of,

Phaedo of Elis, 154n92, 194–97, 200, 202–3

1, 19, 222–23, 232, 272–73, 306, 311; as Phaedrus (Plato): and “art of words, ” 167–68;
cultural production, 235–36; defined by
and etymologies of philosophia, 222; ora-
application, 246; and the divine, 182, 200, tory in, 143; Palinode, 234–40; philoso-

233–34, 238, 240–41; Empedocles and, phia as unified and justified practice in,

140–43; as exercise in self- improvement,

22, 222–23, 231–44; philosophos in, 222

149, 185, 195–96; and friendship, 240, Phalinus, 177–78

246–49; and “hidden matters,” 138–40; Pherecydes of Athens, 265
as idiosyncratic way of life, 182, 259; as

Pherecydes of Syros, 71, 100n18, 112–13, inexhaustible, 270; meaning of, 260; as

274–75, 278n57; Pythagoras and associa-methodical, well- ordered, or systematic,
tion with, 71, 112

50, 53–54, 64, 132, 266, 317; and peda-philanthrôpia, 78n32, 192, 258
gogy, 237–38; Plato’s appropriation of, 29,
philautia, 72, 80–82, 247, 258

258–59; Plato’s etymologies for, 29, 222; Philebus (Plato), 29–30, 116, 244–46

Plato’s legitimation and justification of,
philein: Aristotle and, 75, 81n39, 83–84; as

258; and po liti cal or legislative prepara-
a desire for something one lacks, 248–49;
tion, 185, 214–15; and polymathy, 313–14;

I N DEX 383
as practical or pragmatic, 171, 178, 240,
idiosyncratic oddballs, 116, 138–39, 155,

244, 286, 301; and preparation for civic or

237–38, 300; as “investigators into much”

po liti cal engagement, 215; as preparation

( see polymathy; “research”); Isocrates
for death, 192; preservation and con-
and categories of, 210–12; lay vs. profes-solidation of term, 288; as Pythagorean
sional distinction among, 183–84; as
activity, 215; and real ity, 143, 212, 232,

“lovers of wisdom, ” 66; as misdirected

236–39, 241–42, 244–45, 279–80; rela-or misguided, 64–65; and myth, 274–76, tionship of to other ways of life, 234–36;

279–80; as object of derision, 297–300,
and rhe toric, 145–46, 150, 166, 171, 172,

310–14; and poetry, 275–76; and

200, 208, 232, 256; scientific, formal-relation to theologoi, 274–76, 279–80; ized, and self- directed ele ments, 128; as

“research” as practice of, 45, 128; and
self- defense, 149; and self- purification,
sage advice about good life, 127–28;

182–83; shifting meaning of, 145–46; as self- identification as, 45, 63–64, 72–73,
social arrangement, 233–34; as socially

260; and self- improvement, 72, 108–9,
odd, 238–39; Socrates on, 232, 256–57;

174, 209, 213–14, 221, 256, 257, 271, 314, and sophia, 248–49; as sophomoric way

316, 318; as socially valuable individu-
of life, 310; as a term and philosophy as a
als, 25–26; Socrates and rejection of
discipline, 28–29; as term with multiple
inclusion among, 157–58; Socrates and
historically related expressions, 256; as
vari ous types of, 243; as sophoi, 276–77; too reductive and imprecise to be useful,
as striving or ambitious to an excessive

137–38; in Xenophon’s Memorabilia,
degree, 1, 6, 61, 72–73, 78–79, 123–24,

178–80; in Xenophon’s Symposium,

146–47, 150; as subset of sophistai, 211;

181–83
as teachers ( see pedagogy); in Xeno-

Philosophia as nickname of Democritus of
phon, 178–79, 182, 204; in Zeno of Elea, Abdera, 155–56

151–53
philosophizing. See philosophein
philosophoi andres, 43–44; in Heraclitus,

(philosophizing)

38, 62–64, 107; and polymathy, 38; and philosophoi (phi los o phers): Anaxagoreans

Pythagorean practice, 38, 58
as, 170–71; Aristotle’s history of the,
philosophoi- kings, 223, 250–56

276–80; Aristotle’s use of term, 160–61;
philosophos (as word), 25; applied to
and the “art of words, ” 167–68, 170–72,

Athenians, 190; competition for label or

179–80, 203–4; and aspiration to being identification with, 28–39; conceptual
sophos, 64–65, 72, 105, 111–12, 131,
continuity of, 222–23, 232; connotations

146–47; and civic or po liti cal engagement,
of ( see connotations of philosophos); and

104–5, 128, 146–47, 168, 189, 210–11, cultivation of one’s intellect, 131–32, 134,

213, 215 ( see also advice); as comedic

149–50, 153, 157, 171, 178, 190, 201, 221,
figures, 290, 297–98; competition among

300, 306, 307; Hellenistic culture and, ( see competition); and conversationality

291–97; ironical or sarcastic use of, 64; ( see conversation); as criminal ele ment

“lover of wisdom” as gloss of, 66; as nar-
spreading corruption, 159, 165–66, rowly specific term with infrequent use,

183n66; and deductive reasoning, 177;

127; as nebulous term, 61; as neologism
as disreputable, 166–67, 178–80, 206–7,
in need of explanation or definition, 73;

210; earliest application or attestation of
and “not - sophos” definition, 19, 22, 24,
term, 3, 37; and emulation of sophoi, 1,

122; Pythagoras and use of, 3–5, 8–14,

71, 128, 150; as identifiable social group,

16–25, 71–73, 107, 256; related words (see

5, 166–67, 170–71, 176–77, 189, 203–4, philosophos- group words; phil- prefixed

211, 234–35, 252, 271–72, 306, 310–11; as terms); and sage advice about good life,

384 I N DEX
philosophos (as word) (cont.)

nal component, 105; and lack of literally-

127–28; as self- appellation or self-
referred-to object, 105; morphosemantics
identification, 45, 63–64, 72–73, 260;
and, 249; and Mycenaean pi- ro words, 27, shift in meaning of, 146–47, 157–58, 190;

89–90; as name- calling names, 255–56; Socrates and self- attribution as, 186–90;
and negative connotations, 27, 76–77, 78,

Socrates as, 156–57, 178, 190; Socrates

82, 105, 246–47, 253–56; as other- applied, on, 232

80, 84–88, 105, 108; and personal name philosophos- group words: Alexis and deri-formation, 88–89; and positive con-
sion, 297–300; Antisthenes and, 197–98, notations, 89, 246–47; in pre- classical

200; Aristophanes and philosophon in

Greek, 83–88; and punning in Hesiod,

Ecclesiazusae, 147–48; broad geographic

85; Socrates and examples as glosses on
currency of, 291–97; chronology of use
philosophia, 253–56
of, 62–63; and entertainment or diversion,

Phlius: as hometown of Pythagoreans,

182–85; Gorgias and single use in Helen

20n53; as setting for Pythagoras story, 4,
of, 143–44; Herodotus and singular, spe-

13–14, 17–19, 119–21
cific use of, 131–32; Lysias and persuasive

Phocylides, 44
problem- solving, 149; in Odysseus attrib-

Phrynis, 280
uted to Alcidamas, 209; and peculiarity
phusiologia, 269, 273–74, 279
or abnormality, 149; per sis tence of, 217;

Physics (Alcidamas), 268
in Plato, 238–39, 241, 257; Plato and shift Physics (Aristotle), 273n42, 276, 280–81,
in meaning of philosophia, 221–22; Plato

309
and sparing use of, 190, 197, 230–31,

Pindar, 289; and maxims, 98, 101–3; phil-

238–39, 241, 257; Pythagoreans linked prefixed terms in, 83–87, 90n77; sophos to, 70–71, 105–6, 107, 122–24; and self-in, 93, 98–101, 289
improvement, 238–39; and specificity,

Pittacus, 69, 100n118, 101–3, 129, 229, 263

131–32, 149; Thucydides and po liti cal Placita Philosophorum (Aëtius), untrans-orientation of, 132–35; use as narrow and
lated text, 323
infrequent, 27–28, 74n23, 127, 131–33, Plato: and “appropriation” of term philoso-

186, 191; in Xenophon’s Symposium,
phos, 23, 256–59; and commonplace view

182–86. See also specific words
of philosophia, 246; and continuity of
philosophy. See philosophia (philosophy)

philosophia, 222–23; etymologies and

Philosophy of the Greeks and Its Histori-
reconstruction of, 222–23, 250, 258, 289;
cal Development (Zeller), 21
and expansion of philosophy, 259; and
philotoioutos, 74–77, 82
history of philosophy, 270; and innova-
phil- prefixed terms, 27, 31; and acquain-
tion or revision of philosophia, 221–22;
tance or familiarity, 26–27, 87; and and philosophia as discipline, 222; and
ambivalence, 78; Aristophanes and
philosophia as universally normative
name- calling, 22–23, 27, 39n6, 89–93, activity, 259; philosophos as used by, 2,

306; Aristotle’s theory of, 73–83; Burkert

29–30, 190–92, 256, 272; and redemption on, 22–23, 26–27; and caricature, 87; and of philosophia, 25, 29–30, 221; reluctance desire or affection, 80–81; and deviation
to associate term with Socrates, 158,
from social norms, 87–88, 105, 107; and

190–93; and retrojection of philosophia
excessive or abnormal attitude, 76–77,
as term, 246; and sophos lineages, 270.

90–92, 254–55; and friendship, 80;

See also under specific works
and identity relationships, 242–43; and

“Platon oder Pythagoras” (Burkert), 21–23
idiosyncratic be hav ior, 74–77, 155; and

“play, ” 86–87
intensification, 68n3; and lack of attitudi-

Plutarch, 155, 159, 169, 264

I N DEX 385
poetry, 100; Aristotle on, 271, 275; in at Pythagoras or pollôn histores, 40–41;

Charmides, 224–26; and devotion to the
and philomathia, 254–55; and philosophoi

Muses, 236; as discipline, 283–85, 318;
andres, 38; and politics, 175; Pythagoras
phil- prefixed epithets and poetic usage,
and, 38–41, 58; and “research,” 41, 47–49;

83, 87; poets as incapable of self- exegesis,
in Rival Lovers, 310–11; and wisdom,

226n10; poiêtikos as expertise, 225–26,

48–50, 62, 110–11

229; Solon as poet, 132n21, 224; sophos as popu lar perceptions of philosophoi, 8–9, 38, poetic skill, 100; Xenophanes as poet, 40

105, 166–67, 174, 182, 288, 302, 305. See Polemarchus, 239–40
also under comedies
po liti cal advice, 24, 27, 129, 175, 213; in

“possession,” 86

Aristophanes, 102n125, 128, 147–48; and Praeparatio evangelica (Eusebius), untrans-coinage of philosophos, 104; Ionians and
lated text, 326
sage po liti cal advisors, 40, 103, 129n6; Preface to St. Jerome’s Chronicle (Eusebius),

Pythagoras and, 24, 108–11; Seven Sages untranslated text, 326–27
and, 102–3; Socrates as uninvolved in,
prob lem solving, 149; Lysias and personal,

185–86; of sophoi, 99–100

149; medical diagnosis as, 136; philoso-
politics: advisory role in, 128, 175 (see
phein as dithering, 134, 298–99; philoso-also sophoi as po liti cal advisors under
phia as simplistic or imprecise, 137–38,
this heading); education as preparation

298; philosophos and, 104. See also advice for, 175; investigation and discussion

Prodicus, 139n40, 165, 175, 183, 185, 211,
of, 127–28; Isocrates and pedagogy for

229n15
po liti cal speech- making, 210–16; legisla-
professionalism, 18, 184; - istês suffix and tion, 69, 103, 172, 185, 212; Pericles and indication of, 7n15; philosophoi as profes-rhe toric as po liti cal instrument, 168–69;
sional class, 23–24, 204–6, 211; Plato and philosophein and po liti cal deliberation,
formulation of philosophy as discipline,

132–35; philosophia and po liti cal speech,

23, 29–30; professional vs. sophos as title,

150, 210–17; philosophia and preparation

97, 102. See also expertise
for legislation, 185; and “philosophizing

“profit,” 87
philosophy,” 171–76; philosophoi and,
prognostication, 12, 14, 112, 141–42, 144,

210–211; philosophoi- kings, 223, 250–56;

169–70, 210
and polarized debates, 303; and pollôn

Prometheus, 67, 99n109, 116n46, 278n55
histores as judges, 59–60; and Prodicus’s

Protagoras (Plato), 29–30, 94–95, 99n109,

“straddling class,” 211; socio- political

101, 206, 262–63, 273, 311
contexts of Pythagorean movement in

Protagoras of Abdera, 12n34, 68n1, 146n66, Magna Graeca, 108; Solon and, 129–30;

160nn9–10, 164, 175, 183–84, 191n76,
sophoi as po liti cal advisors, 6, 69–70,

211–12, 226, 262nn4–5, 267, 269–71; and

146–50, 167
philosophical conversation, 228–31
pollôn histôr: in Heraclitus, 45, 50–52, Protarchus, 245

58–61, 63; and legal or po liti cal decision protreptics: and adaptation of Pythagoras
making, 59; and polymathy, 40–41, 45, story to goals, 19; and ambivalence

58, 60–61; Pythagoras as, 58–61
toward philosophia, 288–90; Aristotle’s

Polus of Acragas, 171

“perfect protreptic argument,” 306–12;
polymathy: as bad pedagogy, 38–39, 49, 50;
audience for, 259, 287–89; Heraclides and as beginning point, 50; as collection and
protreptic goals, 15–16, 19, 288–89, 302, collation of research, 40–41; in Heracli-

304–5; as intrinsic to philosophia, 290,
tus, 26, 38–41, 45–58, 62–63, 261–62; as

316; in medical texts, 15–16, 288–89, 302,
inadequate, 47, 51–57; as insult directed

304–5; and public as unsympathetic to

386 I N DEX
protreptics (cont.)

ras story, untranslated texts, 321–29; as
philosophia, 288–89; and redemption of
wonderworker, 141
philosophoi, 25

Pythagoreans, 270; Aristotle on, 117–22, 279; Protrepticus (Aristotle), 30–32, 80n36; conversation or speech as impor tant to,

Cicero and, 121; as evidence for Pythago-

123; in Dissoi Logoi, 114; and distinc-
ras story, via Iamblichus, 117–22, 290–91,
tive way of life, 14n38, 116; doctrines of,

303–5; and “perfect protreptic argument,”

according to Dicaearchus, 14n38; and

306–12; and “self- contradiction” genre,
emotional control, 202; Empedocles as

290–91
representative of, 140–43; and emulation

Protrepticus (Iamblichus), 119–20; untrans-of Sophoi, 71; as group named philoso-
lated text, 325
phoi, 105–8, 122–24; and idiosyncratic prudence, 167
be hav ior, 10, 116; and mathe matics,
punctuation and meaning, 18–19, 115n44, 152

116; as pedagogues, 114; as philosophoi
purification: philosophia and, 182–85,

(phi los o phers), 6–9, 19, 24–27, 37–38,

196–97, 201, 245; of the self, 8, 15, 108,

58, 106, 116, 152, 170, 196, 202, 215, 262,

114–15, 182–84

270, 276, 279, 300; and philosophos as pre-Pythagoras: as aggrandizing, 112; in Alci-
existing term, 25–26; Phlius as hometown
damas, 115–16; as ambitious or egotisti-
of, 20n53; Plato and group identification
cal, 22, 71–72; in Antisthenes, 114; and of, 116; polymathy and, 116, 262; and aspiration to status of sophos, 111–12;
self- identification as philosophoi, 25; and
and association with Seven Sages, 68–69,
silence, 123; and striving for sophos status,

112, 117; as autopolybiographer, 12–13; as

71; as target of phil- prefixed name- calling,
charismatic and beloved teacher, 116; and

70–71, 105–6, 122–24; as two groups, 116
coinage of philosophos, 22, 71, 256; as controversial thinker, 22; and conversation, 108, 114; Croton as adopted home
quacks, 184n68
of, 107–9; and cult associations, 108, Quakers, 1

112–13; Egyptian influence and, 113–15; qualitative vs. quantitative shifts in insight, 45
in Empedocles, 111–12, 141; as fraud or qualities, bad, 82n43, 251, 254n51, 314
impostor, 38–39, 61–62, 109n10, 111; in queer activists, 1

Heraclitus, 38–39, 61; in Herodotus, 113; questions: asked of Pythagoras, 13, 24,
and hubris, 70; and idiosyncratic be hav-

120–21; asked of Solon, 130, 135; asked ior, 10, 40, 107, 116; in Ion of Chios, 112; of oneself, 228; and historia, 60n63;
in Isocrates, 114–15; and Leon, 14, 24;
investigated in philosophia, 30, 311;
memory and, 12–13, 71; and miracle-prompting gnomic explanations of philos-
mongering, 274, 279; “not- sophos” expla-
ophia, 201, 203; Socrates’s, 23, 223–24,
nation and, 19, 22, 24, 122; and pedagogy,

226n10, 228; “What is philosophy?,” 32;

121–22; as philosophos, 71, 107; in Plato’s

“What is x?,” 136, 313; in Xenophon’s

Republic, 116–17; po liti cal influence of, Oeconomicus, 187–88

107–10, 113, 115; and polymathy as path quickness of judgment, 144–47, 204
to wisdom, 110–11; and reincarnation,

Quintilian, 3–4; Institutes of Rhe toric,

4n9, 12–13, 113; reputation of, 21, 40, untranslated text, 322

72, 110–17; as “researcher, ” 110–11; self-appellation as philosophos, 24, 72–73,

110, 117–18, 122; as sophos, 115–16; as reincarnation: resurrection and return from
target of name- calling, 71; travels of, 72,

Hades, 15n41. See also metempsychosis

109, 113–15, 121; versions of Pythago-Reinhardt, Karl, 46–47

I N DEX 387

Republic (Plato), 116–17; and etymologies of research and preparedness for, 143, 208;
philosophia, 222; philosophos in, 222; re-rhetorical contexts of philosophia, 28;
semanticizing of philosophos in, 250–56

Socrates and, 232, 240–41, 254; technical reputation, 109n13; of Anaxagoras, 162–64;
rhe toric as philosophia, 215n47
modesty and sophos, 95–96; peril caused

Rhe toric (Aristotle), 75, 77, 255
by envy, 159; philosophoi as disreputable,

Riedweg, Christoph, 19n51, 25n67, 68n3,

166–67, 178–80, 206–7, 210; and philoso-

131n15, 158n4
phos as charge, 159–64; phil- prefixed Rival Lovers (Plato), 30, 290–91, 310–16
terms related to, 254–55; of Pythagoras,

Robert, Louis, 292–95

21, 40, 72, 116–17; Socrates on his own, Robinson, Thomas, 42, 47–48, 205–6

188–89, 190–91
research, 26; and abstraction, 51, 207–8;
as beginning point, 50; Clement on
sages. See Seven Sages; sophoi (sages or
research as essential practice, 26, 48n35;
wise people)

connotations of, 64–65; and direct expe-

“sage- wannabes,” 1, 7, 105
rience, 46; as hearsay, 60; Heraclitus on,

Samos, 103; as home of Pythagoras,

38–39, 48n35, 62–63, 261–62; historia as,

19–20n53, 103, 108n6, 112, 113

58–60; as hubris, 105; learning as pleas-Sandanis of Lydia, 129
ur able, 186–87; limitations of relying on,
sapientes, 13, 67; philosophoi as replace-

51–57, 60, 172–75; and “love of wisdom,”

ment for, 67

48–49, 62; and oratory, 143; over-sarcasm, 58, 64, 300
dependence on books, 173–75; philoso-

Satyrus, 141
phein and, 135; philosophos and inquiry,

“Sayings of the Seven Sophoi” (Demetrius),

128; polymathy and, 40–41, 47–49, 261–

95–96

62; practical prob lem solving and, 136,

“self- contradiction” genre, 290–91

142, 149; as purported path to wisdom,
self- discipline: and self- knowledge, 314–415;

110–11; Pythagoras as “inquirer,” 39n29; as virtue, 102. See also discipline of the self
and self- improvement, 318; Socrates and,
self- improvement, 72, 108–9, 174, 221, 256,

162, 172–73; and sophia, 205–6

257, 271, 314, 316, 318; conversation and, resemanticizing of philosophos, 250–56

223–28, 244–46; learning as pleas ur-retrojection, errors of, 1, 21, 24–25, 62, 93, able, 186–87; and modification of desire,

108, 246, 256

20, 194, 196, 200; Phaedo of Elis and, rhe toric: Alcidamas as rhetorician, 115,

195–97; as Pythagorean preoccupation,

140–41, 150, 206–9, 268; and Anaxago-

195–97, 209; value of moderate effort rean pedagogy, 168–70; Antisthenes and,
and, 259

199–201; and competition among philoso-
selfishness, 80, 81n41
phoi, 194; as defensive instrument, 149,
self- knowledge, 52, 56–57, 97, 261, 270;

200; Empedocles and, 141, 206, 278n59;

“know yourself” as maxim, 226n12, 230,
extemporaneous, 194, 206–9; Gorgias

295, 296n25
and, 143–47, 200–201, 206; and memory, self- reliance, 46–47, 108, 197, 201

205–6; in non- Academic philosophy, 194; self- sufficiency, 201

Pericles as perfect in, 168–69; persuasion

Seven Sages (Seven Sophoi): Babylonian
and, 201; and philosophia, 145–46, 150,
precursors for, 8, 94, 98–99, 104; Cicero

166, 172, 200, 208, 232, 256; in Plato’s and association of Pythagoras with, 68;

Phaedrus, 223, 231–32; as po liti cal competition and status of, 95; dating of,
instrument, 168–69, 186, 200; Pythago-

94–95; Diodorus on, 68–69; as distinct ras or Pythagoreans and, 108, 141, 206; group, 67, 103–4, 129; and expertise, 104;

388 I N DEX

Seven Sages (Seven Sophoi) (cont.)

on sophoi, 167; as sophos, 175; in Xe-geo graph i cal distribution of, 102–4; in
nophon, 162–64; Zopyrus and physiog-

Heraclitus, 102; in Iamblichus, 121–22;
nomic assessment of, 195
and innate wisdom, 100–101; as legend-

Solon, 69, 71, 96–98, 100n118, 102–3, ary figures, 67, 69, 94, 98–99, 103–4,

224–25, 313, 327; in Herodotus, 127–32;

277–79; origin of concept, 98–99; in in Xenophon’s Symposium, 185–86

Pindar, 95, 98–101; in Plato’s Protagoras, soph- compounds: coinage patterns of,

94–95; as po liti cal advisors, 102–3; as

66, 104; and etymology of philosophos,
precursors of philosophoi, 67–71; Pythag-

26–27, 66, 104; and sophoi, 93–96; and oras and association with, 68–69, 112,
synecdoche, 123

117; Pythagoras on sophos as descriptor
sophia (wisdom): abstraction and, 275–76; for, 68–70, 72; and rejection of sophos as as clarity, 276; and research, 205–6; and descriptor, 69–70; social role of, 6, 96–97; sophos as linked terms, 17, 94, 97
and sophos as laudable status, 94–96; and sophistai, 7; in Cratinus, 265; in Dissoi sophos lineage, 261; as trope, 103–4; in Logoi, 114; in Herodotus, 113, 128–29,

Zeno of Rhodes, 99–100

132, 135–36; philosophoi as subset of, Shakers, 1

211; Seven Sages in Isocrates as, 96n93

Sicyon, 19–20n53, 31. See also Phlius sophoi (sages or wise people): in Aristotle’s

Sicyon- version author, 17, 19, 122; as pre-Metaphysics, 273–76; aspiration to status de ces sor or con temporary of Heraclides,
of, 72, 105, 111–12; competition with the,

117; as pre- existing narrative of Pythago-

261–62; contrasted with philosophoi, 223;
ras story, 19–20

Diodorus on Pythagoras’s use of, 69–70;
silver, 88, 97, 304; as white in color, 302, as divine, 18, 165, 237–38, 265; and ety-

304
mology of philosophos, 27, 93–94, 104–5; Simmias of Thebes, 267–68
as experts, 68, 93–94, 96–97, 101–2, 328;

Simonides, 87, 93, 229–30, 239–40, 254n50; as group term in Pindar, 95, 98–101; in Ode to Scopas, 101–2; and sophos as Heraclitus, 104; Hippias and, 262–67; specific expertise, 101–2
as inappropriate term for mortals, 18,

Simon the Shoemaker, 153–55

69–70; as legendary figures, 67, 98–99, Simus, 299

103–4; lineages of, 19, 261–68, 270, 289; skepticism, 46–47
as pejorative term, 165; philosophizing

“smiling” as epithet, 85
as activity of, 128–32; poiêtai as, 273–75;

Smith, Justin E. H., 318
and po liti cal involvement, 70, 263–64;

Socrates: and accusations of philosophiz-

Pythagoras on, 18; ranking of, 96, 265;
ing, 158, 165–67; and agriculture as and “research,” 131–32; the Seven Sophoi
philosophical matter, 186–89; Anax-

( see Seven Sages [Seven Sophoi]); as
agoras linked to, 159–65; biographical
sophistai, 265–66; as synonym for phi-sketch of, 197; and etymologies, 246–56, losophoi, 276–77; theologoi as, 272–75;

260; and expertise, 97, 263, 313–14; as as theorists of the number of “beings,”

failed commercial phi los o pher, 180–81;

271; travel as typical of, 40, 100n118, 105,
on his own reputation, 188–91; as model

113n34, 131–32, 160
of philosophical life, 28; on philosophia,
sophos anêr (wise man), 129n9; Socrates’s

256–57; and philosophia’s value, 313–14;
rejection of the appellation, 157–58
as philosophos, 67, 180–82, 186–89; and sophos (as word), 27; and advice for living,
protreptics, 259; and rejection of appella-

93; as despecialized or generalized in
tion sophos anêr (wise man), 156–57; and
meaning, 60, 93–94, 128n4; and philoso-self- attribution as philosophos, 186–89; phos as “not - sophos,” 19, 22, 24, 122;

I N DEX 389
philosophos as replacement for, 68–70;
swarm, of sophia, 264–65
pre- classical uses of, 96–104; Pythago-

Symposium (Plato): and etymologies of
ras’s use of, 328; radical change in use of,
philosophia, 222, 246–50; philosophos

60, 93–94, 97–98; Seven Sages as only in, 222
application for description as, 18, 69–70;

Symposium (Xenophon): philosophia as
and sophia as linked terms, 17, 94, 97; as instruction in clever speech, 182–86

“technically skilled,” 93–94, 96, 100
synecdoche, 254

Sosiades, 292–95
systematization, 50, 53–54, 64, 132, 266, 317

Sosicrates of Rhodes, 3–4, 9–10, 13, 16–19,

21, 289; Successions, untranslated text,

321

“taming,” 202
soul: and afterlife in Tartarus or Hades,

Tartarus, 139

139, 265–66; conversation and revelation temporality: diachronic conversation in Ar-of the, 224–25; cultivation of the, 212,
istotle, 271–73; philosophia as synchronic

224, 234, 309–10; Egyptian concept of, before Aristotle, 269–70; “quickness,”

113–14, 212; excess as damaging to the,

143–48, 204–5, 231; timeliness of action,

313; and observation of real ity, 234, 237;

133–34
philopsuchos and, 81–82; philosophia

Thales of Miletus, 3, 8, 30, 128, 167, 261,
and purification of the, 15–17, 182–83,

263–65; as autodidact, 100n118; as first to

200–202; psuchê as alternative to nous, be proclaimed Sophos, 94–95; as “initia-

168n37; Pythagoras and metempsychosis,
tor” of philosophia, 276–78, 281

12–14, 22, 71; Socrates on, 169, 232, 234,

Thargelia of Miletus, 263

237–38; soul- immortality as doctrine of
thatton de, translation of, 17n45

Pythagoreans, 4n9, 14n38, 71, 112–13,

Theaetetus (Plato), 191–92, 200–201, 270–71

117; as steadfast, in Herodotus, 198–99; Theagenes of Rhegium, 266

Thales’s view of, 277n45; thought as

Theodorus, 192
conversation within one’s, 201

Theognis, 93, 97

Sparta, 72, 103, 115, 185, 229–30, 264

Theogony (Hesiod), 39, 85

Spectacles of Truth (Nightingale), 23
theologoi, 273–76, 279–80

“spectation” ( theôria): as philosophical

“ things below the earth, ” 135n27, 138–40, activity, 4–5, 18, 21–22, 27–28, 119–20,

162, 165–66, 190–91, 301

132, 147, 252; phil- prefixed terms related Thrasyalkes of Thasos, 139, 302–4
to, 254–55

Thucydides, 24, 27, 31, 175, 247; and Anax-speech. See conversation; debate or public
agoras, 127–28, 167–68, 170; “beautify”

oratory
in, 133; defense of Athenian philosophein
speech act theory: Aristotle’s, 78–82; of
in, 132–35, 170, 256; Funeral Oration in, phil- prefixed names (see phil- prefixed

127, 132–35, 168, 215, 235, 256
terms); of proper names, 88–90

Timaeus (Plato), 116n46

Stesimbrotus of Thasos, 154

Timaeus of Tauromenium, 11, 21n55, 68n5,

Stobaeus, 39n6, 200–202, 292, 294; untrans-

81n41, 111n23, 140–42
lated text, 323–24

Timotheus, 280–81

“strangers,” 86

To Demonicus (Isocrates), 212

Strasbourg papyrus, 31

To Nicocles (Isocrates), 212

Strepsiades, 138–39
translation issues, 13–14, 17n45, 21, 47n30,

“striving for wisdom, ” 21–22

52n46, 58–59, 62, 68

Stromata (Clement), untranslated text, 324
travel, as typical of sophoi, 40, 100n118,

Suda, 151–52, 155

105, 113n34, 131–32, 160

390 I N DEX
trial and error, 48

205, 214; Pythagoras and Pythagoreans
trials, legal, 51, 159n8, 190; and enthusiasm as notably committed to, 109, 114–15; for jury duty, 90–93
sôphrosunê (discipline of the self), 102,

Troy/Trojans, 86, 143, 266, 327

195n1, 199, 223–25, 239, 256–57; and trust, 85; misplaced, 111, 296n24
striving for honor, 77; teachability of,
truth: discovery of, 232, 237, 242, 252–53,

153, 187, 210–11, 228–29

280–81, 284, 318–19; persuasiveness and,

144; philosophoi’s orientation toward,

4–5, 18, 22, 80n36, 120, 145–46, 202,

“war,” 86–87

204, 211, 214

Wasps (Aristophanes), 22, 39n6, 90–93, 306
tuition, 165, 172, 180–81, 183, 212, 264
weakness or softness, philosophein and,

Tusculan Disputations (Cicero), untrans-

132–34
lated text, 321–22
wealth, 75, 86, 98, 120, 130, 133, 197, 199; tyrants, 20n53, 69, 102n125, 103n126, 108; and origin of philosophia, 317; philosophy
as lowest kind of life, 235; “sage advisor
as lucrative profession ( see commercial
of tyrants” trope, 24, 102–3; sophoi and philosophy)

“chosen,” 103n126. See also Leon of

White, Mary, 31

Phlius
white, as color of silver, 302, 304
wine: “lovers or friends” of, 248; phil-
prefixed terms related to, 254

Valerius Maximus, 3–4, 71; Memorable wisdom: Cicero on, 67; direct experience

Deeds and Sayings, untranslated text, 322
and, 46–47, 70–71; as “education,”

value of philosophy, 25–26, 313–16, 315–16;

229–30; in Heraclitus, 49–50; love of Aristophanes and, 148; in Cicero, 67; as

( see “love of wisdom”); and polymathy
commercial product ( see commercial
or “research, ” 48–50, 62, 110–11; of Seven philosophy); as debatable, 310, 318; as

Sages, 100–101
immortalizing or soul purifying, 182–85,
wise advisor trope, 24

196–97, 200–201, 245; as object of Anti-women: in Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae,
sthenes’s concern, 197–202; as object of

127, 147–48; Diotima’s gloss on philoso-Socrates’s concern, 191; as path to flour-
phia, 250; as histores, 59–60; Pantheia ishing and virtue, 29, 148, 172, 180–81,
of Acragas (“the unbreathing woman”),

212, 222–23, 259, 318; as preparation for

11–12
death, 195; as preparation for politics
won der, 7, 140, 192, 279, 317
or legislation, 172, 175; and prosperous

Works and Days (Hesiod), 39; 792–93, 59
cities, 134; protreptics and ac cep tance of,

290, 312; to rulers, 70, 212, 235, 250–56

( see also po liti cal advice; politics)

Xanthus of Lydia, 141n52, 262n4, 268n29
van der Eijk, Philip, 15

Xenophanes of Colophon, 102, 279, 281; in vegetarianism, 10, 14n38, 71

Plato, 270; as polymath, 38, 40, 111, 262;

Verdenius, W. J., 46n29, 57n54, 169n38
on Pythagoras, 110
virtue: - aretê as second ele ment of phil-

Xenophon, 28, 31, 40, 50, 150, 154nn87–88,
prefixed word, 74–75; and competition

160, 162–64, 300; and disreputable peda-among the sophoi, 95–96; conversation
gogy of philosophoi, 175–76, 178–80; and conducive of, 29, 222; and flourishing
exclusion of Socrates from the philoso-
as goal of philosophia, 29, 148, 172, phoi, 171, 176–77, 180–82, 185–86, 189,

180–81, 212, 222–23, 318; as instrument

267–68; and philosophoi and abstract
of sophoi, 74–75; linked with sophia, deductive reasoning, 177; and philosophoi

I N DEX 391
and the “art of words, ” 167–68, 170–72,

121; Socrates’s trial for corruption of,

203–4; and philosophoi as group identity,

160, 165–66, 183n66, 190, 213; study of

171–72, 177; and philosophy as a disci-astronomy and geometry by, 114
pline, 267–69; and phil- prefixed words,

247, 254; and “purified souls,” 182–83; Socrates in, 157–58

Zaleucus, 109

Zalmoxis, 15n42, 108–9, 113

Zeller, Eduard, 21, 23
youth: immaturity and excess of, 76–77,

Zeno of Elea, 22, 51, 141, 143, 150–53,

179, 211; philosophein as activity of, 134,

160n10, 211, 244, 267–70, 278n59, 279

302, 309–10; and philosophoi, 178, 250;

Zeno of Rhodes, 99–100
phil- prefixed terms related to boys, 254;

Zopyrus, 9n18
influence of Pythagoras on, 109, 115,

Zopyrus (Phaedo of Elis), 195–97

INDEX LOCORUM

Aeschylus

Assemblywomen
fr. 326a.14: 6n14

(Ecclesiazusae)

Seven against Thebes

212–38: 147n67

45: 87n64

441–53: 147n67

Suppliant Maidens

560–67: 147n67

485: 6n14

571–80: 147–48

770: 96n94

Birds

803: 88n69

689–91: 139n40

Aëtius

1009: 278n57

1.3.7: 4n5, 323

Clouds

2.13: 10n28

94–97: 144n6

4.4.7: 12n34

180: 278n57

5.25.3: 12n34

187–94: 139

Alexander of Aphrodisias

225: 164n32,

Commentary on Aristotle’s Topics

188n73

149,15: 307

333: 43–44

On Fate

358: 148n68

6: 195

412: 25n67, 43–44

Ambrose of Milan

423: 43–44

On Abraham the Patriarch

478–80: 300n35

2.7.37: 4n5, 256, 327

512: 148–49n70

Ammonius

1161: 148–49n70

Commentary on Porphyry’s

1169: 148–49n70

Introduction

Frogs

Proem 9.7–9, 16–18: 328–29

280–82: 77n31

Anacreon

1032–36: 265n21
fr. 72.2: 97n98

Knights
fr. 100D.3: 87n64

787: 148n68

Apuleius

Wasps

Apologia

71–90: 91

4.7: 4n5, 323–24

439: 43n18

26.4: 15–16n42

1174–87: 39n6

Florida

1526: 148n68

4.5: 323–24

Women at the Thesmophoria

15: 108

(Thesmophoriazusae)

15.22: 323–24

383–84: 77n31

Aristophanes

Aristotle

Acharnians

Constitution of the Athenians

168: 43n18

11: 130n10

394 I N DEX

LOCORU M

On Generation and Corruption

1169b27–1170b4: 82

325a20–23: 304n47

1175a14: 256n54

On the Heavens (De Caelo)

On Poets

279b7–12: 282n72
fr. 1: 141n50

294a28– b6: 277n54
fr. 3: 278n57

Metaphysics

On the Soul (De Anima)

982a8–13: 275–76

405a19: 264n15, 277–78n54

982b29–983a11: 162n20

405b2: 277–78n54

983b2: 276

Parts of Animals

983b6: 277

640a5: 152n82

983b20: 277

677a6–12: 171n45

984a4: 277–78n54

Physics

984b15: 163n25

184b15: 273n42

984b18–19: 277n52

206a12–14: 282n72

984b23–985a10: 277n52

Poetics

985a6: 280n65

1451b1–7: 275n46

985b23: 279

Politics

985b23–986a2: 279n61

1263b2: 82n43

986b18–28: 279n60

1274b18: 103n126

986b21: 279n60

1285a30: 103n126

986b27: 273n42

1285a35–39: 103n127

993a16: 276

1315b10–21: 19–20n53

993a35: 280

1316a30–31: 19–20n53

993b1: 280

Posterior Analytics

993b3: 280

79a5: 275n47

993b12–14: 280–81

Rhe toric

994a22–23: 122n58

1363a37– b3: 75

995a24– b4: 282n72

1371b20–21: 82n43

Meteorology

1373b6–17: 142n54

347a6–8: 277n53

1381b27: 77n30

353a34- b1: 277n53

1387b32–34: 255

Nicomachean Ethics

1389b32: 82

1099a7–13: 74

1398b: 268n31

1099a10: 255n53

1398b11–16: 115n43, 115n44, 268n31

1106b28–31: 69n7

1398b17–20: 115n44

1108b29–1109a5: 77

1398b30–32: 304n42

1118b21–27: 76

1406b: 198n7

1125b14–18: 77

Sophist

1125b18–25: 77
fr. 1: 151n49

1141a15: 97n97

Sophistical Refutations

1141b2–8: 167

171b26: 80n37

1142b34–1143a18: 103n129

183b29: 278

1150a31: 134n24

183b37–184a1: 205n33

1155a29: 77n30

184b27: 282

1155a34: 77n30

Topics

1156a7: 304n48

100b21–23: 282n72

1168a28–1169b2: 80

101a36– b4: 282n72

1168a28–30: 80n38

104a8–15: 282n72

I N DEX LOCORU M 395

105a34– b18: 282n72

15.13.3: 10n23

149a7: 304n46

15.27.2: 10n23

Aspasius

16.2.6: 10n23

Commentary on Aristotle’s

16.11.3: 10n23

Nicomachean Ethics

16.12: 10n23

91,10: 76n28

Letters to His Brother Quintus

116,27–117,18: 76n33

3.5.1: 10n23

Athenaeus

On Invention

The Learned Banqueters

2.2.6–7: 282

(Deipnosophistai)

Republic

1.6d: 76n29

3.11.19: 142n54

4.54.29: 268n29

Tusculan Disputations

4.163f: 4n7

1.48.116: 207n35

5.220c: 229n15

3.28.69: 281n70

6.235a: 295n20

5.3.8: 67

6.263f: 4n7

5.3.8–9: 4n5, 13–14, 321

10.422c: 4n7

5.3.9: 10n29

10.714: 252n48

5.4.10: 118n48

13.589: 154n89

Clement of Alexandria

13.592: 207n35

Stromata

13.602c: 155n97

1.14.59.1: 324

13.603a– b: 254n50

1.14.61.4: 324

13.608f: 263n9

1.15.58.3: 15–16n42

13.610b: 39n7

1.15.72.5: 295n22

14.620: 141n46

1.21.129.3–4: 278n57

15.668e: 155n97

1.25.1: 97n97

Augustine of Hippo

1.61.4: 4n5

City of God

1.63: 159n6

8.2: 4n5, 328

1.93.1: 39n7

On the Trinity

1.129.4: 95n92

14.1.2: 4n5, 327

2.20.107.2–3: 198n10

2.21.130.3: 10n27

4.9.1: 324

Bacchylides

4.50.2: 58n58

3.69: 248n44

5.59.5: 58n58

9.44: 59

5.140.6: 37

10.37–45: 97n98

6.15.1–2: 265

13.164: 43n21

6.18.5: 307

6.30.1: 12n33

6.32.2: 155n94

Celsus

On Medicine

2.6: 12n34

De mos the nes
proem 7–9: 15n40

[Eroticus]

Cicero

4.5: 198n7

Letters to Atticus

Orations

13.19.4: 10n23

4.5: 198n7

15.4.3: 10n23

18.289–90: 69n7

396 I N DEX

LOCORU M

Diodorus Siculus

1.85: 103n127

Library of History

1.88: 103n127

5.55–57: 99n110

1.92: 254–55n52

5.57.1: 98–99n107

1.99: 103n126

5.80: 4n7

1.116: 112n26

9 fr. 1: 71n13

1.122: 264n15

9 fr. 1–5: 68–69, 69n8

1.124: 264n15

9 fr. 4: 71n14

2.6: 155n95, 159n5, 169n40

9 fr. 6–7: 70n10

2.6–7: 167n35

9 fr. 9–15: 70n11

2.7: 158n5

9 fr. 24–25: 70n11

2.10–11: 170

9 fr. 31–32: 69n8, 70n11

2.12: 164n32

9 fr. 38–39: 70n11

2.13: 158n5

9 fr. 1.2: 132n21

2.16: 160n11

9 fr. 4.2: 132n21

2.20: 158n5

10 fr. 4: 112n26

2.23: 160n12

10 fr. 24: 4n5, 68–69

2.39: 17n45

12.20.1: 109n12

2.44: 158–59n5

12.39: 168n36

2.46: 278n57

12.53: 143n60

2.48: 154n87, 154n88, 268n29

13.83.1: 12n33

2.60: 154n87

Diogenes Laertius

2.68: 203n25

Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers

2.71: 313n60

1.1–11: 8n17

2.85: 305n49

1.2: 262n4

2.105: 154n92, 195n1

1.5: 112n29

2.120: 17n45

1.12: 4n5, 5n4, 10n29, 16–17, 21, 22, 2.121–25: 153n85

68n5, 128n4, 261n3, 265, 324

2.123: 154n87

1.13: 109n8, 112n26, 264n15

2.125: 268n30

1.16: 152n80, 161n18

2.139: 17n45

1.22: 95n88, 278n57

3.4: 312n58

1.23: 278n57

3.24: 304n42

1.24: 278n57, 300n34

3.25: 270n37

1.25: 263n11

3.35: 154n87

1.27–33: 70n10

3.38: 154n87

1.29: 278n57

3.46: 9n19

1.29–30: 95n90

3.47–48: 154n87

1.30–31: 95–96

5.8: 171

1.31: 98

5.20: 201n18

1.40: 69n9, 103n129

5.39: 17n45

1.41–42: 131n18

5.80–81: 292n7

1.42: 112n26, 168n36

5.86: 9n19, 10n25

1.68: 103n128

5.86–88: 10n22

1.73: 103n128

5.87: 10n29, 261n3

1.74–76: 103n127

5.88: 10n25

1.76: 103n126

5.89: 9n21

1.79: 103n127

6.1: 200n14

I N DEX LOCORU M 397

6.2: 198n9, 200n14, 200n14–15, 305n49

9.37: 158–59n5, 312n58

6.3: 198n9

9.38: 114n37, 262n4

6.10: 198n9

9.46: 12n34

6.11–13: 198n7

9.52: 146n66

6.16: 195, 305n49

9.55: 12n34

6.56: 17n45

9.57: 159n5

6.63: 201n18

10.12: 160n11

6.90: 5n4

Dionysius Halicarnassus

6.103: 198n10

Isocrates

6.104: 198n9

1: 215n44

6.105: 198n9

Lysias

8.1: 20n53

3: 143n60

8.2: 113

Dissoi Logoi

8.2–3: 108n4

1.1: 204–5, 204n27, 206

8.3: 108n3, 109n12, 109n14

5–8: 204

8.4–5: 12n35

5.89: 9n21

8.5: 108n7, 140n45, 277n52

6.8: 205

8.8: 4, 68n4, 108n7, 112n28, 321

8: 266n24

8.11: 108n7

9.1: 205, 206

8.13: 108n7

9.1–2: 204n28

8.16: 109n12, 109n14

9.1–5: 205

8.21: 108n7

8.36: 110n15

8.46: 20n53

Epic Cycle

8.51: 10n29, 11n31

Cyrpria

8.52: 262n4
fr. 5.1: 85n55

8.54: 111n23, 140n46

“Homerus”

8.55: 140–41n46
fr. 2: 96n95

8.55–56: 141n47

Margites

8.56: 140–41n46, 268n32
fr. 2: 96

8.58: 141n51

Euripides

8.59: 142n53

Andromache

8.60: 10n29, 11, 108n6, 142n53

1080: 69n7

8.61: 142n53

Children of Heracles

8.62: 11n33, 142n53

20: 202n24

8.63: 262n4

Electra

8.63–72: 141n52

904: 88n79

8.66: 81n41
fragments

8.67–68: 11, 141n48, 142n53
fr. 183 ( Antiope): 254n51

8.69: 11n32
fr. 282.23 ( Autolycus): 43n21

8.72: 21n55
fr. 542.1 ( Oedipus): 304n46

8.83: 138n36
fr. 574 ( Oenomaus): 304n46

9.1: 37n3, 39n7
fr. 811 ( Phoenix): 138n36

9.18.11–12: 278n57
fr. 816.6 ( Phoenix): 82n42

9.20: 40n11
fr. 910 ( Antiope): 266n24

9.22: 261n3
fr. 913 (unknown play): 144n64

9.35: 163n24
fr. 935 ( Alexander): 248n44

398 I N DEX

LOCORU M

Hecuba

On the Natu ral Faculties (De facultatibus

9: 248n44
naturalibus)

348: 82n42

2.38.13: 268n29

428: 248n44

On Tremor, Palpitation, Spasm, and

Helen

Rigor (De tremor, palpatione, con-

1067: 69n7
vulsion et rigore)

1604: 43n18

6: 15n41

Hippolytus

Gorgias

680: 69n7

Funeral Oration

1445: 69n7
fr. 1: 74n24

Iphigenia among the Taurians

Helen

411: 88n71

13: 143–47

Iphigenia at Aulis

337–42: 77n31

527: 77n31

Heraclitus

Phoenician Women

B1/D1: 52, 55

198: 88n79

B2/D2: 40, 55

531–6: 77n31

B3/D89b: 51n41

597: 82n42

B9/D79: 49n36

[Rhesus]

B12/D65a: 51n41

932: 87n64

B17/D3: 44n29, 49, 50, 55

Eusebius

B18/D37: 48

Life of Constantine

B19/D5: 55

4.2.8: 6n13

B20/D118: 41n13

Preface to St. Jerome’s

B22/D39: 48–49

Chronicle

B24/Dd122a: 42n15

14.2–4: 4n5, 326–27

B25/D122b: 44n24

Preparation for the Gospel

B26/D71: 41n13

(Praeparatio evangelica)

B28/D19: 41n13, 58n60

10.4.12–13: 326

B29/D13: 58n58

10.14.3: 4n5

B30/D85: 42n15

B32/D45: 102n123

B34/D4: 55

Galen

B35/D40: 37–41, 44, 44n23, 45,

[History of Philosophy]

46, 47, 49, 50, 57–58, 58, 61, 63,

2: 10n28

63, 64

53: 159n6

B38: 261n1

On Affected Parts (De Locis

B39/D11: 103n127, 261n1
affectis)

B40/D20: 25, 38, 39, 42n15, 45, 47, 49,

6.5: 10n29, 11n32, 15n41

50, 63, 261n1

On Difficulties in Breathing (De

B41/D44: 49, 50, 63
difficultate resporationis)

B42/D21: 261n1

1.8: 10n29, 15n41

B43/D112: 57n57

On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and

B44/D106: 57n57

Plato (De placitis Hippocratis et

B48/D53: 51n41

Platonis)

B49a/R9: 51n51

9.6.54.5: 152n82

B51/D49: 42n15, 51n41

I N DEX LOCORU M 399

B52/D49: 51n41

1.74: 278n57

B52/D76: 51n41

1.75: 278n57

B54/D50: 49, 50

1.86.3: 131n19

B55/D31: 47

1.96–101: 129n5

B56/D22: 55, 261n1

1.120: 69n7

B57/D25a: 39–40, 47, 261n1

1.170: 103n127, 129n6, 129n8

B59/D52: 51n41

1.214.3: 43n18

B64/[27]D307: 39n6

2.20: 278n57

B65/[9]R104: 39n6

2.49: 43n21, 129n9

B71–75/D54–55: 55n50

2.53.2–3: 265n21

B80/D63: 57n54

2.81: 113

B81/D27: 39, 40, 58n60, 261n1

2.134: 155n96

B86/D38: 44n24

2.143: 40n10

B87/D8: 62n66

2.160: 95n88

B89/R56: 40, 55

2.174.1: 92n81

B93/D41: 47n31, 56

2.177.2: 130n11

B101a/D32: 46–47

3.25: 43n21

B101/D36: 56

3.54.4: 77n31

B105/D24: 261n1

3.85: 43n21

B106/D25b: 261n1

3.121.1: 109n9

B107/D33: 47n31, 49, 50

4.76.2: 131

B108/D43: 40, 49, 50

4.93–5: 113

B112/D114a + b: 49, 50

4.95: 14n38, 108n6

B114/D105: 49, 50, 57n57

5.23: 43n21

B116/D30: 56

5.36: 40n10

B122/D61: 42n15

5.95.2: 103n126

B123/D35: 48, 62n66

5.125–26: 40n10

B125/D59: 51n41

6.11: 134n24

B129/D26: 25, 39, 40, 42n15, 45, 47, 63, 6.65.2: 129n8

63, 261n1

6.106: 43n18

Hermias

6.126–30: 19–20n53

Commentary on Plato’s Phaedrus

7.130: 43n21

278b: 4n5, 328

7.221: 129n9

Herodotus

7.235.5: 129n8

History

8.87: 43n18

1.1: 130n10

8.124.1–2: 96n93

1.20–22: 129n5

9.34: 129n9

1.26.1: 202n24

Hesiod

1.27: 129n6
fragments

1.29: 129n7, 130
fr. 247.1: 85n55

1.29–32: 131n14
fr. 256: 100n114

1.30: 24n65, 71n13, 128–32, 311n57

Shield of Heracles

1.30–32: 14n38

355: 44n25

1.30.3–1.31: 130

Theogony

1.32: 131

119: 139n42

1.59.2: 129n8

200: 85

1.71: 129n9

256: 85n55

400 I N DEX

LOCORU M

Theogony (cont.)

21.86: 86n60

721–810: 139n42

23.129: 86n60

990: 85n55

23.712: 96n95

Works and Days

23.761: 44n25

649: 96n96

24.527–30: 98n104

657: 96n93

Odyssey

Hierocles

1.181: 84n54

Commentary on the Golden

1.419: 84n54

Verses

1.1419: 84n54

23.2: 141n46

4.96: 44n25

Himerius

5.386: 84n53

Orations

6.121: 86n61

28.2: 278n57

7.34–36: 84n53

[Hippocrates]

8.96: 84n53

Airs, Waters, Places

8.191: 84n53

1: 92n81

8.362: 85n55

2.14–26: 144n64

8.369: 84n53

Fractures

8.386: 84n53

16: 69n7

8.535: 84n53

On Ancient Medicine

8.566: 84n53

1.1.3: 136n30

8.576: 86n61

1.3: 138n37

9.176: 86n61

5.1–2: 282

11.349: 84n53

9: 137n34

13.36: 84n53

12: 137n34

13.166: 84n53

20.1: 135–42

13.174: 84n53

20.3: 136n31

13.202: 86n61

Homer

15.427: 84n54

Iliad

16.426: 84n54

1.256: 87n63

23.134: 86n62

3.424: 85n55

24.123: 44n25

4.10: 85n55

Homeric Hymns

4.235: 86n59

Hymn to Aphrodite

5.375: 85n55

17: 85n55

10.351: 86n60

49: 85n55

12.164: 85

56: 85n55

14.201: 265, 271

65: 85n55

14.211: 85n55

155: 85n55

14.302: 265, 271

Hymn to Apollo

15.411–12: 96n95

171: 44n25

16.65: 86n60

Hymn to Demeter

16.90: 86n60

102: 85n58

16.835: 86n60

Hymn to Hermes

17.194: 86n60

483: 100n114

17.224: 86n60

511: 100n114

19.269: 86n60

Hymn to Selene

20.40: 85n55

2: 59

I N DEX LOCORU M 401

Iamblichus of Chalcis

Inscriptiones Graecae

On General Mathematical

I3 766: 101n122

Science ( De communi mathematica

I3 833: 101n122
scientia)

I3 949: 101n122

22.68,7–24: 272n39

I3 1265: 101n122

23.70,26–71,4: 80n36

I3 1393: 101n122

25.78,5: 46n29

VII 3501: 101n122

26.71,4: 80n36

XII,3 1020: 294n17

26.79,14: 171n45

Isidore of Seville

26.82,27–28: 272n39

The Etymologies

26.83,7: 80n36

8.6.1.2: 4n5, 329

On the Pythagorean Way of

14.6.31: 4n5, 329–30

Life

Isocrates

2.9: 112n26

Against the Sophists

6.29–30: 122–23

1: 210n40

8.40: 122n58

1–2: 210n40

8.44,5–15: 121–22,

3: 210n40

325–26

6–7: 210n40

12.58–59: 4n5, 118–19, 122n58, 7–8: 210n40

280n67, 325–26

8: 210n40

17.71: 109n11

9: 210n39

18.81: 111n21

11: 210n40

18.88: 109n11

14: 211

23.104,10–11: 154n88

16–18: 210n40

24.108: 142n54

17: 186n3

35.250: 116n45

19–20: 210n39

35.251: 19–20n53

20: 210n40

35.254: 109n11

21: 186n3, 211

35.267: 19–20n53

Antidosis

Protrepticus (Exhortation to

15: 213n42

Philosophy)

30: 213n42

4,9–13: 119, 325

47: 225n9

6.37,3–22: 80n36

93–94: 216n48

6.40,2–3: 80n11

183: 213

8.48,16: 277n52

201: 213

9: 4n5, 325

226–28: 210n39

9.51,6–8: 325

235: 96n93, 128n4, 168n36

9.51,8–10: 119–20

250: 134n26

9.51,8–15: 159n7

258: 213

9.53,19–54,5: 120,

261: 213

325

262: 213

13.64,2: 5n11

265: 213

20.99,15: 5n11

265–68: 267

Ibycus

266–70: 214
fragments

268: 143n58

S151,47–48: 109n9

270: 149

S151.23: 100n114

271: 214

402 I N DEX

LOCORU M

Antidosis (cont.)

35: 212

283–285: 212n41

50–52: 212

285: 307n51

313: 96n93

Areopagiticus

John Malalas

11: 69n7

Chronographia

45: 212–13

6.6: 132n21

Busiris

John Philoponus

1: 212

Commentary on Nichomachus’s

2–3: 212n41

Introduction to Arithmetic

6: 215n45

1.8: 6n13

17: 212

1.52: 6n13

18: 267n26

15.2: 6n13

22: 212

21.20: 6n13

22–23: 114n38

Josephus

24: 115n41

Against Apion

28: 114n39

1.22: 295n20

28–29: 115n40

1.176–82: 295n22

29: 109n11

2.265: 159n8

30: 212

Julian

42: 212

Caesars

49: 212

309c: 16n42

Evagoras

Epistles

8–10: 212

82 445a: 196

76–81: 212

Orations

Helen

8.244a: 15–16n42

1–3: 211

3: 143n58

4: 211

Lucian

6: 211

The Fly

7–8: 211

7: 277n52

57: 74n24

Hermotimus

66–67: 211

11: 303

Panegyricus

Lysias

47–50: 215n45

Orations

To Demonicus

2.34: 280

3: 212

10.11: 134n24

4–5: 212

18.13: 69n7

7–8: 212

24.10: 149

10: 74n24

18: 255

18–19: 212

Maximus of Tyre

27: 74n24

Dissertations

30: 212

1.2a: 4n5

40: 212

28.4: 15–16n42

To Nicocles

Munich Florilegium

1–9: 212

182: 200n15

I N DEX LOCORU M 403

Nicomachus of Gerasa

4.25: 114n39

Introduction to Arithmetic

6.5: 141n46

1.1: 69n9

Lives of the Sophists

1.1.1.2: 6n13

1.15: 155n96

9.7: 69n9

1.16.2: 155n96

Manual of Harmonics

Pindar

1: 154n88
fragments
fr. 35b ( Hymn 1): 98n102
fr. 70b.24 (Dithyramb 2): 98n106

Olympiodorus
fr. 164: 87

Commentary on Aristotle’s
fr. 209: 95n91

Meteorology
fr. 210: 77n31, 109n13

17.19: 159n8

Isthmian Odes

Commentary on Plato’s

1.45: 43n21

Alcibiades

2.6: 87n66, 109n13

136.1: 168n36

2.10–11: 98n103

144.15–17: 307n52, 308n54

2.10–12: 98n103

Commentary on Plato’s Gorgias

5.28: 7n15

35.12: 141n46

Nemean Odes

Proem 9: 143n60

5.18: 101n119

Origen

7.17–18: 101n119

Against Celsus

8.40–41: 100

2.15.40: 12n34

8.41: 43n21

2.16: 15n41

9.32: 248n44

10.87–88: 138n39

Olympian Odes

Papyri

2.10–12: 98n103

Erlangen

2.87–88: 100n117

4.41–46: 198n8

5.16: 101n119

Herculaneum

6.19: 87

1021 col. vi.41— ii10: 9n20

7.30–31: 99n108

Hibeh

7.44: 99n109

2.182: 197n6

7.72–73: 98

Oxyrhynchus

7.74: 99n109

666: 305n50

7.74–76: 99n109

1365: 19–20n54

9.28–29: 100n117

2402: 305n50

11.10: 43n21

2403: 305n50

11.10–11: 100n115

3659: 302–6

11.16–19: 100n115

Rylands

14.14–16: 90n77

18: 20n53

Paeans

Philostratus

1 fr. 52a.8: 90n77

Epistles

6 fr. 52f.50–53: 101n119

73: 155n96

13 fr. 52s.3: 43n21

Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Pythian Odes

1.1: 141n46

1.42: 100n117

1.2: 169n42

3.80–84: 98n104

404 I N DEX

LOCORU M

Pythian Odes (cont.)

165a7– b3: 227n14

4.138–41: 98n106

166c3–6: 227n14

5.12–13: 100n117

166c7– d6: 227

8.74–76: 100n117

169c6– d1: 227n14

12.1: 87

Cratylus

Plato and Platonic corpus

401c–402c: 265

Alcibiades

402b7: 159n6

118c: 160n14, 168n36

409b6: 170n44

119a: 182n64

Critias

199a–120d: 307n52

113a2: 43n18

Alcibiades II

Definitions

147b9: 225n7

411c8: 225n6

Apology of Socrates

411d4: 225n6

17b– d: 213n42

411d5: 225n6

18b8–10: 165

413b12: 225n6

19c4: 188n73

414e12: 225n6

20c: 182n64

416a29: 225n6

23d1–7: 191

Euthydemus

23d2: 166

274c3: 254–55n52

23d2–6: 178

304c6: 254–55n52

23d5–7: 166

305c7: 43n18, 211

26c7– e2: 161

Gorgias

26e: 161n18

447d: 154n90

28a8– c6: 226n10

448b5–7: 171n47

29a1: 270

465d: 171n47

29b4–5: 12n34

484c–485e: 134

38a5–6: 313

485a4– d1: 301

41a6–7: 266

485d7: 302

Charmides

486c4– d1: 302

153a1– d2: 223

487c2– d1: 225n7, 301

153d2–4: 223–24

491a: 154n90

153d5–154a6: 224

502c12: 225n7

154d1–5: 224

Hippias Major

154d5–7: 224

281a: 263n7

154e1: 224

281a1: 263n9

154e8–155a3: 132n21, 224

281a1–283b4: 175n56

155c: 225n8

281a3– c2: 167

156d5–6: 113

281b6: 263n8

157a6– b7: 224

281c7: 167, 263n10

158e7–159a4: 224

281d5–282a10: 264n12

159b5: 225n4

281d7: 263n8

160d5– e1: 224

282b1– d5: 264n15

160e4–5: 225n4

282b4– c1: 143n60

161a2–3: 226n12

283a1: 264n13

162c1– d4: 227n14

283a6: 169n38

163b2– c10: 226n12

283b7–285b7: 263n6

164d5–165a7: 226n12

286a1: 264

I N DEX LOCORU M 405

286d7: 263n8

76c: 141n51, 143

286e6: 263n6

99c9: 69n7

287b2–3: 263n6

99d1: 225n7

Hippias Minor

Parmenides

363a2–6: 229n15

126b8: 244

363c2: 265n20

126b8–9: 151n74

363c4– d3: 263n6

127c3: 151n77

364a3: 263n7

127d3: 151n77

364a10: 263n7

128a3: 151n77

364b8– c2: 263n6

128b8: 151n77

365c10– d3: 226n11

128c3: 151n77

365d: 269n35

128c7: 151n77

Laws

128d1: 152n78

656c3: 225n7

128d3: 151n77

660a4: 225n7

128d7: 152n77

682a3: 225n7

128e2: 152n77

700d4: 225n7

130e2: 244

731e1: 81n40

135c5: 245

731e4: 81n40

135d: 245

778d6: 225n7

Phaedo

802b6: 225n7

60e3: 236

810e6–811a5: 39n6

60e7: 236

819a1–6: 39n6

61a4: 236

845a3: 304n48

61a5: 192

Lysis

61b1: 236

204d7–206c8: 225n8

61c5: 192n80

206c10: 254–55n52

61d6–7: 115n44

207d5–210d10: 246

63e10: 192n80

209c4: 248n45

64b4–6: 115n44

209e2: 248n45

66c2: 5n20

210a6: 248n45

78a: 43n18

210a8–210d9: 248n45

78a3–4: 43n18

211d7– e8: 247

82d: 192n80

212d6–7: 248

85c: 268n30

212d8: 6n13

86d: 268n30

213d2–3: 248

91a: 192

213d4–5: 248

96a: 266n24

213d8: 248

96a6– b8: 161

214b: 266n24

96b1: 144n61

214e2–3: 249

96c1–97b7: 161

217e8–9: 249

97a8: 144n61

218a5– b1: 249

97b8–99d2: 269

218b7–10: 249

97c1–2: 161

Menexenus

97c5–98b3: 161

243b: 280n67

98b4: 161

Meno

98c2: 161n15

71d: 269n35

98c2–3: 163n26

406 I N DEX

LOCORU M

Phaedo (cont.)

266e: 155n96

98d6– e1: 163n26

267b: 171n47

99b6– c1: 161n16

269a6– c5: 168

102a1: 192n80

269el–2: 168

111c4– e4: 139n43

270a1: 144n64, 168, 311n57

127c3– e4: 269–70

270a5: 168

Phaedrus

271d1–7: 136n31

230d3: 192, 255

274a1–2: 200n17

234e5–235a8: 239

277d10–278b4: 242

236e5: 192

278a: 4n5

239a7– b4: 233–34

278b: 231

242b: 268n30

278c4– d6: 241–42

245a1–8: 236

278d: 22

245a6: 225n7

278e5–279b1: 243

245c5–246a2: 168n37

Philebus

247c5– e2: 236

57c2–3: 245n39

248b4: 234

62d5: 225n7

248c7: 234

Protagoras

248d2–3: 43n18, 234,

312c8: 230n17

250n47

313c5–7: 230n17

248d4– e3: 235

315a1: 226

248e1: 225n7

315c: 266n24

249b5– d3: 22, 237

315c7: 263n6

249d7–8: 278n57

316a7: 226

249e3–4: 236

316c5–17c2: 7n15

249e5– e1: 236

316c5–317c7: 230n17

250a5– e1: 236

317c9– d8: 262n5

250b7–8: 236

318e1–319a2: 175n56

252a1– b1: 234

318e2: 262n5

256a6— b3: 238

319b5: 206

256b2–3: 239

319d: 154n90

256b7– c7: 238

334a1–335a7: 228

257a5: 225n7

337c8–338b2: 263n7

257b4–6: 239

338e7– a6: 226n11

257b6: 233

342b8: 229–30

259b3: 233

342d3: 230

259d3: 236

342d5–6: 230

259d3–8: 240

342e4: 278n57

260a1–4: 240–41

342e6: 230

260b1– d1: 241

343a5– b2: 95n91

260d3–9: 241

343b7: 101n120

261a3–262c4: 232

347e: 269n35

261a4: 233

Republic

261a4–5: 241

327a1–328a10: 239

261c: 155n96

332b9: 225n7

263a6–11: 304n45

333a: 154n90

265b4: 225n7

335e9–10: 101n121

I N DEX LOCORU M 407

376a6: 251

607d7: 225n7

376b: 180n61

608b7: 225n7

376b6: 251

Rival Lovers

376b8: 251

132c9: 312

387b3: 225n7

132d1–2: 312

387b4: 225n7

132d1–6: 312

393d8: 225n7

132d3: 312

397e: 154n90

133a8– b1: 312

400b– c: 160n13

133c3–4: 132n21

424c: 160n13

133c7: 313

437d8– e8: 251

133c10–133d1: 313

443c: 154n90

133d6– e2: 313

473c8: 250

134a8–9: 313

474a1–3: 250

134a8– b2: 313

474a4–5: 250

134c10– d2: 313

474a5: 250

135a9–10: 313

474b7: 250

135b1– d8: 313–14

474b10: 250

135e1: 43n18

474c5: 250

135e1–137b3: 314

474d2: 251

136a8– b2: 313–14

475a4: 251

136b10: 43n18

475a6–8: 251

137a2: 315n63

475a10– b2: 251

138a8: 314–15

475b8–9: 252

Sophist

475b10– c5: 252

216c: 192n79

475c7–10: 252

218d–223d: 5n11

475d1–4: 252

219b11: 225n6

475d4–9: 252

219d1: 225n6

475e1–2: 252

242c–244b: 278n59

475e7: 252

253b–254a: 192n79

476a10– b2: 252

259e–260a: 192n79

479b10–17: 252n48

265a4–266d5: 225n6

479e10: 252

268b: 192n79

480a6: 252

Statesman

487c– d: 302

299b7: 144n64

488a5–7.: 298n30

Symposium

488d5–489d1: 104n136

202d6: 249–50

530d6–9: 116

221e: 154n90

535d5: 254–55n52

Theaetetus

548e5: 254–55n52

146d: 154n90

600a4–7: 278n57

152el–8: 271

600a10– b3: 116

157e2–158d6: 54n48

600e5: 225n7, 601a4

164c7–10: 191

601a4: 225n7

165a1: 182n64

606d4: 225n7

167d–168c: 191n76

607a2: 225n7

172c8–175b7: 145n65, 192

607b6: 225n7

174a4– b6: 278n57

408 I N DEX

LOCORU M

Theaetetus (cont.)

6–8: 108n4

175d10– e2: 192n78

9: 108n3, 108n5

179e3–180b3: 270

14–15: 108n6

183e5–184b1: 270

16: 108n3

189e6–7: 201n19

17: 108n4

189e9–190a6: 201n19

18: 109n10

203b9: 69n7

19: 14n38

Timaeus

21: 109n12, 112n26

19d5: 225n7

30: 111n22

19e5: 43n18

On Abstinence from Animal Food

41d8: 304n48

1.26.2–4: 10n26

Pliny

2.26: 295n22

Natu ral History

On the Cave of the Nymphs

2.149: 163n24

21: 141n46

7.42: 277n52

Proclus

7.52: 15n41

Chrestomathy

Plutarch

1.4: 265n21

Greek Questions (Quaestiones

Commentary on Euclid’s Ele ments

Graecae)

66.16: 304n42

295e: 103n127

Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides

Life of Lysander

694.18: 151n77

12: 163n24

Commentary on Plato’s Republic

Life of Nicias

2.113.6–9: 12n34

23: 163n24, 163n26

Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus

Life of Numa

102,22: 39n7

1.6: 264n17

Life of Pericles

4: 155n95

Quintilian

4.4–6.3: 169n41

Institutes of Rhe toric

4.4–6.4: 168n36

3.1.8: 141n51

16.5–7: 168n36

3.1.10: 32n268

32: 163n24

12.1.19: 4n5, 322

Life of Solon

3: 132n21

Life of Themistocles

Sappho

2.4: 70n12
fragments

2.6–7: 103n129

16.1–4: 247n40

Table Talk (Quaestiones convivales)

56.2: 100n114

728e: 140–41n46

Scholia

That the Phi los o pher Ought to Con-

Σ Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica
verse Especially with Men in Power

2.1248–50: 278n55

(Maxime cum principus philosopho

Σ Aristophanes Birds
esse disserendum)

521: 4n7

776b: 153n83

Σ Euripides Hippolytus

Porphyry

47: 4n7

Life of Pythagoras

Σ Pindar Olympian

1: 108n4

7: 100n113

I N DEX LOCORU M 409

Σ Plato Theaetetus
α 2733: 200n14

179e: 39n7
α 2744: 155n96

Septuagint
α 2745: 155n96

Proverbs
γ 388: 207n34

29.3: 6n13
δ 41: 265n21

Sextus Empiricus
δ 454: 207n34

Against the Mathematicians
ε 738: 40n10

7.132: 52n45
ε 1002: 141n51

9.360: 160n11
ε 1007: 10n25

Outlines of Pyrrhonism
ζ 12: 109n12

2.244: 304n43
ζ 77: 151–52

Simplicius
η 461: 9n20

Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics
η 472: 37n3

23,21–33: 278n55
ι 543: 265n21

27,23: 160n11
σ 806: 18n45

36,25–37,6: 273n42
τ 1019: 12n34

Solon
φ 154: 154n92
fragments
φ 214: 112n26
fr. 13.52: 100n14
φ 214.1–9: 278n57
fr. 27.16: 98n101
φ 414: 307n53

Sophocles

Antigone

347: 43

Tertullian

1055: 88n71

De anima

Electra

43: 12n34

416: 69n7

Theodoret

846: 59n61

Cure for Greek Maladies

850: 59n61

4.20: 10n28
fragments

11.8: 10n27
fr. 528: 88n71

Theognis
fr. 859: 248n44

Theognidea

Oedipus at Colonus

60: 112n24

1487: 69n7

120: 43n21, 97n99

Stobaeus

199: 87n66, 109n13

Anthology

502: 97n100

2.1.21: 95n91

563–65: 97n100

2.31.68: 202n22

790–92: 97n100

2.31.76: 200n12

849: 87n65

2.31.116: 39n6, 39n7

876: 97n100

3.1.172: 95, 292n7

1074: 97n100

3.1.173: 6n14, 254–55n52, 292n8

Thucydides

4.32.21: 154n90

History

4.37.23: 15n42

1.21: 155n96

Suda

1.22: 24, 132n23
α 1283: 207n34, 269n34

1.122.4: 134n24
α 1981: 159n8, 163n24

2.40.1: 74n24, 250n47
α 1987: 114n37

2.40.1–3: 132–35

410 I N DEX

LOCORU M

History (cont.)

Memorabilia (Memoirs of

2.40.2: 136n29

Socrates)

2.61.4: 134n24

1.1.11: 162n21, 162n22

2.65.7: 77n31

1.2.16: 181

2.85.2: 134n24

1.2.19: 176

3.82.4: 77n30, 247n41

1.2.29–30: 178

3.82.8: 77n31

1.2.31: 166, 178

3.86: 143n60

1.2.34–37: 179

5.7.2: 134n24

1.2.37: 181

5.7.3: 134n24

1.4.7: 82n42

8.89.3: 77n31

1.6.2–3: 180

8.95: 198n7

1.6.11–12: 181n63

1.6.12: 180

1.6.14: 182

Valerius Maximus

1.11.11: 266n24

Memorable Deeds and Sayings

1.11.14: 266n24

8.7 ext. 2: 4n5, 72, 322

2.1.21–34: 175

Vatican Gnomologium

3.1.3: 69n7

4: 200n14, 200n16

3.11.9: 74n24

7: 200n12

4.2: 181

430: 201n18

4.2.1: 154n90, 172n50

743n166: 203n25

4.2.2–6: 172n50

4.2.2–8: 174n55

4.2.8: 173n51

Xenophon

4.2.9: 173n51

Anabasis

4.2.10: 173n51

1.9.5: 255n54

4.2.11: 172n50, 173n52

1.9.5.4: 248n44

4.2.11–19: 175

2.1.12–13: 177

4.2.12: 173n52

6.5.30: 280n67

4.2.12–19: 172n50, 303n40

7.2.8: 280n67

4.2.20: 173n52

Cynegeticus (On Hunting with

4.2.23: 172–73

Dogs)

4.2.24–30: 174n54, 175

12–13: 5n11

4.2.31–35: 174n54

Cyropedia (Education of Cyrus)

4.2.36.39: 174n54

1.2.1: 255n54

4.4.5–25: 175

1.3.3: 74n24

4.4.6: 262

1.4.3: 255n54

4.5.9: 175

1.6.8: 255n54

4.6: 179

2.1.22: 74n24

4.6.2–12: 176

7.5.67: 184n68

4.7.6: 162, 162n20

8.3.5: 74n24

4.7.7: 162n20

8.3.49: 77n30, 247n42

4.210: 173n51

Hellenika (History of Greece)

Oeconomicus (On Estate

5.1.2: 198n7

Management)

7.2.20: 19n53

1.3: 188n73

I N DEX LOCORU M 411

5.4: 184n68

1.5: 172, 175, 196

15.13: 188

2.26: 155n96

16.9: 186

3.6: 114n37

20.25–27: 254

4.14.4: 74

Poroi

4.33–44: 197n5

5.3: 180

4.62: 175, 184

Symposium (Banquet)

8.8: 134n24

1.4: 183, 196

8.39: 132n21, 185

Document Outline

- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Selected Abbreviations and Editions
- Map of Places Mentioned

- Chapter 1. Introduction: The Origins of Philosophia

- Origins

- Chapter 2. Heraclitus against the Philosophoi

- Chapter 3. What Philosophos Could Have Meant: A Lexical Account

- Chapter 4. Pythagoreans as Philosophoi

- Development

- Chapter 5. Fifth-Century Philosophoi

- Chapter 6. Socrates’s Prosecution as Philosophos

- Chapter 7. Non-Academic Philosophia

- Academy

- Chapter 8. Plato’s Saving of the Appearances

- Chapter 9. Aristotle’s Historiography of Philosophia

- Chapter 10. Ambivalence about Philosophia beyond the Discipline

- Epilogue. Contemporary Philosophy and the History of the Discipline

- Appendix: Versions of the Pythagoras Story

- Classical Uses of Philosoph-Discussed in This Book

- Phil- Prefixed Words Appearing in This Book
- Bibliography
- Index
- Index Locorum

Table of Contents

- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Selected Abbreviations and Editions
- Map of Places Mentioned

- Chapter 1. Introduction: The Origins of Philosophia

- Origins

- Chapter 2. Heraclitus against the Philosophoi

- Chapter 3. What Philosophos Could Have Meant: A Lexical Account

- Chapter 4. Pythagoreans as Philosophoi

- Development

- Chapter 5. Fifth-Century Philosophoi

- Chapter 6. Socrates’s Prosecution as Philosophos

- Chapter 7. Non-Academic Philosophia

- Academy

- Chapter 8. Plato’s Saving of the Appearances

- Chapter 9. Aristotle’s Historiography of Philosophia

- Chapter 10. Ambivalence about Philosophia beyond the Discipline

- Epilogue. Contemporary Philosophy and the History of the Discipline

- Appendix: Versions of the Pythagoras Story

- Classical Uses of Philosoph-Discussed in This Book

- Phil- Prefixed Words Appearing in This Book
- Bibliography
- Index
- Index Locorum