Lives of Eminent Philosophers (2.3.9-2.3.13)

In the beginning the stars moved in the sky as in a revolving dome, so that the celestial pole which is always visible was vertically overhead; but subsequently the pole took its inclined position. He held the Milky Way to be a reflection of the light of stars which are not shone upon by the sun; comets to be a conjunction of planets which emit flames; shooting-stars to be a sort of sparks thrown off by the air. He held that winds arise when the air is rarefied by the sun’s heat; that thunder is a clashing together of the clouds, lightning their violent friction; an earthquake a subsidence of air into the earth.

Animals were produced from moisture, heat, and an earthy substance; later the species were propagated by generation from one another, males from the right side, females from the left.

There is a story that he predicted the fall of the meteoric stone at Aegospotami, which he said would fall from the sun.[*] Hence Euripides, who was his pupil, in the Phathon calls the sun itself a golden clod.[*] Furthermore, when he went to Olympia,

To one who complained that he was dying in a foreign land, his answer was, The descent to Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.

Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History says Anaxagoras was the first to maintain that Homer in his poems treats of virtue and justice, and that this thesis was defended at greater length by his friend Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who was the first to busy himself with Homer’s physical doctrine. Anaxagoras was also the first to publish a book with diagrams.[*] Silenus[*] in the first book of his History gives the archonship of Demylus[*] as the date when the meteoric stone fell,

and says that Anaxagoras declared the whole firmament to be made of stones; that the

Of the trial of Anaxagoras different accounts are given. Sotion in his Succession of the Philosophers says that he was indicted by Cleon on a charge of impiety, because he declared the sun to be a mass of red-hot metal; that his pupil Pericles defended him, and he was fined five talents and banished. Satyrus in his Lives says that the prosecutor was Thucydides, the opponent of Pericles, and the charge one of treasonable correspondence with Persia as well as of impiety; and that sentence of death was passed on Anaxagoras by default.

When news was brought him that he was condemned and his sons were dead, his comment on the sentence was, Long ago nature condemned both my judges and myself to death; and on his sons, I knew that my children were born to die. Some, however, tell this story of Solon, and others of Xenophon. That he buried his sons with his own hands is asserted by Demetrius of Phalerum in his work On Old Age. Hermippus in his Lives says that he was confined in the prison pending his execution; that Pericles came forward and asked the people whether they had any fault to find with him in his own public career; to which they replied that they had not. Well, he continued, I am a pupil of Anaxagoras; do not then be carried away by slanders and put him to death. Let me prevail upon you to release him. So he was released; but he could not brook the indignity he had suffered and committed suicide.