works written in Greek prose, were the record of their discourses. This Milesian phenomenon of the
philosopher who discoursed before an audience and also issued a written account of his opinions
presently became a wider Ionian phenomenon. But it may have been some while before readers
outnumbered listeners. Heraclitus, about the beginning of the fifth century, refers to people hearing his
discourse; and in alluding to other philosophers he does not say 'all those whose books I have read' but
'all those whose discourses I have heard'.
This, then, was one mode of philosophical expression. Less direct ones were employed by Pythagoras of
Samos, who seems to have been part philosopher, part priest, and part conjuror. He too is said to have
worn imposing costume, to wit a gold coronet, a white robe, and trousers. Instead of discoursing in
reasoned prose he appealed to the authority of poems under the name of Orpheus, which he was
suspected of having composed or at least doctored. He also bequeathed to his disciples in south Italy a
quantity of brief maxims, catechisms, and enigmatic sayings, some expressing old religious taboos,
others cosmological or eschatological dogmas. Some of his followers added to these, or composed new
Orphic poems embodying a picturesque metaphysics. Others, taking their inspiration from
Pythagoras' (probably mystical) interest in number and music, developed the study of mathematics and
harmony in a more scientific spirit. 'Pythagoreanism' thus came to cover a strange gamut of different
phenomena, and it became difficult to disentangle the master's own ideas and achievements from those
of his successors.
There were others in the early fifth century, especially in the western colonies, who regarded poetry as a
suitable medium for reasoned argument: Xenophanes, who, like Pythagoras, migrated from Ionia to the
west; Parmenides of Elea; Empedocles of Acragas. Empedocles was another who dressed to attract
attention, and besides expounding the nature of the world he claimed to impart cures for sickness or old
age, and the ability to control wind and rain or raise men from the dead. People followed him in droves,
he tells us, adorning him with ribbons and garlands, and asking for oracles and remedies.
Clearly the identification of 'philosophy' is a delicate task. Our primary concern is with the development
in Greece of critical and constructive thought about the physical world, the place of gods and souls in it,
the relationship between reality and appearance, the origins and nature of human society, and the
principles which ought to govern it. But this process was concurrent with, and to some extent implicated
in, the spread of untraditional doctrines derived not from pure reason but from oriental myth. The mind
that was willing to question conventional assumptions was receptive to novel ideas from abroad; or
perhaps the mind that was aware of alternative accounts of things was stimulated to think.
Thales taught that everything is derived from water and that the earth rests on water. Perhaps he was
attracted to these tenets, as Aristotle conjectures, 'from seeing that the nutriment of all things contains
moisture, and that heat itself comes from this and is sustained by it; and because the seeds of all things
have a moist nature, and water is the basis of moisture'. At the same time it is hard to separate Thales'
world picture from Egyptian and Semitic creation stories in which the initial state is a waste of waters,
now covered over by the earth.