During the following generations, the crisis of the law of small numbers
came to a head. The material bases of intellectual life drastically reorganized.
Most of the schools which branched off from Socrates flourished for two or
three generations and then died. The school at Elis was moved, in the third
generation, by Menedemus to his home Eretria (on the island of Euboea,
northeast of Athens) before it disappeared, and the school at Cyrene split into
three branches in its third generation (Reale, 1985: 55–56, 39–42). The head
of one branch, Theodorus “the atheist,” was expelled from Cyrene, later
garnered political support from the Ptolemys at Alexandria, and returned in
triumph. The head of another branch was prohibited from lecturing by Ptolemy
because his doctrine was moving students to commit suicide. The school at
Megara, less melodramatic but sophisticated in logic, similarly flourished for
three generations and then disappeared. Eudoxus’ school at Cyzicus, which
maintained visiting ties with the Academy, moved to Cnidus, apparently in
response to Persian military advances; it produced a good deal of creativity,
especially in mathematics and astronomy, but lapsed within two generations
(DSB, 1981: 4:465–467). It was during this period, too, that the Pythagoreans
and the Abdera school came to an end. We can add the two Hippocratic
medical schools to the list of casualties.^8
In the generations just before and after 300 b.c.e., there was a wave of
reorganization. So many schools had died out that there was room for new
ones to form by recombining their cultural capital. Aristotle founded his
Lyceum in Athens, in imitation of the Academy, in 335. Epicurus founded his
Garden community in 307, Zeno of Citium his Stoic school (after the Stoa, or
“Porch,” in Athens where he lectured), about 302. Of the older schools, only
the Academy survived.
These four Athenian schools dominated intellectual life for two centu-
ries. Now stability sets in, comfortably within the law of small numbers. In
Figure 3.3 we see one other organized school, the Museum and Library at
Alexandria. But this was no doctrinal rival to the four philosophies. The
networks headquartered at Athens maintained overseas branches. The Peri-
patetics and Stoics had strong ties at Alexandria. The founding of the Museum
and Library occurred under the influence of Demetrius of Phalerum, a pupil
of Theophrastus and friend of Aristotle. Rivalry over geopolitical prestige was
a motivating factor, while the successors to Alexander partitioned his empire.^9
Neither the Library nor the Museum was a teaching institution, thus leaving
the Athens schools in command. But instruction in private schools also existed
at Alexandria, and after the breakup of the Athens schools around 50 b.c.e.,
the syncretizing philosophies seem to have been based there to a considerable
extent, down through 500 c.e. The Epicureans, too, had branches, but the
intellectual leadership was firmly at Athens. Branch communities received
Partitioning Attention Space: Ancient Greece^ •^93