or someone named Anaxilaos (hardly the alchemist A L), along with
S R, is cited for variant data on an early Greek wise man, Muso ̄n. (In
the latter case, Dionusios of Halikarnassos, A.R. 1.1, may be related.)
FGrHist 1094 – 1095.
PTK
Anaxilaos of Larissa (40 – 20 BCE?)
Paradoxographer, interested in occultism and with Pythagorean tendencies, banned by
A from Italy, in 28 BCE. He is regarded as one of the chief sources of P, who
mentioned Anaxilaos several times: 19.20; 25.154; 28.181; 32.141; 35.175. He wrote Physics
(phusikà), On gilding and silvering (baphikà), and Tr ifles (paignia).
DSB 1 (1970) 150, L. Taràn; DPA 1 (1989) 192, R. Goulet.
Bruno Centrone
Anaximandros of Mile ̄tos (ca 580 – 545 BCE)
Born ca 610, and a student of T,
Anaximandros continued the kind of
scientific theorizing his master had begun.
He wrote a book, perhaps one of the first
prose compositions and a paradigm for
later theorists, describing how the world
arose and its shape. Anaximandros said a
seed-like substance separated from “the
everlasting” or “boundless” (apeiron) and
from it grew the earth surrounded by fiery
stuff, which divided into rings surrounded
by air. The earth was a disk surrounded by
these fiery rings (the heavenly bodies),
enclosed by air to make them invisible
except at an opening through which the
light shone. Thus, what are called the sun,
moon, and stars are just the apertures of
invisible rings. The sun is farthest from the
earth, the moon below it, and the stars
closest to the earth. Lunar phases and
eclipses of the sun and moon result from the blocked openings.
Anaximandros said that periodic phenomena, apparently including day and night, sum-
mer and winter, are caused by some contrary matter (such as the hot) prevailing, and then
paying a penalty to its opposite (such as the cold) “according to the ordering of time,” for its
trespass. Thus a kind of law-like balance was maintained which put a limit to the excesses
of the contraries.
Anaximandros, further, gave natural explanations to meteorological phenomena such as
lightning and thunder (caused by wind in clouds). Life emerged in the primeval seas, and
some creatures were enclosed in shells, which burst open on land to give birth to terrestrial
animals.
Anaximandros © Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier
ANAXIMANDROS OF MILE ̄TOS