![]() ![]() Democritus also pulled to pieces the views of Anaxagoras on cosmogony and on mind, having a spite against him, because Anaxagoras did not take to him. But Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History tells us that Democritus, speaking of Anaxagoras, declared that his views on the sun and the moon were not original but of great antiquity, and that he had simply stolen them. Afterwards he met Leucippus and, according to some, Anaxagoras, being forty years younger than the latter. Xerxes was entertained by the father of Democritus he left men in charge, as, in fact, is stated by Herodotus a and from these men, while still a boy, he learned theology and astronomy. Some one asked him whether he should marry or not, and received the reply, “Whichever you do you will repent it.” He used to express his astonishment that the sculptors of marble statues For he said it was absurd to make a hue and cry about a slave who could not be found, and to allow virtue to perish in this way. On hearing the line of Euripides’ play Auge where the poet says of virtue: ![]() And, being once asked in what consisted the virtue of a young man, he said, “In doing nothing to excess.” He held that geometry should be studied to the point at which a man is able to measure the land which he acquires or parts with. He said that, when people paid a high price for fruit which had ripened early, they must despair of seeing the fruit ripen at the proper season. He used to say that his supernatural sign warned him beforehand of the future that to make a good start was no trifling advantage, but a trifle turned the scale and that he knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance. ![]() As Xenophon relates in the Symposium, it was his regular habit to dance, thinking that such exercise helped to keep the body in good condition. Moreover, in his old age he learnt to play the lyre, declaring that he saw no absurdity in learning a new accomplishment. ![]() Was a Thracian, he replied, “Nay, did you expect a man so noble to have been born of two Athenian parents?” He made Crito ransom Phaedo who, having been taken prisoner in the war, was kept in degrading slavery, and so won him for philosophy. ![]()
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