Democritus and his education (1)

Text
Diogenes Laërtius, Vitae Philosophorum 9.34-35:
[Democritus] was a pupil of certain Magians and Chaldaeans. For when king Xerxes was entertained by the father of Democritus he left men in charge, as, in fact, is stated by Herodotus; and from these men, while still a boy, he learned theology and astronomy. Afterwards he met Leucippus and, according to some, Anaxagoras, being forty years younger than the latter. But Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History tells us that Democritus, speaking of Anaxagoras, declared that his views of the sun and moon were not original but of great antiquity, and that he had simply stolen them. 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. If this be so, how could he have been his pupil, as some suggest?

(Democritus of Abdera floruit 430 BCE.)

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Diogenes Laërtius, Vitae Philosophorum 9.34-35

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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