![]() ![]() He was nobody's pupil, but he declared that he "inquired of himself," and learned everything from himself. ![]() He was exceptional from his boyhood for when a youth he used to say that he knew nothing, although when he was grown up he claimed that he knew everything. Neanthes of Cyzicus states that, being unable to tear off the dung, he remained as he was and, being unrecognizable when so transformed, he was devoured by dogs.ĥ. Being thus stretched and prone, he died the next day and was buried in the market-place. Hermippus, too, says that he asked the doctors whether anyone could by emptying the intestines draw off the moisture and when they said it was impossible, he put himself in the sun and bade his servants plaster him over with cow-dung. For a fell disease flooded his body with water, quenched the light in his eyes and brought on darkness. Often have I wondered how it came about that Heraclitus endured to live in this miserable fashion and then to die. There is a piece of my own about him as follows: But, as even this was of no avail, he died at the age of sixty.Ĥ. They could make nothing of this, whereupon he buried himself in a cowshed, expecting that the noxious damp humour would be drawn out of him by the warmth of the manure. However, when this gave him dropsy, he made his way back to the city and put this riddle to the physicians, whether they were competent to create a drought after heavy rain. He would retire to the temple of Artemis and play at knuckle-bones with the boys and when the Ephesians stood round him and looked on, "Why, you rascals," he said, "are you astonished? Is it not better to do this than to take part in your civil life?"įinally, he became a hater of his kind and wandered on the mountains, and there he continued to live, making his diet of grass and herbs. ![]() Again he would say: "There is more need to extinguish insolence than an outbreak of fire," and "The people must fight for the law as for city-walls." He attacks the Ephesians, too, for banishing his friend Hermodorus: he says: "The Ephesians would do well to end their lives, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless boys, for that they have driven out Hermodorus, the worthiest man among them, saying, 'We will have none who is worthiest among us or if there be any such, let him go elsewhere and consort with others.'" And when he was requested by them to make laws, he scorned the request because the state was already in the grip of a bad constitution. He was lofty-minded beyond all other men, and over-weening, as is clear from his book in which he says: "Much learning does not teach understanding else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, or, again, Xenophanes and Hecataeus." For "this one thing is wisdom, to understand thought, as that which guides all the world everywhere." And he used to say that "Homer deserved to be chased out of the lists and beaten with rods, and Archilochus likewise." Ģ. Heraclitus, son of Bloson or, according to some, of Heracon, was a native of Ephesus. ![]()
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