254 HEIDEL. 



the further statement of ApoUodorus that Anaximander died shortly 

 afterwards. If, as we are bound to do, we confine ourselves to such 

 information as ApoUodorus might derive from the book he had met 

 with, without assuming either data from other sources or unwarranted 

 inferences on the part of the chronologist, we must frame a better 

 theory. Such an hypothesis is in fact not far to seek, and has indeed 

 been already in part suggested by Professor Burnet. *^ 



Diogenes dates Anaximander by the second year of the fifty-eighth 

 Olympiad. This statement does not derive directly from ApoUo- 

 dorus, who used the year of the Athenian Archon Eponymus instead 

 of the Olympiad. But the chronological practice of ApoUodorus 

 suggests not only that the datum really comes from his work but also 

 that it was based upon information of a peculiarly definite sort. 

 Ordinarily ApoUodorus contented himself (perforce, no doubt) with 

 determining the floruit of a man, taken as forty years of age, with 

 reference to some epoch or the beginning of a king's reign, if a relation 

 could be established. One sees at once the exceptional character of 

 the datum regarding Anaximander; for the age is not forty, but 

 sixty-four, and the year (b.c. 547/6) is not one of his regular 

 epochs. The foUowing year, however (546/5), is one of the important 

 epochs of ApoUodorus, being that of the fall of Sardis. The preceding 

 year, moreover, though not marking an epoch for ApoUodorus, was 

 one of fateful consequences to the lonians of MUetus, among whom 

 Anaximander was a man of great prominence; for the march of the 

 Persians under Cyrus against Croesus, w^hose subject allies the Mile- 

 sians were, and the defeat of Croesus at the Halys, must have filled 

 Anaximander with dismay. Nothing would be more natural than for 

 him to mention these events,*^ if he dealt at all with geographical or 

 historical matters; for they were obviously of great potential signifi- 

 cance from either point of view. If he was personally active in this 

 campaign, as he may well have been, he might properly give his age. 

 Thus we should have a reasonable hypothesis to account for the report 



41 Early Greek Philosophjf, p. 51. He refers to the circumstance that the 

 date in question is the year before the fall of Sardis, and to the question (which, 

 to judge by Xenophanes, fr. 22, was considered interesting in those days), 

 'How old were you when the Mede appeared^' Ibid, n. 3 Burnet adds, "The 

 statement that he ' died soon after ' seems to'mean that ApoUodorus made him 

 die in the year of Sardeis (546/5), one of his regular epochs." 



42 It is by no means certain that 'the common report of the Greeks' (rejected 

 by Hdt. 1.75) that Thales served Croesus as engineer on this occasion, turning 

 the Halys River, was false. If Thales was in the army of Croesus, Anaxi- 

 mander his 'comrade and kinsman' quite probably also was there: sufficient 

 reason, in either case, for mentioning the event. 



