248 HEIDEL. 



first who boldly essayed the subject men of this sort, — Homer, and 

 Anaximander, and Hecataeus, (as Eratosthenes also says) his towns- 

 man, and Democritiis also and Eudoxus and Dicaearchus and Ephorus 

 and others more; and besides, after their time, Eratosthenes and 

 Polybius and Posidonius, philosophers all. But, what is more, wide 

 and varied learning, by which alone it is possible to achieve this task, 

 belongs peculiarly to the man who contemplates all things divine and 

 human, the science of which we call philosophy." Here Anaximander 

 is presented as a geographer who, like numerous other worthies, 

 including Homer, is regarded as a philosopher. The two-fold fact 

 that Eratosthenes is cited as authority for the citizenship of Heca- 

 taeus and that the list of worthies falls into two groups of which 

 Eratosthenes heads the second, suggests that that eminent geographer 

 had something to do with drawing up the roll of geographers. His 

 contribution does not, of course, extend beyond the first division; 

 and even there we must except Homer, whom Eratosthenes declined 

 to recognize either as a philosopher or as a geographer, insisting that 

 he was to be regarded solely as a poet bent on entertaining his readers. ^^ 

 Nor can we credit Eratosthenes with rating the others as philosophers; 

 for, aside from the vague conception of what constitutes a philosopher, 

 which is characteristic of Strabo's cast of thought, ^^ it is to be noted 

 that Hecataeus, for reasons which will engage our attention later on, 

 was never seriously regarded as a philosopher and hence does not figure 

 in the doxographic tradition. ^^ The same is true of Ephorus. ^° 



The reference of Strabo, however, to the 'wide and varied learning' 

 (polymathy) required of the geographer recalls that Heraclitus rebuked 



27 See Strabo I. 2, 3 C.15. It is probable that Strabo in his judgment of 

 Homer was merely echoing Ephorus. 



28 If Ephorus was his model, we might think of Isocrates and his conception 

 of philosophy. Strabo however was a Stoic; and in late Stoics a similar 

 conception of philosophy may be found. 



29 In Dox. Gr., p. 681 Diels referred Aetius II. 20, 16 to him, but has since 

 corrected the error and assigns the notion to Hecataeus of Abdera (F^ II. 153, 



3)- 



30 Aetius IV. 1, 6 is only an apparent exception. It refers to the inundation 



of the Nile and probably comes from the 'Posidonian Areskonta.' The theme 

 properly belongs to geography and was a favorite subject of speculation. Dio- 

 dorus Sic.l. 37, 1 says tieyaK-qs b'ovarjs diropias irepi Trjs tov iroTanvv TrXr/pcocrecos, 

 kiTiKex^'-PV'^'^'^^ TToXXot Tcbu re (j>i\otT64>uiv Koi tCiv laTopiKdv dwoSovvai. rds raurijs alrlas. 

 That Herodotus (Aetius IV. 1, 5) appears in the list along with Thales, 

 Euthymenes, Democritus, Ephorus and Eudoxus, is sufficienl^ly significant. 

 All but Thales (and he is not certainly an exception) were geographers. Anax- 

 agoras hkewise is included in the list, but possibly by confusion; for the ex- 

 planation attributed to him is older than he, as is plain from Aeschylus /r. 300. 

 Possibly Anaximander may have been the originator of the theory that the 

 flood of the Nile was due to the melting of snows in Ethiopia. 



