anaximander's book. 249 



it, saying ^^ "Polymathy does not teach one to have understanding, 

 else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xe- 

 nophanes and Hecataeus." It was apparently the historical and geo- 

 graphical interest ^^ of these men that invited the rebuke of the 

 Ephesian recluse. Such breadth of interest was of course character- 

 istic of the whole line of historians and geographers. Pythagoras 

 alone seems strange in such company. Why he should have been 

 decried as a polymath is not clear; ^^ but we must recall that he came 

 from Samos, where he may well ha\'e imbibed some of the varied 

 knowledge of the Milesian circle, and that we have no authentic 

 account of the range of his interests. What is commonly attributed 

 to him is for the most part true of his school only. He may have been 

 interested in geography, but neither the nature of the reports to that 

 effect nor the record of his school would warrant one in affirming that he 

 was. Heraclitus is said ^* to have referred to Thales' prediction of the 

 eclipse: in what terms he may have done so, we do not know. There 

 is nothing to show what he may have thought of Anaximander. 



But to return to Strabo. A few pages after the passage above 

 quoted he resumes: ^^ "Let this suffice to justify the statement that 

 Homer was the first geographer; but those also who succeeded him 

 are known as noteworthy men and of the kindred of philosophy; 

 the first of whom after Horaei", Ei'atosthenes says, were two, x^naxi- 

 mander, an acquaintance and fellow citizen of Thales, and Hecataeus 

 the Milesian; the one, he says, first gave out a geographical tablet 

 (map), the other, Hecataeus, left a treatise attested as his by his other 

 writing." ^^'^ The importance of this statement, coming from Eratos- 

 thenes the renowned geographer and chronologist, who served as head 

 of the great library at Alexandria, is at once apparent. Just what it 



31 Fr. 49 Diels. 



32 Cp. Philo. Jud. De congressu eruditionis gratia, 15, p. 521 M. ypaixixcLTiKr) ixtv 

 yap laropLav Trjv irapa TronjTals Kal avyypa4>ev(nv dvadtdd^aaa -KoKvp-aOeLav kpya- 

 ferai. For Xenophaiies one may cite (quite apart from his supposed poem 

 ITepi </>6(7€ajs) his observations of natural phenomena in various places, his 

 obvious interest in ethnology, and his poems regarding the founding of Colo- 

 phon and Elea. Why one should doubt the report that he wrote these poems 

 does not appear. Hecataeus (fr. 352) refers to the colonization of Sinope. 



33 One might think of his 'borrowing' his 'symbols' from Egypt, if Hera- 

 clitus was of the opinion of Herodotus; but Heraclitus himself may be charged 

 with borrowing from Egypt, or at least with utihzing notions which the 

 lonians thought to discover in Egypt. 



34 Fr. 38 Diels. 



35 1.1,11 C. 7. 



35a For the use of ypa4>fi here cf. Dionys. Hal. De Thucyd. 1 eSjjXwo-a nal irtpl 

 QovKv8L5ov TO. SoKovvTO. poi, avvTopu) re Kai KecpaXaLcoSei ypa(j)fj TreptXa/Swi'. 



