anaximander's book. 253 



nology. Attentively reading a vast number of books he published the 

 results of his historical studies chiefly in two works, — his versified 

 Chronicles, in which the dates of ^vriters were as precisely as possible 

 fixed, and The Catalogue of Ships, in which he gathered about the 

 Homeric Catalogue the fruits of his researches in geography. Con- 

 nected with this learned commentary was his work On the Earth, 

 like the Chronicles, versified. He wrote, besides, on mythology, 

 prompted by an interest in literary history. ApoUodorus is, therefore, 

 of all ancient critics the one whose testimony regarding the book of 

 Anaximander we should most wish to learn. 



By a singular good fortune we are in fact in a position to ascertain 

 at least in part what ApoUodorus knew of Anaximander's writings. 

 Diogenes Laertius says ^^ that Anaximander " gave a summary exposi- 

 tion of his opinions, on which ApoUodorus of Athens somewhere 

 chanced, who in his Chronicles reports that he was sixty-four years 

 of age in the second year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad and died shortly 

 thereafter." In the light of our foregoing discussion, this most inter- 

 esting statement deserves somewhat fuller consideration than it has 

 hitherto received. 



Whence Diogenes derived this datum is not certain; but one may 

 conjecture from the phraseology that it came mediately or immedi- 

 ately from the late doxographic document which Diels has called 

 the Posidonian Areskonta. It is known that Posidonius followed 

 closely in the footsteps of ApoUodorus, whose geographical studies 

 he took up and prosecuted to the best of his ability. But in any case 

 ApoUodorus made the statement in question in his Chronicles. By 

 'opinions' Diogenes of course means 'philosophical' opinions, and 

 therefore, though ApoUodorus does not seem to have cited the title 

 of the 'summary exposition,' it is commonly assumed that it was 

 the treatise appropriately caUed On Nature to which he referred. 

 Diels has cited ^^ as a parallel the chronological datum given by 

 Democritus in his Brief Cosmology, and suggests *° that the year 

 designated was that of the publication of the treatise, which contained 

 autobiographical references capable of astronomical determination. 

 This is of course conceivable; but, it must be pointed out, this hypo- 

 thesis, while possibly accounting for the given year, fails to explain 



38 V^ I. 14, 11. 



39 Chronologische Untersuchungen uber Apollodors Chronika, Rhein. Museum, 

 N. F. XXI, p. 24. Cf. Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik, p. 53 sq. 



40 ys J i^^ 13 (note). It is worth mentioning that we have no record of 

 any remarkable astronomical phenomenon in tliat year. 



