DIOGENES LAERTIUS. 35 



writers whom lie quotes, appears to have been during the 

 last part of the second century of our era or in other 

 words, about as far distant from the age of Thales as we 

 are from that of William the Conqueror. If, according to 

 other opinions, he did not live until the time of Alexander 

 Severus, and wrote the book for Julia, the consort of that 

 emperor, who was of a philosophical and platonic turn of 

 mind, there is still a wider gap between him and the an- 

 cient Greek. 



The sentence which he gives is: 



u But Aristotle and Hippias say that he attributed souls 

 also to lifeless things, forming his conjecture from the 

 nature of the magnet and the amber." 



As a matter of fact, Aristotle says nothing about the 

 amber, and that he should have knowingly omitted men- 

 tion of it in the passage above quoted is difficult to believe. 

 On the other hand, while Plato, in the Timseus at a later 

 period, speaks of the "marvels that are observed about the 

 attraction of amber and the Heraclean stone," he does not 

 connect Thales with them. Hippias was a traveling Soph- 

 ist, and a contemporary of Protagoras and Socrates, but 

 none of his writings are extant. 



It is necessary merely to glance at the remarkable col- 

 lection of stories which Laertius has gathered about Thales 

 to see that he has simply brought together items of gossip 

 and tradition which had been accumulating for centuries. 



Apuleius, 1 who lived either contemporaneously with Laer- 

 tius or nearly a century earlier, gives another and different 

 category, in which the amber-soul theory is ignored. Add 

 to this that Laertius refers to no less than five " other men 

 of the name of Thales," including at least one "painter 

 of Sicyon, a great man," and none unknown to fame, a 

 not unnatural suspicion arises that the biographies of all 

 these may have been laid under contribution for the delec- 

 tation of the fair Julia. "All those letters which are at- 

 tributed by Laertius to the Philosophers," remarks Julius 



1 Apuleius : Floridor, 361. 



