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Silloi
Timon of Phlius (; , , ; BCc. 235 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher from the Hellenistic period, who was the student of Pyrrho. Unlike Pyrrho, who wrote nothing, Timon wrote satirical philosophical poetry called ''Silloi'' () as well as a number of prose writings. These have been lost, but the fragments quoted in later authors allow a rough outline of his philosophy to be reconstructed. Life The primary source for Timon's biography is the account in Diogenes Laërtius, which claims to be taken from earlier authors such as Apollonides of Nicaea, Antigonus of Carystus, and Sotion, whose works have now been lost. According to Diogenes, Timon was born in Phlius, and was at first a dancer in the theatre, but he abandoned this profession for the study of philosophy, and, having moved to Megara, he spent some time with Stilpo, returned home to marry, and then moved to Elis with his wife, and heard Pyrrho, whose tenets he adopted. Driven again from Elis by straitened circums ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apollonides Of Nicaea
Apollonides of Nicaea () lived in the time of the Roman emperor Tiberius, to whom he dedicated a commentary on the '' Silloi'' of Timon of Phlius. Apollonides wrote several works, all of which are lost: *A commentary on the orations of Demosthenes (περὶ παραπρεσβείας). *On fictitious stories (περὶ κατεψευσμένων), of which the third and eighth books are mentioned. *A work on proverbs. *A work on Ion, the tragic poet. An Apollonides, without any statement as to what was his native country, is mentioned by Strabo, Pliny the Elder, and by the Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes, as the author of a work called ''Circumnavigation of Europe'' (περίπλος τῆς Εὐρώπης). Stobaeus Joannes Stobaeus (; ; 5th-century AD), from Stobi in Macedonia (Roman province), Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containing two books each. The tw ... quotes some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon ( ; ; – c. 478 BC) was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and critic of Homer. He was born in Ionia and travelled throughout the Greek-speaking world in early classical antiquity. As a poet, Xenophanes was known for his critical style, writing poems that are considered among the first satires. He composed elegiac couplets that criticised his society's traditional values of wealth, excesses, and athletic victories. He criticised Homer and the other poets in his works for representing the gods as foolish or morally weak. His poems have not survived intact; only fragments of some of his work survive in quotations by later philosophers and literary critics. Xenophanes is seen as one of the most important pre-Socratic philosophers. A highly original thinker, Xenophanes sought explanations for physical phenomena such as clouds or rainbows without references to divine or mythological explanations, but instead based on first principles. He distinguished ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sotion
Sotion of Alexandria (, ''gen''.: Σωτίωνος; fl. c. 200 – 170 BC) was a Greek doxographer and biographer, and an important source for Diogenes Laërtius. None of his works survive; they are known only indirectly. His principal work, the Διαδοχή or Διαδοχαί (the '' Successions''), was one of the first history books to have organized philosophers into schools of successive influence: e.g., the so-called Ionian School of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. It is quoted very frequently by Diogenes Laërtius, and Athenaeus. Sotion's ''Successions'' likely consisted of 23 books, and at least partly drew on the doxography of Theophrastus Theophrastus (; ; c. 371 – c. 287 BC) was an ancient Greek Philosophy, philosopher and Natural history, naturalist. A native of Eresos in Lesbos, he was Aristotle's close colleague and successor as head of the Lyceum (classical), Lyceum, the .... The ''Successions'' was influential enough to be abridged by Heracli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Philosophy
Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratics. The word ''philosophy'' itself originated from the Ancient Greek (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" , "to love" and σοφία ''Sophia (wisdom), sophía'', "wisdom". History Ancient The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics). Pre-Socratics The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology (the nature and origin of the universe), while rejecting unargued fables in place for argued theory, i.e., dogma superseded reason, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Propontis
The Sea of Marmara, also known as the Sea of Marmora or the Marmara Sea, is a small inland sea entirely within the borders of Turkey. It links the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea via the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, separating Turkey's European and Asian sides. It has an area of , and its dimensions are . Its greatest depth is . Name The Sea of Marmara is named after the largest island on its south side, called Marmara Island because it is rich in marble ( Greek , ''mármaron'' 'marble'). In classical antiquity, it was known as the Propontis, from the Greek words ''pro'' 'before' and ''pontos'' 'sea', reflecting the fact that the Ancient Greeks used to sail through it to reach the Black Sea, which they called ''Pontos''. Mythology In Greek mythology, a storm on the Propontis brought the Argonauts back to an island they had left, precipitating a battle in which either Jason or Heracles killed King Cyzicus, who had mistaken them for his Pelasgian enemies. Geography an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iambus (genre)
Iambus or iambic poetry was a genre of Greek lyric, ancient Greek poetry that included but was not restricted to the Iamb (foot), iambic meter and whose origins modern scholars have traced to the cults of Demeter and Dionysus. The genre featured insulting and obscene language and sometimes it is referred to as "blame poetry". For Alexandrian period, Alexandrian editors, however, iambus signified any poetry of an informal kind that was intended to entertain, and it seems to have been performed on similar occasions as elegy even though lacking elegy's decorum. The Archaic Greece, Archaic Greek poets Archilochus, Semonides and Hipponax were among the most famous of its early exponents. The Alexandrian period, Alexandrian poet Callimachus composed "iambic" poems against contemporary scholars, which were collected in an edition of about a thousand lines, of which fragments of thirteen poems survive. He in turn influenced Roman poets such as Catullus, who composed satirical epigrams that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aratus
Aratus (; ; c. 315/310 240 BC) was a Greek didactic poet. His major extant work is his hexameter poem ''Phenomena'' (, ''Phainómena'', "Appearances"; ), the first half of which is a verse setting of a lost work of the same name by Eudoxus of Cnidus. It describes the constellations and other celestial phenomena. The second half is called the ''Diosemeia'' (Διοσημεῖα "Forecasts"), and is chiefly about weather lore. Although Aratus was somewhat ignorant of Greek astronomy, his poem was very popular in the Greek and Roman world, as is proven by the large number of commentaries and Latin translations, some of which survive. Life There are several accounts of Aratus's life by anonymous Greek writers, and the Suda and Eudocia also mention him. From these it appears that he was a native of Soli in Cilicia (although one authority says Tarsus). He is known to have studied with Menecrates in Ephesus and Philitas in Cos. As a disciple of the Peripatetic philosopher Praxipha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homerus Of Byzantium
Homer of Byzantium (Greek: ) was an ancient Greek grammarian and tragic poet. He was also called ''ho Neoteros'' ("the Younger") to distinguish him from the older Homer. The son of the grammarian Andromachus Philologus and the poet Moero (some sources give her as Homer's daughter), he flourished in the beginning of the 3rd century BC, in the court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus at Alexandria. Together with his main rival, Sositheus, he is counted among the seven great tragics of the Alexandrian canon, or "Pleiad The Pleiades (; , ), were the seven sister-nymphs, companions of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Together with their sisters, the Hyades, they were sometimes called the Atlantides, Dodonides, or Nysiades, nursemaids and teachers of the infa ..." (named after the cluster of seven stars). Homer is variously attributed 45, 47 or 57 plays, all of them now lost. Only the title of one, ''Eurypyleia'', survives. Sources * William Smith, 3rd-century BC Greek people ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Aetolus
Alexander Aetolus (, ''Alexandros ho Aitōlos'') or Alexander the Aetolian was a Hellenistic Greek poet and grammarian, who worked at the Library of Alexandria and composed poetry in a variety of genres, now almost entirely lost. He is the only known Aetolian poet of antiquity. Life and works Alexander was a native of Pleuron in Aetolia. A contemporary of Callimachus and Theocritus, he was born c. 315 BC, and according to the Suda the names of his parent were Satyros and Stratokleia. By the 280s he was one of a group of literary scholars working at the Library of Alexandria, where Ptolemy II Philadelphus commissioned him to organize and correct the texts of the tragedies and satyr plays in the collection of the Library. Later, along with Antagoras and Aratus, he spent time at the court of the Macedonian king Antigonus II Gonatas. In addition to his work as a scholar, Alexander was a versatile poet who produced verse in a variety of meters and genres, although only about 70 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suda
The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; ; ) is a large 10th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine encyclopedia of the History of the Mediterranean region, ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas () or Souidas (). It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Medieval Greek, Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from Christianity in the Middle Ages, medieval Christian compilers. Title The exact spelling of the title is disputed. The transmitted title (''paradosis'') is "Suida", which is also attested in Eustathius of Thessalonica, Eustathius' commentary on Homer's epic poems; several conjectures have been made, both defending it and trying to correct it in "Suda". * Paul Maas (classical scholar), Paul Maas advocated for the spelling, connecting it to the Latin verb , the second-person singular imperative of , "to sweat". * Franz Dölger also defended , tracing its origins back to Byzantine mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Ptolemy II Philadelphus (, ''Ptolemaîos Philádelphos'', "Ptolemy, sibling-lover"; 309 – 28 January 246 BC) was the pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt from 284 to 246 BC. He was the son of Ptolemy I, the Macedonian Greek general of Alexander the Great who founded the Ptolemaic Kingdom after the death of Alexander, and Queen Berenice I, originally from Macedon. During Ptolemy II's reign, the material and literary splendour of the Alexandrian court was at its height. He promoted the Museum and Library of Alexandria. In addition to Egypt, Ptolemy's empire encompassed much of the Aegean and Levant. He pursued an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy with mixed success. From 275 to 271 BC, he led the Ptolemaic Kingdom against the rival Seleucid Empire in the First Syrian War and extended Ptolemaic power into Cilicia and Caria, but lost control of Cyrenaica after the defection of his half-brother Magas. In the Chremonidean War (–261 BC), Ptolemy confronted Antigonid Maced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antigonus II Gonatas
Antigonus II Gonatas (, ; – 239 BC) was a Macedonian Greek ruler who solidified the position of the Antigonid dynasty in Macedon after a long period defined by anarchy and chaos and acquired fame for his victory over the Gauls who had invaded the Balkans. Birth and family Antigonus Gonatas was born around 320 BC. The origin of the Hellenistic nickname Gonatas is unknown. He was descended from the Diadochi (the successors of Alexander the Great) on both his father's and mother's side. His father was Demetrius Poliorcetes, himself the son of Antigonus I Monophthalmus, who then controlled much of Asia. His mother was Phila, the daughter of Antipater, who had controlled Macedonia and the rest of Greece since 334 BC and was recognized as regent of the empire, which in theory remained united. Cassander, Antipater's oldest son who would become King of Macedon in 305 BC, was his uncle. The year of Antigonus Gonatas' birth, however, Antipater died, leading to further strugg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
