The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

INTRODUCTION.

Eudoxus says that the Gymnosophists are descendants of the Magi, and some claim the Jews are also derived from them. Moreover, those who have written about the Magi condemn Herodotus, for they argue that Xerxes would never have shot arrows against the sun or shackled the sea—since both sun and sea are honored by the Magi as gods—but that it was consistent for Xerxes to destroy the images of the gods.

VII. The following is the account authors give of the Egyptian philosophy regarding the gods and justice. They say that the first principle is matter; then the four elements were formed out of matter and divided, and animals were created. The sun and moon are gods; the former is called Osiris and the latter Isis, and they are symbolized by beetles, dragons, hawks, and other animals, as Manetho tells us in his abridged account of Natural Philosophy, which Hecataeus confirms. They make images of the gods and assign them temples because they do not know the form of God. They consider that the world had a beginning and will have an end, and that it is a sphere. They think stars are fire and that earthly things are generated through their combination; that the moon is eclipsed when it falls into the shadow of the earth; that the soul is eternal and migrates; and that rain is caused by atmospheric changes. Hecataeus and Aristagoras provide further speculations on natural history.

They have established laws of justice, which they attribute to Mercury, and they consider useful animals to be gods. They claim the merit of having invented geometry, astrology, and arithmetic. So much for the subject of invention.

VIII. But Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term "philosophy" and called himself a philosopher. He was conversing at Sicyon with Leon, who was tyrant of the Sicyonians or Phliasians (as Heraclides Ponticus relates in his book about a dead woman), when he said that no man ought to be called wise, but only God. For formerly, what is now called philosophy (philosophia) was called