LIFE OF THALES.

I. THALES, then, as Herodotus, Duris, and Democritus say, was the son of Euxamius and Cleobule, of the family of the Thelidæ, who are Phoenicians by descent—among the most noble of all the descendants of Cadmus and Agenor, as Plato testifies. He was the first man to whom the name of "Wise" was given, when Damasius was Archon at Athens, in whose time the seven wise men were also given that title, as Demetrius Phalereus records in his Catalogue of the Archons. He was enrolled as a citizen at Miletus when he came there with Neleus, who had been banished from Phoenicia; but a more common statement is that he was a native Milesian of noble extraction.

II. After having been immersed in state affairs, he applied himself to speculations in natural philosophy. Some people state he left no writings behind him, for the book on Naval Astronomy which is attributed to him is said in reality to be the work of Focus the Samian. But Callimachus was aware that he was the discoverer of the Lesser Bear; for in his Iambics he speaks of him thus:

And he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars
Which beam in Charles's wain The Big Dipper/Ursa Major., and guide the bark
Of the Phoenician sailor o'er the sea.

According to others, he wrote two books, and no more, about the solstice and the equinox, thinking that everything else was easily to be comprehended. According to other statements, he is said to have been the first who studied astronomy and who foretold the eclipses and motions of the sun, as Eudemus relates in his history of astronomical discoveries; on which account Xenophanes and Herodotus praise him greatly; and Heraclitus and Democritus confirm this statement.

III. Some again (one of whom is Choerilus the poet) say that he was the first person who affirmed that the souls of men were immortal; and he was the first person, too, who...