Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

...and Naucides are celebrated. And Epicurus succeeded them in his turn. Philosophers are generally distributed into two genera. Some of these are called dogmatic, who discourse about things as if they could be comprehended. Others are ἐφεκτικοὶ [skeptics], who define nothing, and argue about things in such a way that they cannot be comprehended. Of these, many left behind monuments of their own genius; others wrote nothing at all. Socrates is counted among the latter, as some wish, as are Stilpon, Philip, Menedemus, Pyrrho, Theodorus, Carneades, Bryso, and Pythagoras, according to some, as well as Aristo of Chios, except for a few letters. There are others who wrote only single short works, such as Melissus, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras. Zeno wrote many, Xenophanes more, Democritus more, Aristotle more, Epicurus more, but Chrysippus the most. Some philosophers are named from their cities, such as the Eleans, Megarians, Eretrians, and Cyrenaics. Some from their locations, such as the Academics and Stoics. Some from an event, such as the Peripatetics. Some from their ignominy, such as the Cynics. Others from their effect, such as the Eudaemonics. Some from their arrogance, such as those who call themselves φιλαλήθεις, that is, lovers of truth, and ἐλεγκτικοὺς, and ἀναλογιστικοὺς. There are also those named from their teachers, such as the Socratics and Epicureans. And others, because they wrote about the nature of things, are called Physicists. Others, because they occupied themselves rather with morals, are Ethicists. The rest are called Dialecticians from their debating, namely those who fight with the sharpness of words and arguments. Philosophy is divided into three parts: Physics, Ethics, and Dialectics. It is the property of Physics to discourse about the world and those things that are in it. Of Ethics, to treat of life and morals. Furthermore, of Dialectics, to provide the reasons for both parts. Physics flourished alone up to Archelaus; from Socrates, however, as was predicted, Ethics took its beginning, and from Zeno the Eleatic, Dialectics.