Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

...its image. He held that the beginnings of all things were matter, quality, causality, and the place from which, by which, where, and in which [they exist]. As for the end, he says it is that to which all things are referred. He says that life is perfect in every virtue, not without the natural requirements of the body and external goods. But now we must speak of the men themselves, what sort they were, and first of Thales.

THALES THE MILESIAN.

Thales, therefore, as Herodotus, Duris, and Democritus say, was born to a father named Examyes and a mother named Cleobulina, of the family of the Thelidae, who are the most noble of the Phoenicians and trace their origin from Cadmus and Agenor—Plato also being a witness to this. He was the first to be called wise, at the time when Damasius was archon at Athens, under whom the seven wise men were also so named, as Demetrius Phalereus writes in his description of the rulers. He was enrolled as a citizen of Miletus, having departed from Phoenicia with Neleus after having lost his ancestral soil, or, as it seemed to others, he was a native Milesian of noble birth. After the affairs of the republic, he turned himself to the contemplation of the nature of things. Indeed, according to some, he left no monument of his own genius. For that nautical astrology which is attributed to him is said to be the work of Phocus the Samian. Callimachus relates that he was the discoverer of the Little Bear and that he noted its stars, by which the Phoenicians navigate, of which these are the verses:

Καὶ τ' ἁμάξις ἐλέγετο σταθμήσασθαι
Τοὺς ἀστερίσκους ᾗ πλέουσι φοίνικες.
that is,
He is said to have marked out the smaller
stars of the Wain, by which the skilled Phoenicians sail.

According to some, he wrote only two books, one on the solstice and one on the equinox, having judged other matters to be easy to grasp. Many think he was the first to explore the secrets of astrology and to predict the eclipses and movements of the sun, as says Eude...