Anaximander
Videos
Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded Thales and becam
Anaximander in a 17th century portrait by Pietro Bellotti
Ancient Roman mosaic from Johannisstraße, Trier, dating to the early third century AD, showing Anaximander holding a sundial
Detail of Raphael's painting The School of Athens, 1510–1511. This could be a representation of Anaximander leaning towards Pythagoras on his left.
The sight of stars circling the Pole star and vanishing and reappearing at the horizon could have suggested to Anaximander that the Earth was surrounded above and below by a void.
Diogenes Laertius
Videos
Diogenes Laërtius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving work, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, remains a primary source
1688 engraving of Diogenes Laërtius
Dionysiou monastery, codex 90, a 13th-century manuscript containing selections from Herodotus, Plutarch and (shown here) Diogenes Laertius
Title page of an edition in Greek and Latin, 1594
The Italian Renaissance scholar, painter, philosopher, and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) modeled his own autobiography on Diogenes Laërtius's Life of Thales.