Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/180

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ANAXAGORAS.ANAXAGORAS.

ceased persons, to the exclusion of their rightful heirs. He perished in a. d. 557, in an earthquake at Byzantium, whither he had removed his residence from Berytus. (Agath. Hist. v.3.) [J.T. G.]


ANATO'LIUS (Ανατόλιος), Patriarch of Constantinople (a. d. 449), presided at a synod at Constantinople (a. d. 450) which condemned Eutyches and his followers, and was present at the general council of Chalcedon (a. d. 451), out of the twenty-eighth decree of which a contest sprung up between Anatolius and Leo, bishop of Rome, respecting the relative rank of their two sees. A letter from Anatolius to Leo, written upon this subject in a. d. 457, is still extant. (Cave, Hist. Lit. a. d. 449.) [P. S.]


ANATO'LIUS (Ανατόλιος), Bishop of Laodicea (a. d. 270), was an Alexandrian by birth. Eusebius ranks him first among the men of his age, in literature, philosophy, and science, and states, that the Alexandrians urged him to open a school of Aristotelian philosophy. (H.E. vii. 32.) He was of great service to the Alexandrians when they were besieged by the Romans, a. d. 2G2. From Alexandria he went into Syria. At Caesarea he was ordained by Theotechnus, who destined him to be his successor in the bishopric, the duties of which he discharged for a short time as the vicar of Theotechnus. Afterwards, while proceeding to attend a council at Antioch, he was detained by the people of Laodicea, and became their bishop. Of his subsequent life nothing is known ; but by some he is said to have suffered martyrdom. He wrote a work on the chronology of Easter, a large fragment of which is preserved by Eusebius. (l.c.) The work exists in a Laatin translation, which some ascribe to Rufinus, under the title of "Volumen de Paschate or "Canones Paschales," and which was published by Aegidius Bucherius in his Doctrina Temporum, Antverp., 1634. He also wrote a treatise on Arithmetic, in ten books (Hieron, de Vir. Illustr., c. 79. de Vir. Illust. c. 73), of which some fragments are preserved in the Θεολογούμενα τῆς Ἀριθμετικῆς Some fragments of his mathematical works are printed in Fabric. Bib. Graec. iii. p. 4G2. [P. S.]


ANAX (Ἄναξ) 1. A giant, son of Uranus and Gaea, and father of Asterius. The legends of Miletus, which for two generations bore the name of Anactoria, described Anax as king of Anactoria; but in the reign of his son the town and territory were conquered by the Cretan Miletus, who changed the name Anactoria into Miletus. (Paus. i. 35. § 5, vii. 2. § 3.)


2. A surname or epithet of the gods in general, characterizing them as the rulers of the world; but the plural forms, Ἄνακες, or Ἄνακτες, or Ἄνακες παῖδες, were used to designate the Dioscuri. (Paus.. ii. 22. § 7, x. 38. § 3 ; Cic.. de Nat. Deor. iii. 31; Aelian. V. H. v. 4; Plut. Thes. 33.) In the second of the passages of Pausanias here referred to, in which he speaks of a temple of the Ἄνακες παῖδες at Amphissa, he states, that it was a doubtful point whether they were the Dioscuri, the Curetes, or the Cabeiri; and from this circumstance a connexion between Amphissa and Samothrace has been inferred. (Comp. Eustath. ad Hom. pp. 182, 1598.) Some critics identify the Anaces with the Enakim of the Hebrews. [L. S.]


ANAXA'GORAS (Ἀναξαγόρας), a Greek philosopher, was born at Clazomenae in Ionia about the year b. c. 499. His father, Hegesibulus, left him in the possession of considerable property, but as he intended to devote his life to higher ends, he gave it up to his relatives as something which ought not to engage his attention. He is said to have gone to Athens at the age of twenty, during the contest of the Greeks with Persia, and to have lived and taught in that city for a period of thirty years. He became here the intimate friend and teacher of the most eminent men of the time, such as Euripides and Pericles; but while he thus gained the friendship and admiration of the most enlightened Athenians, the majority, uneasy at being disturbed in their hereditary superstitions, soon found reasons for complaint. The principal cause of hostility towards him must, however, be looked for in the following circumstance. As he was a friend of Pericles, the party which was dissatisfied with his administration seized upon the disposition of the people towards the philosopher as a favourable opportunity for striking a blow at the gnat statesman. Anaxagoras, therefore, was accused of impiety. His trial and its results are matters of the greatest uncertainty on account of the different statements of the ancients themselves. (Diog. Laert. ii. 12, &c.; Plut. Pericl. 32, Nicias, 23.) It seems probable, however, that Anaxagoras was accused twice, once on the ground of impiety, and a second time on that of partiality to Persia. In the first case it was only owing to the influence and eloquence of Pericles that he was not put to death; but he was sentenced to pay a fine of five talents and to quit Athens. The philosopher now went to Lampsacus, and it seems to have been during his absence that the second charge of μηδισμὸς was brought against him, in consequence of which he was condemned to death. He is said have received the intelligence of his sentence with a smile, and to have died at Lampsacus at the age of seventy-two. The inhabitants of this place honoured Anaxagoras not only during his lifetime, but after his death also. ((Diog. Laert. ii. c. 3 ; Dict. of Ant. s. v. 'Ἀναξαγόραρεια.)

Diogenes Laertius, Cicero, and other writers, call Anaxagoras a disciple of Anaximenes; but this statement is not only connected with some chronological difficulties, but is not quite in accordance with the accounts of other writers. This much, however, is certain, that Anaxagoras struck into a new path, and was dissatisfied with the systems of his predecessors, the Ionic philosophers. It is he who laid the foundation of the Attic philosophy, and who stated the problem which his successors laboured to solve. The Ionic philosophers had endeavoured to explain nature and its various phenomena by regarding matter in its different forms and modifications as the cause of all things. Anaxagoras, on the other hand, conceived the necessity of seeking a higher cause, independent of matter, and this cause he considered to be νοῦς, that is, mind, thought, or intelligence. This νοῦς, however, is not the creator of the world, but merely that which originally arranged the world and gave motion to it; for, according to the axiom that out of nothing nothing can come, he supposed the existence of matter from all eternity, though, before the νοῦς was exercised upon it, it was in a chaotic confusion. In this original chaos there was an infinite number of homogeneous parts (ὁμοιομερῆ) as well as heterogeneous ones. The νοῦς united the former and separated from them what was heterogeneous, and out of this process arose the things we see in this world. This