Anaxagoras

Use in the book

The name occurs beside Pythocleides, followed by the assertion that Pericles still keeps company with Damon. It supplies a recognizable association rather than an exposition of natural philosophy. Nothing here licenses importing Anaxagoras’ account of mind or matter into the argument about the human being at 129–130. The dramatic significance is that even a prestigious educational lineage does not answer Socrates’ next demand: name someone Pericles himself has made wise. A catalogue of teachers and a demonstration of teachable understanding are treated as different sorts of evidence.

Places to read

1. 118cAlcibiades cites Anaxagoras among the wise men associated with Pericles.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s note identifies him as the natural philosopher of Clazomenae; neither that location nor his doctrines are stated in the dialogue.

Ἀναξαγόρας

Attested: Ἀναξαγόρᾳ (anaxagorai; 118c). Anaxagoras, a wise associate of Pericles. Lexical identification: lemma: Ἀναξαγόρας. See Anaxagoras.

Use in the book

Anaxagoras enters at the border between what Socrates hears and what he sees. The circles and tilted hands suggest a learned discussion; the nearby lover dismisses that activity as talk about things in the sky. The name therefore establishes a recognizable intellectual setting without supplying an astronomical argument that the rest of the dialogue tests. Nothing said later refutes an Anaxagorean cosmology. The target becomes the lover’s definition of philosophy as accumulation of learning.

This restraint has interpretive consequences. One can see a contrast between cosmic topics at the entrance and self-knowledge and civic judgment near the close. But “Socrates rejects Anaxagoras” would turn a dramatic transition into a doctrinal verdict absent from the text. The boys’ earnestness remains potentially admirable: it is the athlete who first labels it nonsense, while Socrates asks whether their subject is great and fine.

Nor does the pairing authorize an identification of either lover with Anaxagoras. Both names belong to the subject apparently discussed by the lads; the lovers are described through music and gymnastics and are otherwise unnamed.

Places to read

1. 132aἢ περὶ Ἀναξαγόρου — The first of two possible subjects of the lads’ quarrel.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s note identifies Anaxagoras as the thinker from Clazomenae, gives approximate dates of 500–428 BC, and says he taught at Athens and held the sun to be a fiery stone, citing Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.7.7. Those details are contextual information from the note, not statements in The Lovers, and no independent historical verification is claimed here. The supplied Greek assigns the name to 132a; Oenopides begins 132b. The cross-section placement is worth observing when quoting the opening alternatives.

Use in the book

Aristotle’s brief comparison makes Anaxagoras older in years than Empedocles but later in his work, immediately before reporting unlimited principles. This is a chronological hinge with an interpretive ambiguity, rather than a securely dated publication notice. Diogenes’ Alcidamas report also names Anaxagoras among Empedocles’ subsequent teachers, pairing natural philosophy with a separate model of personal dignity. Read together, the passages need not form a coherent succession: Aristotle supplies a relative comparison, while the biography constructs a lineage. Simplicius places Empedocles not long after Anaxagoras, another broad relation that is less precise than an exact sequence of books or schools. The lexicon should therefore keep the chronological and doctrinal senses open rather than treating the older man’s “later” work as settled evidence that he borrowed from Empedocles.

Places to read

1. A 6 (testimony)Aristotle, Metaphysics. Contrasts priority in age with lateness in works.
2. A 1 §§ 56–58 (biography)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 56, reporting Alcidamas, Physics. Includes Anaxagoras in a disputed account of further instruction.
3. A 7 (testimony)Simplicius, On the Physics. Offers broad relative placement rather than exact dates.

Translation in this edition

Bonitz’s apparatus note explicitly leaves open activity-date and doctrinal maturity; the translation must retain that uncertainty rather than turning a relative comparison into a precise publication chronology.