Introduction

This is the only complete history of philosophy to survive from antiquity. In ten books it begins with Thales and the Seven Sages and goes on through Socrates and his followers, Plato and the Academy, Aristotle and the Peripatetics, the Cynics, the Stoics and the Pythagoreans to Epicurus. With evident relish the author records the philosophers' lives, wills, book lists and doctrines, and a wealth of anecdotes: Diogenes living in a tub and telling Alexander to stand out of his sun, Thales falling into a well while gazing at the stars. For two thousand years these stories have shaped how we picture the philosophers of the ancient world.