BIOGRAPHY OF PHILOLAUS

BY DIOGENES LAERTES

Philolaus of Crotona, a Pythagorean, was he from whom Plato, in some of his Letters, begged Dio to purchase Pythagorean books. He died under the accusation of having had designs on the tyranny. I have made about him the following epigram:

"I advise everybody to take, good care to avoid suspicion; even if you are not guilty, but seem so, you are ruined. That is why Crotona, the homeland of Philolaus, destroyed him, because he was suspected of wishing to establish autocracy."

He teaches that all things are produced by necessity and harmony, and he is the first who said that the earth has a circular movement; others however insist this was due to Hicetas of Syracuse.

He had written a single book which the philosopher Plato, visiting Dionysius in Sicily, bought according to Hermippus, from Philolaus's parents, for the sum of 40 Alexandrian minae, whence he drew his Timaeus. Others state that he received it as a present for having obtained the liberty of one of Philolaus's disciples, whom Dionysius had imprisoned. In his Homonyms Demetrius claims that he is the first of the Pythagorean philosophers who made a work on nature public property. This book begins as follows:

"The world's being is the harmonious compound of infinite and finite principles; such is the totality of the world and all it contains."