Greek Philosophers

	A	B	D	G	H
1	Hittite Kingdom	1600-1180 BC		Mycenaea
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19	Timeline of Western philosophers (Ancient philosophy) - YouTube
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22	Homer & the curious affinity to the Epic of Gilgamesh.
23	Despite this connection, the world of Homer does not describe the Hittite, Mesopotamian empires;or the Greek City states which emerged from the Greek Dark Age.
24	Rather, it describes a world much like that of the Eurasian Steppes.
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39	Bronze Age collapse		1200 BC
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44	THE GREEK AGES
45	1100-800 BC	Greek Dark Age
46	800-490 BC	Archaic Period
47	490-323 BC	Classical Period
48	323-146 BC	Hellenistic Period
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51	LIST OF GREEK PHILOSOPHERS
52	Date	Name	Philosophy
53		Melampus	A legendary soothsayer & healer from Pylos, who ruled at Argos. He introduced the worship of Dionysus
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55		Orpheus	In Greek mythology he was a Thracian bard, legendary musician, a renowned poet & prophet
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57		Musaeus	A legendary polymath, philosopher, historian, prophet, seer, priest, poet & musician, said to have been the founder of priestly poetry in Attica.
58	(Laura lists Melampus, Orpheus & Musaeus, because they were definitely part of the intellectual environment in which Greek philosophy arose, and wonders if they were all the same person, known by different names.)
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60	7-6thC BC	Epimenides of Cnossos	Greek seer & philosopher-poet. He was summoned to Athens in the 46th Olympiad (595-592 BCE) to purify their city & thereby stop a pestilence
61			He & Melampus were alleged to have been some of the founders of Orphism which apparently taught reincarnation. Epimenides blamed this plague on “the pollution which Cylon brought on the city & showed them how to remove it.”
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63	600 BC	Alcman	Alcman (~600 BC) was a Spartan choral/lyric poet who apparently wrote a theogonical cosmogony. The papyrus fragment preserves a couple of unusual terms that is a description of a physical path or passage through the heavens, against a background stars, but there were no constellations yet named by the Greeks.
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65	605-560 BC	Pherecydes of Syros	He was the bridge between ancient myths & pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. His work survived into Diogenes’ time (3rdC AD) who recites miracle stories about Pherecydes. But the same miracles were also attributed to Pythagoras, as there were few reliable details about either, it’s best to be skeptical of a connection. Laura believes Homer & Pherecydes were making astronomical observations. Pherecydes, talks of recesses, pits, caves, doors & gates...Laura suggests that Pherecydes was talking about regions of the sky exactly as did Homer & Hesiod. Pherecydes was the first to teach the eternity and transmigration of human souls, i.e. reincarnation. Hellenic scholar Schibli writes that Pherecydes discusses the immortality of the soul, its wanderings in the underworld, & the reasons for the soul’s incarnations.the material that comes from Pherecydes is dotted with original terms & imagery that strikes Laura as: 1) possibly derived from northern sources, 2) a quasi-scientific attempt to depict real events, not myth.
66		Pherecydes of Syros
67	630-475 BC	Milesian School	Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes & Xenophanes from neighbouring Colophon
68	(490 Classical)
69	624-548 BC	Thales	During the 6th century BC, Miletus was considered to be the greatest & wealthiest Greek city even though it was not in Greece proper. Miletus was resettled by Ionian Greeks around 1000 BC & was formerly occupied by speakers of an Indo-European language, Luwian (~ Hittite), who disappeared in the collapse of the Bronze Age. Please notice that Ionia really isn’t Greece. So it looks like ‘Greek Civilization’ as we know it actually belongs to Anatolia, & only later did they colonize Greece, proper.
70			Thales founded a school at Miletus around 600 BC that was destined to be the root of ‘Greek art & philosophy’. Diogenes tells us that his parents were Phoenician, so even he was not Greek
71					Thales is hailed as the first true mathematician- he used geometry to calculate the height of pyramids & distances of ships from the shore. He predicted a solar eclipse in May, 595 BCE (at the same time Epimenides was heading to Athens to save them from a plague.
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73					He also engaged in political life.
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75					Thales was among the ‘Seven Sages of Greece’, a list complied around 582 BC. Dicaearchus of Messina (350-285 BC) commented that none of them were either sages or philosophers, but merely shrewd men with a turn for legislation. That suggests even more strongly that their ideas were driven by a need for political stability & to change the way the public perceived the relationship between the leaders & the cosmos. A parallel perspective is that Thales & his colleagues represented a new kind of community: one that inquires into the nature of things without recourse to the ‘old ways & explanations’.
76					Thales profoundly influenced later philosophy; his student Anaximander was allegedly one of Pythagoras’ teachers
77					This age is often referred to as the ‘Axial Age’ - it is notable as revolutionary thinking arose in widely separated places at the same time: China, India, Iran & the Near East.
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88	610-545 BC	Anaximander	Anaximander is thought to have introduced the sundial to the Greeks, which he got from the Babylonians. He claimed that nature, like human societies, is ruled by laws & anything that breaks natural laws suffers repercussions. Right there we have a hint of his interest in power politics & social control. He associated dissolution & renewal with definite cycles; this strongly suggests influence from Iranian/Persian cosmology & the study of comets.
89			**Aelian mentions that philosophers often dealt with political matters. As Dicaearchus stated, these really weren’t philosophers but shrewd men with political agendas.
90			** Perhaps leaders of those times consciously decided that ‘this business about comets being gods needs to be dealt with since it threatens our control’ because the ‘old way’ had been to sacrifice the leaders if it was perceived that the gods were angry or hungry.
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93	585-528 BC	Anaximenes	The earliest attempt to provide explanations for the world without recourse to anything supernatural. This is seen today as the earliest physics along the line of approaching Quantum Theory with its atoms & quarks. His theories suggest that a firm connection via observation had been made between the ‘terrestrial bodies’ & stars of some sort, probably comets/ fireballs.
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97	570-495 BC	Pythagoras	Born on the island of Samos, he travelled widely, had himself initiated into all of the mystery schools in Greece & foreign countries, learned the Egyptian language & journeyed to the lands of the Chaldeans.
98	490 (Classical)		Then, in Crete, he went into the cave of Ida with Epimenides. He returned to Samos & found his country under the rule of a tyrant, Polycrates, so he sailed to Croton (about 530 BCE) & there, became a leader who created a constitution for the Italian Greeks.
99			His disciples held the opinion about him that he was Apollo come down from the far north”, which is interesting considering other clues that Pythagoras’ (& Pherecydes) ideas had a more northern origin
100			The alleged books of Pythagoras were placed into the hands of none other than Plato! And, we can’t be certain that Philolaus didn’t write them himself.