Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/365

Rh this chapter is really one of the periodical "bankruptcies of science" which mark the close of one chapter in its history and announce the beginning of a new one.

185. Hippon of Samos or Kroton or Rhegion belonged to the Italian school of medicine. We know very little indeed of him except that he was a contemporary of Perikles. From a scholiast on Aristophanes we learn that Kratinos satirised him in his Panoptai; and Aristotle mentions him in the enumeration of early philosophers given in the First Book of the Metaphysics, though only to say that the inferiority of his intellect deprives him of all claim to be reckoned among them.

With regard to his views, the most precise statement is that of Alexander, who doubtless follows Theophrastos. It is to the effect that he held the primary substance to be Moisture, without deciding whether it was Water or Air. We have the authority of Aristotle and Theophrastos, represented by Hippolytos, for saying that this theory was supported by physiological arguments of the kind common at the time, and the arguments tentatively ascribed to Thales by Aristotle are of this kind (§ 10). His other views belong to the history of Medicine.

Till quite recently no fragment of Hippon was known to exist, but a single one has now been recovered from the