Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/398

 S80 HISTORY OF GREECE. slew him. A severe revenge was taken on his partisans aftel his falU During the interval between 540-500 B.C., events of much importance occurred among the Italian Greeks, especially at Kroton and Sybaris, events, unhappily, very imperfectly handed down. Between these two periods fall both the war between Sybaris and Kroton, and the career and ascendency of Pythag- oras. ]n connection with this latter name, it will be requisite to say a few words respecting the other Grecian philosophers of die sixth century B.C. I have, in a former chapter, noticed and characterized those distinguished persons called the Seven Wise Men of Greece, whose celebrity falls in the first half of this century, men not KO much marked by scientific genius as by practical sagacity and foresight in the appreciation of worldly affairs, and enjoying a high degree of political respect from their fellow-citizens. One of them, however, the Milesian Thales, claims our, notice, not only on this ground, but also as the earliest known name in the long line of Greek scientific investigators. His life, nearly con- temporary with that of Solon, belongs seemingly to the interval about 640-550 B.C.: the stories mentioned in Herodotus perhaps borrowed in part from the Milesian Hekatceus are sufficient to show that his reputation for wisdom, as well as for science, continued to be very great, even a century after his death, among his fellow-citizens. And he marks an important epoch in the progress of the Greek mind, as having been the first man to depart both in letter and spirit from the Hesiodic Theogony, introducing the conception of substances with their transformations and sequences, in place of that string of persons and quasi-human attributes which had animated the old legend- ary world. He is the father of what is called the Ionic philoso- phy, which is considered as lasting from his time down to that of Sokrates ; and writers, ancient as well as modern, have pro- fessed to trace a succession of philosophers, each one the pupil of the preceding, between these two extreme epochs. B it the appellation is, in truth, undefined, and even incorrect, since nothing entitled to the name of a school, or sect, or succession,
 * Plntarch, Philosophand. cum Principibus, c. 3, p. 778.