Chapter 25.—What Philosophers
Were Famous When Tarquinius Priscus Reigned Over the Romans, and
Zedekiah Over the Hebrews, When Jerusalem Was Taken and the Temple
Overthrown.
When Zedekiah reigned over the
Hebrews, and Tarquinius Priscus, the successor of Ancus Martius,
over the Romans, the Jewish people was led captive into Babylon,
Jerusalem and the temple built by Solomon being overthrown. For
the prophets, in chiding them for their iniquity and impiety,
predicted that these things should come to pass, especially
Jeremiah, who even stated the number of years. Pittacus of
Mitylene, another of the sages, is reported to have lived at that
time. And Eusebius writes that, while the people of God were held
captive in Babylon, the five other sages lived, who must be added
to Thales, whom we mentioned above, and Pittacus, in order to make
up the seven. These are Solon of Athens, Chilo of Lacedæmon,
Periander of Corinth, Cleobulus of Lindus, and Bias of Priene.
These flourished after the theological poets, and were called
sages, because they excelled other men in a certain laudable line
of life, and summed up some moral precepts in epigrammatic
sayings. But they left posterity no literary monuments, except
that Solon is alleged to have given certain laws to the Athenians,
and Thales was a natural philosopher, and left books of his
doctrine in short proverbs. In that time of the Jewish captivity,
Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Xenophanes, the natural philosophers,
flourished. Pythagoras also lived then, and at this time the name
philosopher was first used.