Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

almost the same) name as the
alleged author of the
Alcyon. 4) None of these three persons can be identified as the
mathematician Leon.
68
Lasserre.
Eudoxos, 141. Cf. Krämer, H.J. Die Ältere Akademie, Die Philosophie der
Antike, Vol. 3: Ältere Akademie, Aristoteles, Peripatos, ed. by H. Flashar, 2
nd
ed.,
Basel 2004, 56f.
69
In Eratosthenes’ letter to King Ptolemy Eudoxus finds the solution to the Delian
problem dià tõn kampúlwn grammõn (Eutoc. In Archim. De sphaer., 90.7 =
47 A 15).

---

Chapter 3: Science in the Platonic Academy
96
before 347.
70
Von Fritz proposed his ‘minimal’ dates as 400–347,
71
but in a
special article about Eudoxus’ chronology, Santilliana reasonably returned to
390–337.
72
Lasserre accepts the latter dates and gives a detailed argument in
support of them in his edition of Eudoxus’ fragments.
73
Since then, no one has
seriously tried to defend the old chronology, though it has been tacitly used
even after Lasserre’s edition.
74
Eudoxus’ teacher in geometry was Archytas,
75
and it is not by chance that
Diogenes Laertius finishes his Pythagorean book (VIII) with a biography of
Eudoxus. He visited Athens twice (VIII, 86–88). The first time, when he was
23, i.e., in the year 367, he went there for two months. He attended the Soph-
ists’ lectures and possibly visited the Academy, but nothing is said about his ac-
quaintance with Plato, since the latter was in Sicily at that time.
76
The second
time, he was already a grown man and came to Athens “bringing with him a
great number of pupils: according to some, this was for the purpose of annoying
Plato who had originally passed him over”.
77
According to Santilliana and Las-
serre, Eudoxus probably spent a few years in Athens, from about 350 to about
349, and then returned to his homeland in Cnidus, where he died in 337. It
seems that one may relate Eudoxus’ participation in Academic discussions on
the relationship between Forms and things and on what is the highest Good to
his second visit to Athens. His answers to both problems were so un-Platonic in
70
Susemihl, F. Die Lebenszeit des Eudoxos von Knidos,
RhM 53 (1898) 626ff.; Gi-
singer, F.
Die Erdbeschreibung des Eudoxos von Knidos, Leipzig 1923, 5.
71
Fritz, K. von. Die Lebenszeit des Eudoxos von Knidos,
Philologus 39 (1930)
478–481.
72
Santillana, G. de. Eudoxus and Plato. A study in chronology,
Isis 32 (1940) 248–282.
73
Lasserre.
Eudoxos, 137ff. See also Waschkies, H.–J. Von Eudoxos zu Aristoteles,
Amsterdam 1977, 34ff.; Trampedach, K.
Platon, die Akademie und die zeitgenös-
sische Politik, Stuttgart 1994, 57ff.
74
P. Merlan’s (
Studies in Epicurus and Aristotle, Wiesbaden 1960, 98ff.) alternative
chronology for Eudoxus (395–342) depends on the highly unlikely supposition that,
at the age of 27, he came to Athens with a group of his students and, at 28, during
Plato’s absence, became a scholarch at the Academy.
75
D. L. VIII, 86, with reference to Callimachus, who was a bio-bibliographer and a li-
brarian at the Museum in Alexandria.
76
It is to this visit that the well-known statement from the late biography of Aristotle
refers: ^Aristotélh~ fóxou (Vita Marciana 10). These
words used to be taken as evidence that during Plato’s absence Eudoxus played the
role of scholarch. The impossibility of this reconstruction has been repeatedly
shown (Waschkies,