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Chapter 1. SPEUSIPPUS (circa 407-339 B.C.) (Head of the Academy, 347-339 B.C.)
[1] The foregoing is the best account of Plato that we were able to compile after a diligent examination of the authorities. He was succeeded by Speusippus, an Athenian and son of Eurymedon, who belonged to the deme of Myrrhinus, and was the son of Plato’s sister Potone. He was head of the school for eight years beginning in the 108th Olympiad.
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He set up statues of the Graces in the shrine of the Muses erected by Plato in the Academy. He adhered faithfully to Plato’s doctrines. In character, however, he was unlike him, being prone to anger and easily overcome by pleasures. At any rate there is a story that in a fit of passion he flung his favourite dog into the well, and that pleasure was the sole motive for his journey to Macedonia to be present at the wedding-feast of Casander.
[2] It was said that among those who attended his lectures were the two women who had been pupils of Plato, Lastheneia of Mantinea and Axiothea of Phlius. And at the time Dionysius in a letter says derisively,
We may judge of your wisdom by the Arcadian girl who is your pupil. And, whereas Plato exempted from fees all who came to him, you levy tribute on them and collect it whether they will or no.
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According to Diodorus in the first book of his
Memorabilia, Speusippus was the first to discern the common element in all studies and to bring them into connexion with each other so far as that was possible.
[3] And according to Caeneus he was the first to divulge what Isocrates called the secrets of his art, and the first to devise the means by which fagots of firewood are rendered portable.
When he was already crippled by paralysis, he sent a message to Xenocrates entreating him to come and take over the charge of the school.
3
They say that, as he was being conveyed to the Academy in a tiny carriage, he met and saluted Diogenes, who replied,
Nay, if you can endure to live in such a plight as this, I decline to return your greeting. At last in old age he became so despondent that he put an end to his life. Here follows my epigram upon him
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:
Had I not learnt that Speusippus would die thus, no one would have persuaded me to say that he was surely not of Plato’s blood; for else he would never have died in despair for a trivial cause.
[4] Plutarch in the Lives of Lysander and Sulla makes his malady to have been
morbus pedicularis.
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That his body wasted away is affirmed by Timotheus in his book
On Lives. Speusippus, he says, meeting a rich man who was in love with one who was no beauty, said to him,
Why, pray, are you in such sore need of him? For ten talents I will find you a more handsome bride.
He has left behind a vast store of memoirs and numerous dialogues, among them:
Aristippus the Cyrenaic.
On Wealth, one book.
On Pleasure, one book.
On Justice,
On Philosophy,
On Friendship,
On the Gods,
The Philosopher,
A Reply to Cephalus,
Cephalus,
Clinomachus or Lysias,
The Citizen,
Of the Soul,
A Reply to Gryllus,
[5]
Aristippus,
Criticism of the Arts, each in one book.
Memoirs, in the form of dialogues.
Treatise on System, in one book.
Dialogues on the Resemblances in Science, in ten books.
Divisions and Hypotheses relating to the Resemblances.
On Typical Genera and Species.
A Reply to the Anonymous Work.
Eulogy of Plato.
Epistles to Dion, Dionysius and Philip.
On Legislation.
The Mathematician.
Mandrobolus.
Lysias.
Definitions.
Arrangements of Commentaries.
They comprise in all 43,475 lines. To him Timonides addresses his narrative in which he related the achievements of Dion and Bion.
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Favorinus also in the second book of his
Memorabilia relates that Aristotle purchased the works of Speusippus for three talents.
There was another Speusippus, a physician of Alexandria, of the school of Herophilus.
Vitae philosophorum. Diogenes Laertius. R. D. Hicks (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1925.
Funding provided by National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Preservation and Access.