Life
Born in the last years of the 5th century BC, Phaedo was a native of Elis and of high birth. He was taken prisoner in his youth, and passed into the hands of an Athenian slave dealer; being of considerable personal beauty, he was compelled into prostitution. The occasion on which he was taken prisoner was no doubt the war between Sparta and Elis, 402-1 BC, in which the Spartans were joined by the Athenians in 401 BC.
Two years would have been available for Phaedo's acquaintance with Socrates, to whom he attached himself. According to Diogenes Laërtius he was ransomed by one of the friends of Socrates. The Suda says that he was accidentally present at a conversation with Socrates, and pleaded with him to effect his liberation. Various accounts mention Alcibiades, Crito, or Cebes, as the person who ransomed him. Cebes is stated to have become friends with Phaedo, and to have instructed him in philosophy. Phaedo was present at the death of Socrates in 399 BC, and was young enough for Socrates to stroke his hair which was worn long in the Spartan style.
That Phaedo was friends with Plato seems likely from the way in which he is introduced in Plato's dialogue Phaedo which takes its name from him. Athenaeus, though, relates that Phaedo and Plato were enemies, and that Phaedo resolutely denied any of the views which Plato ascribed to him.
Phaedo appears to have lived in Athens for a short time after the death of Socrates. He then returned to Elis, where he became the founder of a school of philosophy. His disciples included Anchipylus, Moschus and Pleistanus, who succeeded him. Subsequently Menedemus and Asclepiades transferred the school to Eretria, where it was known as the Eretrian school and is frequently identified (e.g. by Cicero) with the Megarian school.
Read more about this topic: Phaedo Of Elis
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)