Eudoxus of Cnidus

“ Illustrious natives of Cnidus were, first, Eudoxus the mathematician, a disciple of Plato’s; Agatharchides, the Peripatetic philosopher and historian; Theopompus, one of the most powerful of the friends of divus Cæsar, and his son Artemidorus. Ctesias also, the physician of Artaxerxes, was a native of this place. ”

“ Eudoxia, the wife of Arcadius, &c.――A daughter of Theodosius the younger, who married the emperor Maximus, and invited Genseric the Vandal over into Italy.
Eudoxus, a son of Æschines of Cnidus, who distinguished himself by his knowledge of astrology, medicine, and geometry. He was the first who regulated the year among the Greeks, among whom he first brought from Egypt the celestial sphere and regular astronomy. He spent a great part of his life on the top of a mountain, to study the motions of the stars, by whose appearance he pretended to foretell the events of futurity. ”

“ Eudoxus, a native of Cnidus, who lived about the fourth century b.c., a contemporary of Plato, was the first Greek who described the constellations with approximate completeness. He is reported to have visited Egypt and to have there received astronomical instruction. He wrote The Enoption, or The Mirror, and The Phenomena or Appearances, both prose works and unfortunately not extant, but Aratos, the Alexandrine poet, versified the latter work about 270 b.c., and it has descended to our day. ”

“ According to Aristotle (Ethics x. 2) , Eudoxus held that pleasure was the chief good, because (1) all beings sought it and endeavoured to escape its contrary, pain; (2) it is an end in itself, not a relative good. Aristotle, who speaks highly of the sincerity of Eudoxus’s convictions, while giving a qualified approval to his arguments, considers him wrong in not distinguishing the different kinds of pleasure and in making pleasure the summum bonum. ”

“ Eudoxus also left some excellent commentaries. He had a son Aristagoras, who had a son Chrysippus, the pupil of Athlius. To this Chrysippus we owe a medical work on the treatment of the eye, speculations upon nature having occupied his mind.
90. Three men have borne the name of Eudoxus: (1) our present subject; (2) a historian, of Rhodes; (3) a Sicilian Greek, the son of Agathocles, a comic poet, who three times won the prize in the city Dionysia and five times at the Lenaea, so we are told by Apollodorus in his Chronology. ”

“ Fearing, however, that he might bring trouble on Greece if a vast armament were sent to Italy on his account, he added that it would content him if the Cnidians undertook to obtain his recall. Now the Cnidians were close friends of the Tarentines, which made him think there was no likelier means of procuring his return. Darius promised and performed his part; for he sent messenger to Cnidus, and commanded the Cnidians to restore Gillus. The Cnidians did as he wished, but found themselves unable to persuade the Tarentines, and were too weak to attempt force. ”

“ Peasants still find numerous antiquities, and the site would certainly repay more thorough excavation.
Cnidus was a city of high antiquity and probably of Lacedaemonian colonization. Along with Halicarnassus and Cos, and the Rhodian cities of Lindus, Camirus and Ialysus it formed the Dorian Hexapolis, which held its confederate assemblies on the Triopian headland, and there celebrated games in honour of Apollo, Poseidon and the nymphs. ”

“ When, on his return to Alexandria, he was detected in having appropriated to himself much of the merchandise, how came it that he was not punished, but allowed to go about interrogating the pilots, and exhibiting his bit of prow? And that one of these fellows actually recognised the relic, is it not delicious! Eudoxus too believed it, this is still richer; and inspired by the hope, hastens home, and then starts on a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules! But he could never have left Alexandria without a passport, still less after having stolen the royal property. ”

“ Some of the most important architectural features of the town may be seen in the “Ionian Antiquities.”
Cnidus is noticed first in the Homeric hymns, and later as a Lacedæmonian colony, and as a member 71of the Dorian Hexapolis, or assembly of six cities, whose place of meeting was the temple of the Triopian Apollo, on Cape Krio. [40] As a population, the Cnidians were great traders, combining with this a love for, and a high sense of, art. Thus we find them at a remote period in Egypt (Herod. ii. 178) , and possessing a treasury at Delphi, while Lipara, near Sicily, was one of their colonies. ”

“ For the Greek astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus, who resided fourteen months in Egypt and conversed with the priests, was of opinion that the Egyptians spared the pig, not out of abhorrence, but from a regard to its utility in agriculture; for, according to him, when the Nile had subsided, herds of swine were turned loose over the fields to tread the seed down into the moist earth. But when a being is thus the object of mixed and implicitly contradictory feelings, he may be said to occupy a position of unstable equilibrium. ”

“ And Alexander the Myndian agrees with him in the ninth book of his Traditions. But Eudoxus of Cnidos, and Evanthes of Miletus, say that one of the friends of Crœsus received from the king a golden goblet, for the purpose of giving it to the wisest of the Greeks; and that he gave it to Thales, and that it came round to Chilo, and that he inquired of the God at Delphi who was wiser than himself; and that the God replied, Myson, whom we shall mention hereafter. (He is the man whom Eudoxus places among the seven wise men instead of Cleobulus; but Plato inserts his name instead of Periander.) ”

“ In the various wars of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., we find the Cnidians sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. Thus, they submitted to Harpagus, the general of Cyrus; [41] then supported Athens, then deserted her after her losses in Sicily, [42] and then, again, in Roman times, were, generally, on the side of Rome. [43] The Cnidians derived much fame from their patronage of art. Thus, the famous painting of Polygnotus in the Lesche at Delphi was their gift; [44] as were also a statue of Jupiter at Olympia, and one at Delphi, of their founder, Triopas ”

“ There are also fish called congers. Icesius says that these are coarser than the common eels; and that their flesh is less firm and less nutritious, and that they are very deficient in palatable juice; but still, that they are good for the stomach. But Nicander, the epic poet, in the third book of his Treatise on Dialects, says that they are also called grylli. But Eudoxus, in the sixth book of his Circuit of the Earth, says that there are numbers of congers caught off Sicyon, each large enough to be a load for a man ”

“ Ecdicus having reached Cnidus, there learned that the democracy in Rhodes were entirely masters of the situation. They were dominant by land and sea; indeed they possessed a fleet twice the size of his own. 23He was therefore content to keep quiet in Cnidus until the Lacedaemonians, perceiving that his force was too small to allow him to benefit their friends, determined to relieve him. ”

“ For what else, according to the original signification, is Poseidon, but a moist substance? the name being derived from posis (drink) ; as, beyond doubt, the warlike Ares is so called, from arsis (rising up) and anæresis (destroying) . For this reason mainly, I think, many fix a sword into the ground, and sacrifice to it as to Ares. The Scythians have a practice of this nature, as Eudoxus tells us in the second book of his Travels. The Sauromatæ, too, a tribe of the Scythians, worship a sabre, as Ikesius says in his work on Mysteries. ”

“ And if a free-born woman marry a slave, the children are accounted of pure birth; but if a man though a citizen, and of high rank, marry a foreigner, the children are considered low born.
All Cnidia, except a small space, is surrounded by water; for the Ceramic gulf bounds it on the north, and on the south the sea by Syme and Rhodes: now this small space, which is about five stades in breadth, the Cnidians, wishing to make their territory insular, designed to dig through, while Harpagus was subduing Ionia. For the whole of their dominions were within the isthmus ”

“ The moment that the midnight bell resounds, He brings a Vandal garb for my Eudocia, And aids our flight to the Tarentiae sea. Eudocia
Traulista!---I like not this Traulista--- Traulista has a rough, a savage soul, Wrought up to treasons of the darkest hue. Gaudentius
His life he owes to Ætius and myself. Eudocia
But gratitude can never bind the base: An infidel to God---there is no tie--- No principle to bind a worthless heart. Gaudentius
Hs is my friend; come, dissipate distrust. Eudocia
A thousand spectres stare on every side. ”

“ Euboic talent, 1, 62; 15, 18; 21, 17, 30, 32 Euboea, daughter of Cleoptolemus, wife of Antiochus the Great, 20, 8 Eubulidas, of Chalcis, 21, 17, 45 Eucampidas, of Arcadia, 18, 14 Euclidas, brother of Cleomenes III., 2, 65, 67, 68 Eudamidas, of Sparta, 4, 35 Eudemus, of Rhodes, 21, 10 Eudemus, an ambassador of Miletus, 28, 19, 20 Eudoxus, a Greek historian, 34, 1 Euemerus, of Messene, a writer on religion, 34, 5, 6 Eulaeus, an Egyptian eunuch, 28, 20, 21 Eumenes II., king of Pergamum B.C. 197-159, son of Attalus I., 3, 3 ”

“ For when Eunomius had seized on the see of Cyzicus in the lifetime of Eleusius, Eudoxius urged him to hide his opinions and not make them known to the party who were seeking a pretext to persecute him. Eudoxius was moved to offer this advice both by his knowledge that the diocese was sound in the faith and his experience of the anger manifested by Constantius against the party who asserted the only begotten Son of God to be a created being. “Let us” said he to Eunomius “bide our time; when it comes we will preach what now we are keeping dark; educate the ignorant ”

“ Not long after Megasthenes was at Palibothra, Ptolemy Philadelphus sent an expedition overland through Persia to India, and later Ptolemy Euergetes, who lived between 145-116 B.C., sent a fleet under Eudoxius on a voyage of discovery to the western shores of India, piloted, as is said, by an Indian sailor who had been shipwrecked, and who had been found in a boat on the Red Sea. Eudoxius reached India safely, and returned to Egypt with a cargo of spices and precious stones. ”

“ Neither then the Carians nor any Greeks who dwell in this country did any deed of note before they were all enslaved by Harpagus. Among those who inhabit it are certain Cnidians, colonists from Lacedaemon. Their country (it is called the Triopion) lies between the sea and that part of the peninsula which belongs to Bubassus, and all but a little part of the Cnidian territory is sea-girt ”

“ Tempted by the prospect of so magnificent a reward he repaired to the rock, and boldly requested the Sphinx to propound to him one of her riddles. She proposed to him one which she deemed impossible of solution, but Œdipus at once solved it; whereupon the Sphinx, full of rage and despair, precipitated herself into the abyss and perished. Œdipus [271] received the promised reward. He became king of Thebes and the husband of Jocaste, the widow of his father, king Laius. ”

“ To each who passed her lair the sphinx addressed the question, "What animal is it that in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two feet, and in the evening on three feet?" These who failed to answer her riddle she destroyed. Œdipus declared the answer to be man himself, who in childhood crawled upon his hands and knees, in manhood stood erect, and in old age shuffled along supporting himself by a staff. Discovering one who knew the answer to her riddle, the sphinx cast herself from the cliff which bordered the road and perished. ”

“ At length Hæmon, son of Creon, was destroyed by the monster, and the king made a public proclamation, that he would give the throne, with the hand of his sister Jocasta, to that man who should solve the riddle. Œdipus, who was then at Thebes, came forward and answered the Sphinx, that the animal was Man, because when an infant he creeps on all fours; in manhood, he walks on two feet, and when old uses a staff as a third foot. ”

“ Now Eudoxus, a contemporary of Plato, mentions a star situate in the pole of the equator, and from computation it appears that χ Draconis was not very far from that place about 3000 years ago; but as Eudoxus lived only about 2150 years ago, he must have described an anterior state of the heavens, supposed to be the same that was determined by Chiron, about the time of the siege of Troy. Every circumstance concurs in showing that astronomy was cultivated in the highest ages of antiquity. ”

“ The remainder of the life of Eudocia, about sixteen years, was spent in exile and devotion; and the approach of age, the death of Theodosius, the misfortunes of her only daughter, who was led a captive from Rome to Carthage, and the society of the Holy Monks of Palestine, insensibly confirmed the religious temper of her mind. After a full experience of the vicissitudes of human life, the daughter of the philosopher Leontius expired, at Jerusalem, in the sixty-seventh year of her age ”

“ And from that time he set up a sect of his own for all the men who were of his way of thinking and condemned his betrayal, separated from Eudoxius and joined with Eunomius, whose name they bear up to this day. So Eunomius became the founder of a heresy, and added to the blasphemy of Arius by his own peculiar guilt. He set up a sect of his own because he was a slave to his ambition, as the facts distinctly prove. For when Aetius was condemned and exiled, Eunomius refused to accompany him, though he called him his master and a man of God, but remained closely associated with Eudoxius. ”