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Concept
Anaxarchus
Summary
Anaxarchus (ˌænəɡˈzɑrkəs; Ἀνάξαρχος; c. 380 – c. 320 BC) was a Greek philosopher of the school of Democritus. Together with Pyrrho, he accompanied Alexander the Great into Asia. The reports of his philosophical views suggest that he was a forerunner of the Greek skeptics.
Anaxarchus was born at Abdera in Thrace. He was the companion and friend of Alexander the Great in his Asiatic campaigns. His relationship with Alexander, however, was ambiguous, owing to contradictory sources. Some paint Anarxchus as a flatterer, among them Plutarch, who tells a story that at Bactra, in 327 BC in a debate with Callisthenes, Anaxarchus advised all to worship Alexander as a god even during his lifetime. In contrast, others paint Anaxarchus as scathingly ironic towards the monarch. According to Diogenes Laertius, in response to Alexander's claim to have been the son of Zeus-Ammon, Anaxarchus pointed to his bleeding wound and remarked, "See the blood of a mortal, not ichor, such as flows from the veins of the immortal gods."
When Alexander was trying to show that he is divine so that the Greeks and Macedonians would perform proskynesis to him, Anaxarchus said that Alexander could "more justly be considered a god than Dionysus or Heracles" (Arrian, 104)
Diogenes Laertius says that Anaxarchus earned the enmity of Nicocreon, the tyrant of Cyprus, with an inappropriate joke against tyrants in a banquet in Tyre in 331 BC. Later, when Anaxarchus was forced to land in Cyprus against his will, Nicocreon ordered him to be pounded to death in a mortar. The philosopher endured this torture with fortitude, taunting the king with, "just pound the bag of Anaxarchus, you do not pound Anaxarchus". When Nicocreon threatened to cut out his tongue, Anaxarchus himself cut it out and spat it in his face.
Very little is known about his philosophical views. It is thought that he represents a link between the atomism of Democritus, and the skepticism of his own apprentice Pyrrho. He also shares ethical traits with the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools.
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