Athens

Democritus

c. 460 BCE – c. 370 BCE

Atoms and void. The universe is particles in motion, and cheerfulness is the goal.

Mind orders the cosmos. He brought philosophy to Athens and was exiled for saying the sun is a hot rock, not a god.

Man is the measure of all things. The first and greatest of the Sophists turned philosophy toward human judgment.

Socrates

c. 470 BCE – 399 BCE

He wrote nothing, but changed everything. Philosophy became a conversation.

Plato

c. 428 BCE – c. 348 BCE

He saw a world behind the world. The Forms are real; what we see are shadows.

Aristotle

384 BCE – 322 BCE

He classified the world. Logic, biology, ethics, politics; he gave each its language.

Diogenes

c. 412 BCE – c. 323 BCE

He lived in a jar, mocked convention, and carried a lantern looking for an honest man.

Epicurus

341 BCE – 270 BCE

Pleasure is the absence of pain. The good life is quiet, shared, and free from fear.

Zeno of Citium

c. 334 BCE – c. 262 BCE

He lost everything in a shipwreck and found philosophy. Then he built Stoicism.

Cicero

106 BCE – 43 BCE

He translated Greek philosophy into Latin and into politics. Rome's greatest orator was also its most restless thinker.

The sophist who argued that nothing exists, and that if it did, no one could know it, and if they could, no one could say it.

Theophrastus

c. 371 BCE – c. 287 BCE

Aristotle's chosen successor, who turned the master's curiosity on plants, weather, stones, and the small comedies of human character.

The last great systematizer of pagan philosophy, who built Neoplatonism into a vast cathedral of being just as the ancient world was ending.