authors, a citizen of Miletus.
II. He was a pupil of some of the Magi and Chaldæans, whom Xerxes had left with his father as teachers, when he had been hospitably received by him, as Herodotus informs us;7 and from these men he, while still a boy, learned the principles of astronomy and theology. Afterwards, his father entrusted him to Leucippus, and to Anaxagoras, as some authors assert, who was forty years older than he. And Phavorinus, in his Universal History, says that Democritus said of Anaxagoras, that his opinions about the sun and moon were not his own, but were old theories, and that he had stolen them. And that he used also to pull to pieces his assertions about the composition of the world, and about mind, as he was hostile to him, because he had declined to admit him as a pupil. How then can he have been a pupil of his, as some assert? And Demetrius in his treatise on People of the same Name, and Antisthenes in his Successions, both affirm that he travelled to Egypt to see the priests there, and to learn mathematics of them; and that he proceeded further to the Chaldæans, and penetrated into Persia, and went as far as the Persian Gulf. Some also say that he made acquaintance with the Gymnosophists in India, and that he went to Æthiopia.
III. He was one of three brothers who divided their patrimony among them; and the most common story is, that he took the smaller portion, as it was in money, because he required money for the purpose of travelling; though his brothers suspected him of entertaining some treacherous design. And Demetrius says, that his share amounted to more than a hundred talents, and that he spent the whole of it.
IV. He also says, that he was so industrious a man, that he cut off for himself a small portion of the garden which surrounded his house,