Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/282

£64 ARCHELAUS. forming a point of transition from the older to the newer form of philosophy in Greece. In the men- tal history of all nations it is observable that scien- tific inquiries are first confined to natural objects, and afterwards pass into moral speculations ; and so, among the Greeks, the lonians were occupied with physics, the Socratic schools chiefly with ethics. Archelaus is the union of the two : he was the last recognized leader of the former (succeeding Diogenes of ApoUonia in that character), and added to the physical system of his teacher, Anaxagoras, some attempts at moral speculation. He held that air and infinity (to aireipov) are the principle of all things, by which Plutarch (Plac. Phil. i. 3) supposes that he meant infinite air; and we are told, that by this statement he intended to exclude the operations of mind from the creation of the world. (Stob. Eel. Phys. i. 1, 2.) If so, he abandoned the doctrine of Anaxagoras in its most important point ; and it therefore seems safer to conclude with Ritter, that while he wished to inculcate the materialist notion that the mind is formed of air, he still held infinite mind to be the cause of all things. This explanation has the advantage of agreeing very fairly with that of Simplicius (/. c.) ; and as Anaxagoras himself did not accurately dis- tinguish between mind and the animal soul, this confusion may have given rise to his pupil's doc- trine. Archelaus deduced motion from the opposi- tion of heat and cold, caused of course, if w^ adopt the above hypothesis, by the will of the material mind. This opposition separated fire and water, and produced a slimy mass of earth. While the earth was hardening, the action of heat upon its moisture gave birth to animals, which at first were nourished by the mud from which they sprang, and gradually acquired the power of propagating their species. All these animals were endowed with mind, but man separated from the others, and established laws and societies. It was just from this point of his physical theory that he seems to have passed into ethical speculation, by the propo- sition, that right and wrong are ov cpva-ei oAAa y6ij.(f} — a dogma probably suggested to him, in its form at least, by the contemporary Sophists. But when we consider the purely mechanical and materialistic character of his physics, which make ever}'^ thing arise from the separation or distribution of the pri- mary elements, we shall see that nothing, except the original chaotic mass, is strictly by nature ((pixrei), and that Archelaus assigns the same origin to right and wrong that he does to man. Now a contemporaneous origin with that of the human race is not very different from what a sound sys- tem of philosophy would demand for these ideas, though of course such a system would maintain quite another origin of man ; and therefore, assum- ing the Archelaic physical system, it does not ne- cessarily follow, that his ethical principles are so destructive of all goodness as they appear. This view is made almost certain by the fact that De- mocritus taught, that the ideas of sweet and bitter, warm and cold, &c., are by pvfios, which can be accounted for only by a similar supposition. Of the other doctrines of Archelaus we need only mention, that he asserted the earth to have the form of an egg, the sun being the largest of the stars ; and that he correctly accounted for speech by the motion of the air. J'or this, according to Plutarch {Plac. Phil. iv. 19), he was indebted to Anaxagoras. ARCHELAUS. Archelaus flourished B. c. 450. In that year Anaxagoras withdrew from Athens, and during his absence Archelaus is said to have taught So- crates. (Laert. I. c.) To the authorities given above add Brucker, Hist. Crit. Phil. ii. 2, 1 ; Ritter, Geschichte der Phil. iii. 9 ; Tennemann, Gru?idriss der Gesch. der Phil. § 107. [G. E. L. C] ARCH EL A' US {'kpx^><aos a Greek poet, is called an Egyptian, and is believed to have been a native of a town in Egypt called Chersonesus, as he is also called Chersonesita. (Antig. Caryst. 19 ; Athen. xii. p. 554.) He wrote epigrams, some of which are still extant in the Greek Anthology, and Jacobs seems to infer from an epigram of his on Alexander the Great (Anthol. Planud. 120) that Archelaus lived in the time of Alexander and Ptolemy Soter. Lobeck {Aglaoph. p. 749), on the other hand, places him in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes II. But both of these opinions are connected with chronological difficulties, and Westermann has shewn that Archelaus in all pro- bability flourished under Ptolemy Philadelphus, to whom, according to Antigonus Carystius (/. c, comp. 89), he narrated wonderful stories {irapor- ho^a) in epigrams. Besides this peculiar kind of epigrams, Archelaus wrote a work called iSiocpvijy i. e. strange or peculiar animals (Athen. ix. p. 409; Diog. Laert. ii. 17), which seems to have likewise been written in verse, and to have treated on strange and paradoxical subjects, like his epigrams. (Plin. Elench. lib. xxviii.; Schol. ad Nieand. Thcr. 822 ; Artemid. Oneirocr. iv. 22. Compare Wester- mann, Scriptor. Rer. mirabil. Gra£ci, p. xxii., &c., who has also collected the extant fragments of Archelaus, p. 158, &c.) [L. S.] ARCHELA'US {^ Apxe^aos), a Greek rheto- rician of uncertain date, who wrote on his pro- fession ; whence he is called rext'oypdcpos ^rjTwp. (Diog. Laert. ii. 17.) [L. S.] ARCHELA'US, a sculptor of Priene, the son of ApoUonius, made the marble bas-relief repre- senting the Apotheosis of Homer, which formerly belonged to the Colonna family at Rome, and is now in the Townley Gallery of the British Museum (Inscription on the work). The style of the bas- relief, which is little, if at all, inferior to the best remains of Grecian art, confinns the supposition that Archelaus was the son of ApoUonius of Rhodes [Apollonius], and that he flourished in the first century of the Christian aera. From the circum- stance of the "Apotheosis" having been found in the palace of Claudius at Bovillae (now Frattocchi), coupled with the known admiration of that emperor for Homer (Suet. Claud. 42), it is generally supposed that the work was executed in his reign. A de- scription of the bas-relief, and a list of the works in which it is referred to, is given in The Toionley Gallery, in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge^ ii. p- 120. [P. S.] ^ ARCHELA'US ('ApxeAoos), king of Sparta, 7th of the Agids, son of Agesilaus I., contempo- rary with Charilaus, with whom he took Aegys, a town on the Arcadian border, said to have revolt- ed, but probably then first taken. (Pans. iii. 2 ; Plut. Lye. 5 ; Euseb. Praep. v. 32.) [A. H. C.J ARCHELA'US ('ApxeAaos), son of Theodo- Rus, was appointed by Alexander the Great the military commander in Susiana, B.C. 300. (Arrian. iii. 16 ; Curt. v. 2.) In the division of the provinces in 323, Archelaus obtained Mesopotamia. (Dexipp. op. Phot. Cod. 82, p. G4, b., ed. Bekker.)