Accordingly, after three years, Hyllus marched across the isthmus of Corinth to attack Atreus, the successor of Eurystheus, but was slain in single combat by Echemus, king of Tegea. This second attempt was followed by a third under Cleodaeus and a fourth under Aristomachus, both of which were equally unsuccessful. At last, Temenus, Cresphontes and Aristodemus, the sons of Aristomachus, complained to the oracle that its instructions had proved fatal to those who had followed them. They received the answer that by the “third fruit” the “third generation” was meant, and that the “narrow passage” was not the isthmus of Corinth, but the straits of Rhium. They accordingly built a fleet at Naupactus, but before they set sail, Aristodemus was struck by lightning (or shot by Apollo) and the fleet destroyed, because one of the Heraclidae had slain an Acarnanian soothsayer. The oracle, being again consulted by Temenus, bade him offer an expiatory sacrifice and banish the murderer for ten years, and look out for a man with three eyes to act as guide. On his way back to Naupactus, Temenus fell in with Oxylus, an Aetolian, who had lost one eye, riding on a horse (thus making up the three eyes) and immediately pressed him into his service. According to another account, a mule on which Oxylus rode had lost an eye. The Heraclidae repaired their ships, sailed from Naupactus to Antirrhium, and thence to Rhium in Peloponnesus. A decisive battle was fought with Tisamenus, son of Orestes, the chief ruler in the peninsula, who was defeated and slain. The Heraclidae, who thus became practically masters of Peloponnesus, proceeded to distribute its territory among themselves by lot. Argos fell to Temenus, Lacedaemon to Procles and Eurysthenes, the twin sons of Aristodemus; and Messene to Cresphontes. The fertile district of Elis had been reserved by agreement for Oxylus. The Heraclidae ruled in Lacedaemon till 221 B.C., but disappeared much earlier in the other countries. This conquest of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, commonly called the “Return of the Heraclidae,” is represented as the recovery by the descendants of Heracles of the rightful inheritance of their hero ancestor and his sons. The Dorians followed the custom of other Greek tribes in claiming as ancestor for their ruling families one of the legendary heroes, but the traditions must not on that account be regarded as entirely mythical. They represent a joint invasion of Peloponnesus by Aetolians and Dorians, the latter having been driven southward from their original northern home under pressure from the Thessalians. It is noticeable that there is no mention of these Heraclidae or their invasion in Homer or Hesiod. Herodotus (vi. 52) speaks of poets who had celebrated their deeds, but these were limited to events immediately succeeding the death of Heracles. The story was first amplified by the Greek tragedians, who probably drew their inspiration from local legends, which glorified the services rendered by Athens to the rulers of Peloponnesus.
Apollodorus ii. 8; Diod. Sic. iv. 57, 58; Pausanias i. 32, 41, ii. 13, 18, iii. 1, iv. 3, v. 3; Euripides, Heraclidae; Pindar, Pythia, ix. 137; Herodotus ix. 27. See Müller’s Dorians, i. ch. 3; Thirlwall, History of Greece, ch. vii.; Grote, Hist. of Greece, pt. i. ch. xviii.; Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, i. ch. ii. sec. 7, where a list of modern authorities is given.
HERACLIDES PONTICUS, Greek philosopher and miscellaneous writer, born at Heraclea in Pontus, flourished in the 4th century B.C. He studied philosophy at Athens under Speusippus, Plato and Aristotle. According to Suidas, Plato, on his departure for Sicily, left his pupils in charge of Heraclides. The latter part of his life was spent at Heraclea. He is said to have been vain and fat, and to have been so fond of display that he was nicknamed Pompicus, or the Showy (unless the epithet refers to his literary style). Various idle stories are related about him. On one occasion, for instance, Heraclea was afflicted with famine, and the Pythian priestess at Delphi, bribed by Heraclides, assured his inquiring townsmen that the dearth would be stayed if they granted a golden crown to that philosopher. This was done; but just as Heraclides was receiving his honour in a crowded assembly, he was seized with apoplexy, while the dishonest priestess perished at the same moment from the bite of a serpent. On his death-bed he is said to have requested a
friend to hide his body as soon as life was extinct, and, by putting
a serpent in its place, induce his townsmen to suppose that he had been carried up to heaven. The trick was discovered, and Heraclides received only ridicule instead of divine honours (Diogenes Laërtius v. 6). Whatever may be the truth about these stories, Heraclides seems to have been a versatile and prolific writer on philosophy, mathematics, music, grammar, physics, history and rhetoric. Many of the works attributed to him, however, are probably by one or more persons of the same name.
The extant fragment of a treatise On Constitutions (C. W. Müller, F.H.G. ii. 197–207) is probably a compilation from the Politics of Aristotle by Heraclides Lembos, who lived in the time of Ptolemy VI. Philometor (181–146). See Otto Voss, De Heraclidis Pontici vita et scriptis (1896).
HERACLITUS (Ἡράκλειτος; c. 540–475 B.C.), Greek philosopher, was born at Ephesus of distinguished parentage. Of his early life and education we know nothing; from the contempt with which he spoke of all his fellow-philosophers and of his fellow-citizens as a whole we may gather that he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. So intensely aristocratic (hence his nickname ὀχλολοίδορος, “he who rails at the people”) was his temperament that he declined to exercise the regal-hieratic office of βασιλεύς which was hereditary in his family, and presented it to his brother. It is probable, however, that he did occasionally intervene in the affairs of the city at the period when the rule of Persia had given place to autonomy; it is said that he compelled the usurper Melancomas to abdicate. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the extreme profundity of his philosophy and his contempt for mankind in general, he was called the “Dark Philosopher” (ὁ σκοτεινός), or the “Weeping Philosopher,” in contrast to Democritus, the “Laughing Philosopher.”
Heraclitus is in a real sense the founder of metaphysics. Starting from the physical standpoint of the Ionian physicists, he accepted their general idea of the unity of nature, but entirely denied their theory of being. The fundamental uniform fact in nature is constant change (πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει); everything both is and is not at the same time. He thus arrives at the principle of Relativity; harmony and unity consist in diversity and multiplicity. The senses are “bad witnesses” (κακοὶ μάρτυρες); only the wise man can obtain knowledge.
To appreciate the significance of the doctrines of Heraclitus, it must be borne in mind that to Greek philosophy the sharp distinction between subject and object which pervades modern thought was foreign, a consideration which suggests the conclusion that, while it is a great mistake to reckon Heraclitus with the materialistic cosmologists of the Ionic schools, it is, on the other hand, going too far to treat his theory, with Hegel and Lassalle, as one of pure Panlogism. Accordingly, when he denies the reality of Being, and declares Becoming, or eternal flux and change, to be the sole actuality, Heraclitus must be understood to enunciate not only the unreality of the abstract notion of being, except as the correlative of that of not-being, but also the physical doctrine that all phenomena are in a state of continuous transition from non-existence to existence, and vice versa, without either distinguishing these propositions or qualifying them by any reference to the relation of thought to experience. “Every thing is and is not”; all things are, and nothing remains. So far he is in general agreement with Anaximander (q.v.), but he differs from him in the solution of the problem, disliking, as a poet and a mystic, the primary matter which satisfied the patient researcher, and demanding a more vivid and picturesque element. Naturally he selects fire, according to him the most complete embodiment of the process of Becoming, as the principle of empirical existence, out of which all things, including even the soul, grow by way of a quasi condensation, and into which all things must in course of time be again resolved. But this primordial fire is in itself that divine rational process, the harmony of which constitutes the law of the universe (see Logos). Real knowledge consists in comprehending this all-pervading harmony as embodied in the manifold of perception, and the senses are “bad-witnesses,” because they apprehend phenomena,
