Anaximander: Sundial Inventor

¹ Anaximander was:

• the son of Praxiadas
• a citizen of Miletus

² He used to assert that the principle and primary element of all things was the Infinity.

He gave no exact definition as to whether he meant air or water, or anything else.

He said that:

• the parts were susceptible of change
• but the whole was unchangeable
• the earth was at the centre of a spherical shape.
• the moon had a borrowed light from the sun
• the sun was not less than the earth, and the purest possible fire.

³ He was the first discoverer of the gnomon.

He placed some in Sparta on the sun-dials there, as Phavorinus says in his Universal History.

They showed the solstices and the equinoxes; he also made clocks.

He was the first person, too, who drew a map of the earth and sea, and he also made a globe;

He published a concise statement of his beliefs.

• This treatise was read by Apollodorus, the Athenian.

⁴ Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, states, that in year 2 of the 58th Olympiad, he was 64 years old.

Soon after he died, having flourished much about the same time as Polycrates, the tyrant, of Samos.

They say that when he sang, the children laughed; and that he, hearing of this, said, “We must then sing better for the sake of the children.”

V. There was also another Anaximander, a historian; and he too was a Milesian, and wrote in the Ionic dialect.