Concept
Diagoras of Melos
Overview
Diagoras of Melos (Greek: Διαγόρας ὁ Μήλιος) or Diagoras "the Atheist" was a Greek poet and sophist of the 5th century BC. Throughout antiquity, he was regarded as an atheist, but very little is known for certain about what he actually believed. Anecdotes about his life indicate that he spoke out against ancient Greek religion. He allegedly chopped up a wooden statue of Heracles and used it to boil his turnips and revealed the secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Athenians accused him of asebeia (impiety) and banished him from their city. He died in Corinth.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The traditional stories, accordingly, must be kept as they are, e.g. the murder of Clytaemnestra by Orestes and of Eriphyle by Alcmeon. At the same time even with these there is something left to the poet himself; it is for him to devise the right way of treating them. Let us explain more clearly what we mean by 'the right way'. The deed of horror may be done by the doer knowingly and consciously, as in the old…
Aristotle, Aristotle on the art of poetry
The author is tied to Diagoras of Melos in the knowledge graph.
Such, then, is the relative chronological precedence of these offices. At that time the nine Archons did not all live together. The King occupied the building now known as the Boculium, near the Prytaneum, as may be seen from the fact that even to the present day the marriage of the King's wife to Dionysus takes place there. The Archon lived in the Prytaneum, the Polemarch in the Epilyceum.
Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution
The author is tied to Diagoras of Melos in the knowledge graph.
_Diagoras_ was a native of Melos, and a pupil of Democritus, and flourished about B.C. 435. He is remarkable as having been regarded by all antiquity as an Atheist. In his youth he had some reputation as a lyric poet; so that he is sometimes classed with Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by
Close in meaning to Diagoras of Melos; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Aristophanes
- Greece
- Classical Athens
- Philosophy
- Heracles
- Atheism
- The Clouds
- Myth
- Poet
- Athenagoras of Athens
- Skepticism
- Theology
- Aristotle
- Ionians
- Sophist
- Legislation
- Atomism
- Impiety
- Cicero
- Claudius Aelianus
- Suda
- Democritus
- Diodorus Siculus
Place in the tradition
Part of Atheism.