Xenophilus (philosopher)

Xenophilus (Greek: Ξενόφιλος; 4th century BC), of Chalcidice,¹ was a Pythagorean philosopher and music theorist who lived in the first half of the 4th century BC.² Aulus Gellius relates that Xenophilus was the intimate friend and teacher of Aristoxenus and implies that Xenophilus taught him Pythagorean doctrine.³ He was said to have belonged to the last generation of Pythagoreans, and he is the only Pythagorean known to have lived in Athens in the 4th century BC.⁴

According to Diogenes Laërtius, Aristoxenus wrote that when Xenophilus was once asked by someone how he could best educate his son, Xenophilus replied, "By making him the citizen of a well-governed state."⁵ In the Macrobii of Pseudo-Lucian, Aristoxenus is supposed to have said that Xenophilus lived 105 years.⁶ Xenophilus enjoyed considerable fame in the Renaissance, apparently because of Pliny's claim that he lived 105 years without ever being sick.⁷

Sources

• Freeman, Kathleen (1983) [1948]. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674035011.
• Hahm, David E. (1977). The Origins of Stoic Cosmology. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. hdl:1811/24807. ISBN 0814202535.
• Hayton, Darin (2005). "Joseph Grünpeck's Astrological Explanation of the French Disease". In Siena, Kevin Patrick (ed.). Sins of the Flesh: Responding to Sexual Disease in Early Modern Europe. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. pp. 81–108. ISBN 0772720290.

Notes

Footnotes

1. Huffman, Carl. "Pythagoreanism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 1095-5054. OCLC 429049174. ↩

2. Freeman 1983, p. 81. ↩

3. Aulus Gellius. Noctes Atticae. IV, 11. ↩

4. Hahm 1977, p. 225. ↩

5. Diogenes Laërtius. Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. VIII, 15–16. ↩

6. Pseudo-Lucian. Macrobii, 18; cf. Valerius Maximus. Facta et dicta memorabilia. VIII, c. 13; Pliny. Naturalis Historia. VII, 50. ↩

7. Hayton 2005, p. 95 (including footnote 50). ↩