# Alcmaeon of Croton — The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers character guide

> Alcmaeon of Croton in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0076-alcmaeon

## Snapshot

A pre-Socratic physician-philosopher from Croton who dissected the eye and argued that health is a balance of opposing powers.

## Who they are

Alcmaeon stands at the head of a tradition that treated the body as a philosophical problem, not just a medical one. He wrote on sensation, on the soul, and on the equilibrium of opposites that produces health — ideas that echo through Plato and the Hippocratic corpus. His importance to Diogenes' narrative is that he shows philosophy emerging not only from myth and poetry but from observation, from the knife and the clinic.

## In the story

### [Phaedo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/chapters/phaedo)

Alcibiades is mentioned as one who may have ransomed Phaedo on Socrates' behalf.

### [Alcmaeon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/chapters/alcmaeon)

Main subject of the chapter; a pupil of Pythagoras, first to write on natural philosophy, argued for the immortality of the soul and the eternal nature of the moon.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/alcmaeon
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters