# Archelaus of Athens — The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers character guide

> Archelaus of Athens in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Archelaus the Macedonian

**First appearance:** 0019-archelaus

## Snapshot

An Athenian natural philosopher who taught Socrates, held that the universe is boundless and the sun the greatest of stars, and vanished into a list of three other men with the same name.

## Who they are

Archelaus is the bridge between Anaxagoras and Socrates, the teacher who turned the younger man from stone-cutting to moral inquiry. He is a philosopher of the physical world—boundless universe, sun as greatest star—whose doctrines survive mostly through the pupils he shaped. He matters because without him the book's Socrates has no intellectual lineage, and because his own obscurity, buried under three namesakes, quietly illustrates how thin the line is between founding a tradition and being forgotten by it.

## In the story

### [Book II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/chapters/book-ii)

Pupil of Anaxagoras and teacher of Socrates; first to bring natural philosophy from Ionia to Athens; discussed laws and ethics.

### [Archelaus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/chapters/archelaus)

Main subject of the chapter; pupil of Anaxagoras, master of Socrates, first to import natural philosophy to Athens.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lives_and_opinions_of_eminent_philosophers_se/characters/archelaus
- 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