Simplicius of Cilicia
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Search complete. 17 mentions across 6 episodes found for "Simplicius of Cilicia".
Oct 9, 2026
speaker_1NARRATOR
Some ancient sources even say the Emperor Hadrian treated him as a friend, and yet he went on living with an almost total simplicity.
speaker_1NARRATOR
According to Simplicius, a philosopher who wrote a commentary on his handbook centuries later, for a long time he lived alone in a house with only the bare essentials.
speaker_1NARRATOR
But Simplicius also tells us something almost nobody knows.
speaker_1NARRATOR
When he was already an old man, Epictetus learned that a friend of his was going to abandon a newborn baby, something that sadly happened all too often in those days with children a family couldn't or wouldn't raise.
speaker_1NARRATOR
And Epictetus, the old philosopher who owned nothing and had taught people not to cling to anything, took the child into his home.
Ted GoodGUEST
So when the Denkard was beginning its long compositional period, the Platonic academy in Athens was closed.
Ted GoodGUEST
This is the academy that had figures like Damascus as the head, Simplicius, Priscian of Lydia.
Ted GoodGUEST
There's like seven of them.
Ted GoodGUEST
Their academy is closed, and so they flee to Iran, to the court, where we know this is where the priests were.
speaker_3NARRATOR
The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome, and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor Nero.
speaker_3NARRATOR
There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by torturing him, but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Enchiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age.
speaker_3NARRATOR
It is not said how he became a slave, but it has been asserted in modern times that his parents sold the child.
speaker_3NARRATOR
I have not, however, found any authority for this statement.
speaker_3NARRATOR
Epictetus was never married, as we learn from Lucian.
speaker_3NARRATOR
When Epictetus was finding fault with Demonax, and advising him to take a wife and beget children, for this also, as Epictetus said, was a philosopher's duty to leave in place of himself another in the universe, Demonax refuted the doctrine by answering, Give me then, Epictetus, one of your own daughters.
speaker_3NARRATOR
Simplicius says that Epictetus lived alone a long time.
speaker_3NARRATOR
At last he took a woman into his house as a nurse for a child, which one of Epictetus's friends was going to expose on account of his poverty.
Steven SeitelNARRATOR
Unfortunately the two theories did not bring out the same results.
Steven SeitelNARRATOR
Galileo insists upon irreducible and stubborn facts, and Simplicius, his opponent, brings forward reasons, completely satisfactory, at least to himself.
Steven SeitelNARRATOR
It is a great mistake to conceive this historical revolt as an appeal to reason.
Steven SeitelNARRATOR
On the contrary, it was through and through an anti-intellectualist movement.
speaker_5NARRATOR
The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor Nero.
speaker_5NARRATOR
There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by torturing him, but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Enchiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age.
speaker_5NARRATOR
It is not said how he became a slave, but it has been asserted in modern times that his parents sold the child.
speaker_5NARRATOR
I have not, however, found any authority for this statement.
speaker_5NARRATOR
Epictetus was never married, as we learn from Lucian.
speaker_5NARRATOR
When Epictetus was finding fault with Demonax, and advising him to take a wife and beget children, for this also, as Epictetus said, was a philosopher's duty, to leave in place of himself another in the universe, Demonax refuted the doctrine by answering, Give me then, Epictetus, one of your own daughters.
speaker_5NARRATOR
Simplicius says that Epictetus lived alone a long time.
speaker_5NARRATOR
At last he took a woman into his house as a nurse for a child, which one of Epictetus' friends was going to expose on account of his poverty.
Leon MireNARRATOR
part three fragmented testimonials on annexmenes of melitos translated by arthur fairbanks in the first philosophers of greece fragment of annexmenes of melitos air is the nearest to an immaterial thing for since we are generated in the flow of air it is necessary that it should be infinite and abundant because it is never exhausted testimonials on annexmenes of melitos aristotle meteorology two dot one most of the earliest students of the heavenly bodies believe that the sun did not go underneath the earth but rather round the earth and this region entreated it disappeared from view and produced night because the earth was so high toward the north simplicius comments on aristotle's on the heavens two seventy three b forty five he regarded the first principle as unlimited but not as undefined for he called it air thinking that air had a sufficient adaptability to change simplicius comments on aristotle's physics thirty two r one forty nine thirty two of this one writer alone theoprastos in his account of the physicists uses the words Greek of texture.
Leon MireNARRATOR
The rest, of course, spoke of Greek.
Leon MireNARRATOR
Simplicius comments on Aristotle's physics, 2,57v.
Leon MireNARRATOR
Some say that the universe always existed, not that it has always been the same, but rather it successively changes its character in certain periods of time, as, for instance, Anaxmenes, Enheryclus, and Diogenes.
Leon MireNARRATOR
Aristotle, On the Heavens, 2.13, 294b-13.
2 HRS 6 MINS LATER
Leon MireNARRATOR
Aristotle, on the soul, 1, 5, 411, A, 7.
Leon MireNARRATOR
Some say that soul is diffused throughout the whole universe, and it may have been this which led Thales to think that all things are full of gods.
Leon MireNARRATOR
simplicius commentary on aristotle's on the soul eight r thirty two sixteen three thales posits water as the element but it is the element of bodies and he thinks that the soul is not a body at all speaking thus of thales he adds with a degree of reproach that he assigned a soul to the magnetic stone as the power which moves the iron that he might prove soul to be a moving power in it but he did not assert that this soul was water although water had been designated as the element since he said that water is the element of substances but he supposed soul to be unsubstantial form Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's On the Soul, 20, R. 73, 22.