*** Welcome to piglix ***

Polemon (scholarch)


Polemon (Greek: Πολέμων, gen.: Πολέμωνος; d. 270/269 BC) of Athens was an eminent Platonist philosopher and Plato's third successor as scholarch or head of the Academy from 314/313 to 270/269 BC. A pupil of Xenocrates, he believed that philosophy should be practiced rather than just studied, and he placed the highest good in living according to nature.

Polemon was the son of Philostratus, a man of wealth and political distinction. In his youth, he was extremely profligate; but one day, when he was about thirty, on his bursting into the school of Xenocrates, at the head of a band of revellers, his attention was so arrested by the discourse, which the master continued calmly in spite of the interruption, and which chanced to be upon temperance, that he tore off his garland and remained an attentive listener, and from that day he adopted an abstemious course of life, and continued to frequent the school, of which, on the death of Xenocrates, he became the scholarch, in 315 BC.

His disciples included Crates of Athens, who was his eromenos, and Crantor, as well as Zeno of Citium and Arcesilaus. According to Eusebius (Chron.) he died in 270/269 BC (or possibly, as in some manuscripts, 276/275 BC). Diogenes Laërtius says that he died at a great age, and of natural decay.Laërtius 1925, § 20 Crates was his successor in the Academy.

Diogenes reports that he was a close follower of Xenocrates in all things. He esteemed the object of philosophy to be to exercise people in things and deeds, not in dialectic speculations; his character was grave and severe; and he took pride in displaying the mastery which he had acquired over emotions of every sort. In literature he most admired Homer and Sophocles, and he is said to have been the author of the remark, that Homer is an epic Sophocles, and Sophocles a tragic Homer.


...
Wikipedia

...