Eudemos of Cyprus

Eudemos of Cyprus ( Greek Εὔδημος ; † 353 BC near Syracuse ) was a Greek philosopher and officer.

Eudemos lived at least temporarily in Athens , where he belonged to the Platonic Academy , which at that time was still headed by Plato . Thus Eudemos was a student of Plato. He was close friends with Aristotle , who was also a member of the Academy at the time.

At the end of 358 or beginning of 357 Eudemos was on a trip to Macedonia in the city of Pherai in Thessaly . Marcus Tullius Cicero , who draws his knowledge from a never-preserved dialogue of Aristotle named after Eudemos, reports in his work De divinatione (“On Prophecy”) that Eudemos was so seriously ill in Pherai that all doctors gave him up. In a dream he had seen a young man who had predicted his speedy recovery and the imminent assassination of the tyrant Alexander von Pherai in a few days, as well as his own “return” after five years. The latter announcement did not mean a return to his home country Cyprus , but his violent death (i.e. return to a homeland of the soul on the other side ). From the statement by Cicero that Eudemos had hoped to return to Cyprus, it has been inferred that he was banished from his homeland, but this conclusion is not mandatory.

Eudemos was an ardent supporter of the Sicilian politician Dion of Syracuse , who lived in exile in Greece and from there organized a campaign to overthrow the tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse . When Dion dared the crossing to Sicily from the island of Zakynthos with around 800 men on five ships in 357 , Eudemos was one of the prominent participants in this attack on the greatest military power in the Greek world. The enterprise was successful, but in 354 Dion was murdered in a coup d'état by the officer Kallippos . In the following year Eudemos fell in fighting between the forces of Callippus and former supporters of Dion who had joined Hipparinos , a nephew of Dion.

After Eudemos' death, Aristotle wrote a dialogue on Eudemos, or On the Soul , which he named after his deceased friend. It is a youth work by Aristotle, who at that time was still a follower of Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The dialogue, which was probably designed as a counterpart to Plato's Phaedo , has been lost except for fragments.

Some researchers have suspected that an elegy to Eudemos, composed by Aristotle and transmitted only in fragments , was addressed to Eudemos of Cyprus; in this case it was written either in 357 on the occasion of the departure of the fleet or in 354/353 as a consolation poem after Dion's death. According to the opposite view, which prevailed in classical scholarship, Eudemos of Rhodes , a student of Aristotle, was meant. Occasionally, Eudemos of Cyprus has also been considered as the addressee of Aristotle's Eudemian ethics , but the Eudemos mentioned in the title of this work (not from Aristotle himself) is mostly identified with Eudemos of Rhodes.

literature

Jean-Pierre Schneider: Eudème de Chypre . In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques . Volume 3, CNRS, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-271-05748-5 , pp. 281-282.
Walter Spoerri : Prosopographica . In: Museum Helveticum . Volume 23, 1966, pp. 44-57 (thorough, groundbreaking examination of the chronology of Eudemos' life; doi : 10.5169 / seals-20001 )

Remarks

↑ Cicero, De divinations 1.53.
↑ For the chronology see Walter Spoerri: Prosopographica . In: Museum Helveticum 23, 1966, pp. 44–57, here: 45f .; Anton-Hermann Chroust: Aristotle. New light on his life and on some of his lost works . Volume 2, London 1973, pp. 44f.
↑ This view is Konrad Gaiser : The Elegy of Aristotle to Eudemos . In: Museum Helveticum 23, 1966, pp. 84–106, here: 92–94, 102–104 ( doi : 10.5169 / seals-20005 ). Vianney Décarie (ed.) Agrees : Aristote: Éthique à Eudème. Paris 1978, p. 19f. Note 10 (with information on older literature). Willy Theiler turns against this: Plato and Eudem . In: Museum Helveticum 23, 1966, p. 192f. ( doi : 10.5169 / seals-20014 ).

↑ Franz Dirlmeier (ed.): Aristoteles: Magna Moralia. Berlin 1958, p. 97; Vianney Décarie (Ed.): Aristote: Éthique à Eudème. Paris 1978, pp. 29-31; Vianney Décarie: Eudème: de Rhodes ou de Chypre . In: Proceedings of the World Congress on Aristotle, Thessaloniki August 7-14, 1978. Athens 1981, pp. 277-280.

personal data
SURNAME	Eudemos of Cyprus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Greek philosopher and officer
DATE OF BIRTH	5th century BC BC or 4th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH	353 BC Chr.
Place of death	near Syracuse

[1] Cicero, De divinations 1.53.

[2] For the chronology see Walter Spoerri: Prosopographica . In: Museum Helveticum 23, 1966, pp. 44–57, here: 45f .; Anton-Hermann Chroust: Aristotle. New light on his life and on some of his lost works . Volume 2, London 1973, pp. 44f.

[3] This view is Konrad Gaiser : The Elegy of Aristotle to Eudemos . In: Museum Helveticum 23, 1966, pp. 84–106, here: 92–94, 102–104 ( doi : 10.5169 / seals-20005 ). Vianney Décarie (ed.) Agrees : Aristote: Éthique à Eudème. Paris 1978, p. 19f. Note 10 (with information on older literature). Willy Theiler turns against this: Plato and Eudem . In: Museum Helveticum 23, 1966, p. 192f. ( doi : 10.5169 / seals-20014 ).

[4] Franz Dirlmeier (ed.): Aristoteles: Magna Moralia. Berlin 1958, p. 97; Vianney Décarie (Ed.): Aristote: Éthique à Eudème. Paris 1978, pp. 29-31; Vianney Décarie: Eudème: de Rhodes ou de Chypre . In: Proceedings of the World Congress on Aristotle, Thessaloniki August 7-14, 1978. Athens 1981, pp. 277-280.