Thales of Miletus (
Ta??? ? ????s??? (pronounced
/'?e?li?z/ or "THEH-leez") , ca. 624 BC–ca. 546 BC), was a
pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from
Miletus in
Asia Minor, and one of the
Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the
Greek tradition.
[1] According to
Bertrand Russell, "Philosophy begins with Thales."
[2]Thales lived around the mid 620s–547 BCE and was born in the city of Miletus. Miletus was an ancient Greek Ionian city on the western coast of Asia Minor (in what is today the Aydin Province of Turkey) near the mouth of the Maeander River.
The dates of Thales' life are not known precisely. The time of his life is roughly established by a few dateable events mentioned in the sources and an estimate of his length of life. According to Herodotus, Thales once predicted a solar eclipse which has been determined by modern methods to have been on May 28, 585 BC.[3] Diogenes Laërtius quotes the chronicle of Apollodorus as saying that Thales died at 78 in the 58th Olympiad, and Sosicrates as reporting that he was 90 at his death.
As mentioned, according to tradition, Thales was born in Miletus. Diogenes Laertius states that ("according to Herodotus and Douris and Democritus") his parents were Examyes and Cleobuline, Milesian nobles. Giving another opinion, he ultimately connects Thales' family line back to Phoenician Cadmus, what is thought to be a later elaboration.[4] He also reports two other stories, one that he married and had a son, Cybisthus or Cybisthon, or adopted his nephew of the same name. The second is that he never married, telling his mother as a young man that it was too early to marry, and as an older man that it was too late.
