Eudoxus

, a Pythagorean philosopher, of Cnidus, a city of Caria in Asia Minor, flourished about 370 years before Christ. He learned geometry from Archytas, and afterwards travelled into Egypt to learn astronomy and other sciences. There he and Plato studied together, as Laertius informs us, for the space of thirteen years; and afterwards came to Athens, fraught with all sorts of knowledge, which they had imbibed from the priests. Here Eudoxus opened a school, which he supported with so much glory and renown, that even Plato, though his friend, is said to have envied him; he also composed elements of geometry, from whence Euclid liberally borrowed, as mentioned by Proclus. Cicero calls Eudoxus the greatest astronomer that had ever lived: and Petronius says, he spent the latter part of his life upon the top of a very high mountain, that he might contemplate the stars and the heavens with more convenience and less interruption: and we learn from Strabo, that there were some remains of hisi observatory at Cnidus, to be seen even in his time. None of his works are extant, but he is said by Fabricius (Bibl. GriEC. lib. hi. c. 5.) to have written upon music, and he gathers from Theon of Smyrna, p. 94, that Eudoxus was the first who expressed the ratios of concords by numbers, and who discovered that grave and acute sounds depend on the slow or quick vibrations of the sounding body. He died in the fifty-third year of his age. ²