Book 12
4.9
Men distinguished for their learning, natives of Bithynia, were 4enocrates the philosopher, Dionysius the dialectician, Hipparchus, Theodosius and his sons the mathematicians, Cleophanes the rhetorician of Myrleia, and Asclepiades the physician of Prusa.4enocrates, one of the most distinguished disciples of Plato, was of Chalcedon. Dionysius the dialectician is probably the same as Dionysius of Heracleia, who abandoned the Stoics to join the sect of Epicurus. Hipparchus, the first and greatest of Greek astronomers, (B. C. 160–145,) was of Nicaea. So also was Diophanes, quoted by Varro and Columella, as the abbreviator of the twenty books on Agriculture by Mago, in the Punic language. Suidas speaks of Theodosius, a distinguished mathematician, who, according to Vossius, may be here meant. A treatise of his on Spherics still exists, and was printed in Paris in 1558. Of Cleophanes of Myrleia little is known. Strabo mentions also a grammarian, Asclepiades of Myrleia, in b. iii. c. iv. § 19. To these great names may be added as of Bithynian origin, but subsequent to the time of Strabo, Dion Chrysostom, one of the most eminent among Greek rhetoricians and sophists; he was born at Nicomedia, and died about A. D. 117. Arrian, the author of India, and the Anabasis (the Asiatic expedition) of Alexander, was also born at Nicomedia towards the end of A. 1. 100.
