Xenophilus

Xenophilus, depicted as a medieval scholar in the Nuremberg Chronicle.^[1]

Xenophilus (Greek: Ξενόφιλος; 4th century BC) of Chalcidice,^[2] was a Pythagorean philosopher and musician, who lived in the first half of the 4th century BC.^[3] Aulus Gellius relates that Xenophilus was the intimate friend and teacher of Aristoxenus, and implies that Xenophilus taught him Pythagorean doctrine.^[4] He was said to have belonged to the last generation of Pythagoreans, and he is the only Pythagorean known to have lived in Athens in the 4th century BC.^[5] We learn from Diogenes Laërtius that Aristoxenus wrote that when Xenophilus was once asked by someone how he could best educate his son, Xenophilus replied, "By making him the citizen of a well-governed state."^[6] According to Pseudo-Lucian, Aristoxenus is supposed to have said that Xenophilus lived 105 years.^[7] Xenophilus enjoyed considerable fame in the Renaissance, apparently because of Pliny's claim that he lived 105 years without ever being sick.^[8]

Notes

1. Die Schedelsche Weltchronik, 079
2. Pythagoreanism entry by Carl Huffman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3. Kathleen Freeman, 1983, Ancilla to the pre-Socratic philosophers, page 81, Harvard University Press
4. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, iv. 11
5. David E. Hahm, 1977, The origins of Stoic cosmology, page 225. Ohio State University Press
6. Diogenes Laërtius, viii. 15-16
7. Pseudo-Lucian, Macrobii, 18; cf. Valerius Maximus, viii. c. 13, Pliny, Naturalis Historia, vii. 50
8. Kevin Patrick Siena, Sins of the flesh: responding to sexual disease in early modern Europe, page 95. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.