ANAUSIS, iimail-sis, one of Medea's suitors. ANAXAGORAS,aft-ax-ag'-er-a.S. z. Succeeded his father, King Megapenthes of Argos, sharing the throne with Bias and Melampus, who had cured the women of Argos of madness. a. A philosopher of Clazomenm, born 500 a.c., son of IlEgesibalus, disciple of AnaximEnes, and preceptor of Socrates, Euripides, Pericles, &c. He travelled in Egypt. The previous systems of Greek philosophy had been entirely physi cal, endeavouring to resolve the Universe into its primordial elements, and to find the 'aeXi, or First Principle, or (with them, Material) Cause of all, which Thales, like Homer and the mytho logists, thought was water, Anaximander fire, and Anaximenes air. Anaxagoras first intro duced as his am) Intelligence, Nods, which, alone pure and unmixed, impersonal and im material, had two attributes,—to move and to know, and exercised a catalytic agency on the chaotic mass, in which it originated a rotatory movement. This chaos consisted of Hamra
' merles, or elements which were always united and identical, and incapable of being decom posed. Anaxagoras has been blamed for making but little use of his principle, and being chiefly physical like his predecessors.. He sup posed the sun to be a ball of fire about the size of Peloponnesus, and that the moon was in habited. His philosophy was deemed impious ; he was accused, and defended by Pericles, but banished. He died in his seventy-second year, 428 Lc., at Lampsacus. When the inhabitants asked him before his death how to comme morate him, he asked them to make the anni versary of his death a holiday for the boys, which was carefully observed.