Diagoras of Melos

Diagoras of Melos was an ancient Greek atheist, poet and sophist of the 5th century BC.

Diagoras of Melos was a 5th century B.C. Greek philosopher, poet, sophist and atheist.

The Athenians accused him of impiety, and he fled the city. He died in Corinth.

The author Stefan Stenudd writes about Diagoras of Melos:

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Cicero also tells of how a friend of Diagoras tried to convince him of the existence of the gods, by pointing out how many votive pictures tell about people being saved from storms at sea by "dint of vows to the gods", to which Diagoras replied that "there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea." And Cicero goes on to give another example, where Diagoras was on a ship in hard weather, and the crew thought that they had brought it on themselves by taking this ungodly man onboard. He then wondered if the other boats out in the same storm also had a Diagoras onboard.

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The Christian writer Athenagoras of Athens (2nd century AD) writes about Diagoras:

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With reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there was no God at all.

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J.M. Robertson in his work A Short History of Freethought: Ancient and Modern wrote:

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It was about that time [415 BCE] that the poet Diagoras of Melos was proscribed for atheism, he having declared that the non-punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that there were no gods. It has been surmised, with some reason, that the iniquity in question was the slaughter of the Melians by the Athenians in 416 BCE, and the Athenian resentment in that case was personal and political rather than religious. For some time after 415 the Athenian courts made strenuous efforts to punish every discoverable case of impiety; and parodies of the Eleusinian mysteries were alleged against Alcibiades and others. Diagoras, who was further charged with divulging the Eleusinian and other mysteries, and with making firewood of an image of Herakles, telling the god thus to perform his thirteenth labour by cooking turnips, became thenceforth one of the proverbial atheists of the ancient world, and a reward of a silver talent was offered for killing him, and of two talents for his capture alive; despite which he seems to have escaped.

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Diagoras of Melos and his poetry

See also: Atheism and poetry

According to the book Greek Lyric Poetry: A Complete Collection of the Surviving Passages from the Greek Song-writers by George Stanley Farnell, "His position as a poet seems to be one of little prominence, and he probably abandoned his art for philosophical speculation." See also: Atheism and poetry.

There is little information about Diagoras of Melos' life and his beliefs. And no atheist poems have been found written by him as far as the historical record.

See also

• Ancient Greece
• Greeks

External links

• Diagoras of Melos - biography