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When Zedekiah reigned over the Hebrews, and Tarquinius Priscus,
the successor of Ancus Martius, over the Romans, the Jewish people
was led captive into Babylon, Jerusalem and the temple built by
Solomon being overthrown. For the prophets, in chiding them for
their iniquity and impiety, predicted that these things should come to
pass, especially Jeremiah, who even stated the number of years.
Pittacus of Mitylene, another of the sages, is reported to have
lived at that time. And Eusebius writes that, while the people of
God were held captive in Babylon, the five other sages lived, who
must be added to Thales, whom we mentioned above, and Pittacus, in
order to make up the seven. These are Solon of Athens, Chilo of
Lacedaemon, Periander of Corinth, Cleobulus of Lindus, and Bias
of Priene. These flourished after the theological poets, and were
called sages, because they excelled other men in a certain laudable
line of life, and summed up some moral precepts in epigrammatic
sayings. But they left posterity no literary monuments, except that
Solon is alleged to have given certain laws to the Athenians, and
Thales was a natural philosopher, and left books of his doctrine in
short proverbs. In that time of the Jewish captivity, Anaximander,
Anaximenes, and Xenophanes, the natural philosophers, flourished.
Pythagoras also lived then, and at this time the name philosopher was
first used.
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