ABSTRACT
The birthplace of philosophy, Miletus, was from the beginning of historical times a Greek settlement on the south-western coast of Asia Minor (Ionia). In about 600 BC it was one of the most flourishing trading cities of the Greek world, the mother city of a number of colonies and with trade relations with the Near East, the Black Sea, Egypt, and southern Italy. It was a wealthy and cosmopolitan city, politically independent and unencumbered by rigid traditions. Nevertheless, the city was forced in the middle of the sixth century to acknowledge the formal sovereignty of first the Lydians and later the Persians. But until the revolt against the Persians and the destruction of Miletus in 494 (the beginning of the Persian wars), the city occupied a privileged position. Prosperity and political independence do not, of course, automatically lead to cultural flowering, but it is clear that liberty and the close connections with other cultural spheres were necessary preconditions. It is no accident that Miletus was also the home of the first historians and geographers. A typical ‘scholar’ from Miletus wrote in prose, which means that he imparted information or presented theories without obligation to religious authorities or literary conventions. He was practical and engaged in politics, but he was above all curious —without an aim to gather riches and without visions of mastering nature with technical means. His curiosity was directed at the world around him-from the minutest to the largest. He was naturalistically inclined, and other religions were only of ethnographic interest to him-expressions of the strange customs of other peoples. What was most remarkable about a philosopher from Miletus was that he sought causal explanations.
