ABSTRACT
The Pre-Socratics' influence on Plato was so great that a study of their thought is essential to understanding many passages in his dialogues and his intentions. Aristotle studied the Pre-Socratics closely and discussed them at length in the first book of his Metaphysics. Of the later Greek philosophers, it has often been remarked that the Stoics were particularly influenced by Heraclitus and the Epicureans by Democritus. Like many other Pre-Socratics, Thales was by no means a philosopher only. He was also a statesman, an astronomer, a geometer, and a sage. Anaximander may have been the first Greek to write a book of prose. Anaximander developed a rudimentary concept of natural law the idea that all growing things in the natural world develop according to an identical pattern. The religious sect Pythagoras founded still existed in Plato's time, 150 years later, and decisively influenced Plato's thought an influence, in fact, second only to that of Plato's revered teacher, Socrates.
