Ionia (Asia Minor)
An Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor, birthplace of Anaxagoras—the philosopher who brought natural science to Athens and taught that a cosmic Mind set the universe in order.
Clazomenae through the eras
One of the Ionian Greek cities of the Asia Minor coast, Clazomenae fell under Lydian and then Persian dominion in the sixth century BCE, sharing the fate of its neighbors after Cyrus the Great's conquest. Into this world Anaxagoras was born around 500 BCE, the man who would carry Ionian natural philosophy westward to mainland Greece.
Clazomenae joined the failed Ionian Revolt against Persia and afterward entered the Athenian-led Delian League. Its greatest son, Anaxagoras, left for Athens to become the first major philosopher to teach there and an associate of Pericles; he held that the sun was a fiery stone and the moon made of earth, and that an ordering 'Nous' (Mind) set in motion the swirling that separated all things from their primordial mixture—teachings so bold that he was charged with impiety and forced to flee Athens.
Teachers who lived here
Works composed here
by Anaxagoras