change of the formation of the world; or
perhaps, like the philosophers of the pure Ionic school, a perpetual
continuance of pure fundamental substances; to which the parts of the
world that are tired of change return, and prepare the formation of the
sphere for the next period of the world. Like the Eleatics, he strove to
purify the notion of the Deity, saying that he, "being a holy infinite
spirit, not encumbered with limbs, passes through the world with rapid
thoughts." At the same time he speaks of the eternal power of Necessity as
an ancient decree of the Gods, though it is not quite clear what he
understood by this term.

_Diagoras_ was a native of Melos, and a pupil of Democritus, and
flourished about B.C. 435. He is remarkable as having been regarded by all
antiquity as an Atheist. In his youth he had some reputation as a lyric
poet; so that he is sometimes classed with Pindar, Simonides, and
Bacchylides. Aristophanes, in the Clouds, alludes to him where he calls
Socrates "the Melian;" not that he was so, but he means to hint that
Socrates was an atheist as well as the Melian Diagoras. He lived at Athens
for many years till B.C. 411, when he fled from a prosecution instituted
against him for impiety, according to Diodorus, but probably for some
offence of a political nature; perhaps connected with the mutilation of
the Hermae.

That he was an atheist, however, appears to have been quite untrue. Like
Socrates, he took new and peculiar views respecting the Gods and their
worship; and seems to have ridiculed the honours paid to their statues,
and the common notions which were entertained of their actions and
conduct. (See De Nat. Deor. iii. 37.) He is said also to have attacked
objects held in the greatest veneration at Athens, such as the Eleusinian
Mysteries, and to have dissuaded people from being initiated into them. He
appears also, in his theories on the divine nature, to have substituted in
some degree the active powers of nature for the activity of the Gods. In
his own conduct he was a man of strict morality and virtue. He died at
Corinth before the end of the century.

_Protagoras_ was a native of Abdera; the exact time of his birth is
unknown, but he was a little older than Socrates. He was the first person
who gave himself the title of {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREE