The most illustrious of the Ionic philosophers, and the first distinguished philosopher of this period of Grecian history, was Anaxagoras, who was born at Clazom'enæ in the year 499 B.C. At the age of twenty he went to Athens, where he remained thirty years, teaching philosophy, and having for his hearers Pericles, Socrates, Euripides, and other celebrated characters. While the pantheistic systems of Tha'les, Heracli'tus, and other early philosophers admitted, in accordance with the fictions of the received mythology, that the universe is full of gods, the doctrine of Anaxagoras led to the belief of but one supreme mind or intelligence, distinct from the chaos to which it imparts motion, form, and order. Hence he also taught that the sun is an inanimate, fiery mass, and therefore not a proper object of worship. He asserted that the moon shines by reflected light, and he rightly explained solar and lunar eclipses. He gave allegorical explanations of the names of the Grecian gods, and struck a blow at the popular religion by attributing the miraculous appearances at sacrifices to natural causes. For these innovations he was stoned by the populace, and, as a penalty for what was considered his impiety, he was condemned to death; but through the influence of Pericles his sentence was commuted to banishment. He retired to Lamp'sacus, on the Hellespont, where he died at the age of seventy-two. A short time before his death the senate of Lampsacus sent to Anaxagoras to ask what commemoration of his life and character would be most acceptable to him. He answered, "Let all the boys and girls have a play-day on the anniversary of my death." The suggestion was observed, and his memory was honored by the people of Lampsacus for many centuries with a yearly festival. The amiable disposition of Anaxagoras, and the general character of his teachings, are pleasantly and very correctly set forth in the following poem, which is a supposed letter from the poet Cleon, of Lampsacus, to Pericles, giving an account of the philosopher's death: The Death of Anaxagoras. Cleon of Lampsacus, to Pericles: Of him she banished now let Athens boast; Let now th' Athenian raise to him they stoned A statue. Anaxagoras is dead! To you who mourn the master, called him friend, Beat back th' Athenian wolves who fanged his throat, And risked your own to save him--Pericles-- I now unfold the manner of his end: The aged man, who found in sixty years Scant cause for laughter, laughed before he died, And died still smiling: Athens vexed him not! Not he, but your Athenians, he would say, Were banished in his exile!