Menedemus

Menedemus of Eretria (; 345/44 – 261/60 BC) was a Greek philosopher and founder of the Eretrian school. He learned philosophy first in Athens, and then, with his friend Asclepiades, he subsequently studied under Stilpo and Phaedo of Elis. Nothing survives of his philosophical views apart from a few scattered remarks recorded by later writers.

Life Menedemus was born at Eretria. He was a member of the noble Theopropidai family, which held significant religious authority but had become impoverished by Menedemus's time. Like his father, Cleisthenes, he worked as a builder and tent maker.

In the course of military conflicts (probably 323/322 BC, during the Lamian War) he was sent with a military expedition to Megara, from where he traveled to the Platonic Academy in Athens and resolved to devote himself to philosophy. At Megara he formed a lifelong friendship with Asclepiades of Phlius, with whom he toiled in the night that he might study philosophy by day. Later, Asclepiades and Menedemus went to Elis and became students of the philosophical descendants of Phaedo of Elis, namely Anchipylus and Moschus. He was subsequently a pupil first of Stilpo and then of, whose school he transferred to Eretria, by which name it was afterward known. and from Cicero that he regarded Virtue as one, by whatever name it be called, and maintained that it is intellectual. Cicero's evidence is less valuable because he always assumed that Menedemus was a follower of the Megarian school. Diogenes says that he left no writings, and the Eretrian school disappeared after a short and unobtrusive existence.