born at Miletus, an eminent Greek philosopher, friend, scholar, and successor of Anaximander. He diffused some degree of light upon the obscurity of his master's system. He made the first principle of things to consist in the air, which he considered as immense or infinite, and to which he ascribed a perpetual motion. He asserted, that all things which proceeded from it, were definite and circumscribed; and that this air, therefore, was God; since the divine power resided in it and agitated it. Coldness and moisture, heat and motion, rendered it visible, and dressed it in different forms, according to the different degrees of its condensation. All the elements thus proceed from heat and cold. The earth was, in his opinion, one continued flat surface.

the son of Aristocles of Lampacus, an orator, the disciple of Diogenes the Cynic, and of Zoilus the satirist against Homer. He was preceptor to Alexander of Macedon, and followed him to the wars. Alexander being incensed against the people of Lampacus, they sent this philosopher to intercede for them. Alexander knowing the cause of his coming, swore that he would do the very reverse of whatever he desired of him. Anaximenes begged of him to destroy Lampacus. Alexander, unwilling to break his oath, and not able to elude this stratagem, pardoned Lampacus much against his will.

ANAXIMANDRIANS, in the history of philosophy, the followers of Anaximander; the most ancient of the philosophical atheists, who admitted of no other subsistence in nature but matter.