SOURCE: Edward Hussey, "The Milesians," in The Presocratics, Duckworth, 1972, pp. 11-31.

In the following excerpt, Hussey examines Anaximander's philosophy in the larger context of Milesian cosmology.

The Theogony of Hesiod is very likely the earliest work of Greek literature that we possess. Its author lived in Boeotia, on the Greek mainland, and can be plausibly dated to near the beginning of the seventh century. The Theogony is an attempt to construct a unified genealogy of the gods. It is far from being merely a reworking of traditional Greek stories. The chief deities of the Greeks have a prominent place; but the story which looms largest—the 'Succession Myth', in which Uranus is deposed by his son Cronus who is in turn succeeded by his son Zeus—is of Near Eastern origin, though it had perhaps arrived in Greece in the Mycenean age. What is more, the well-known gods...