person
Diagoras of Melos
Diagoras
also: Diagoras Melius, Diagoras the Atheist, Atheos
A late-fifth-century BC poet notorious in antiquity as 'the Atheist' for openly denying the existence of the gods. Cicero repeatedly pairs him with Theodorus of Cyrene as a thinker who abolished divinity altogether.
Reading notes
- On the Nature of the Gods §3.89 Diagoras
Diagoras of Melos, the proverbial atheist. Shown the votive tablets of sailors saved by their vows, he answered that those who drowned despite their vows were nowhere painted; the story is Cotta's stock illustration that the rescue of the pious proves nothing.