Continuing the “physiological” trend of Pythagorean natural philosophy, Hippo mostly studied problems of physiology, embryology, botany and medicine.
Hippon’s traditional connection with the Pythagorean school is based on his birthplace, which, though controversial, was most probably in Magna Graecia, where he must have lived at least for a period.
Hippon held water and fire to be the primary elements, with fire originating from water, and then developing itself by generating the universe. Hippon thought that water was the principle of all things. Most of the accounts of his philosophy suggest that he was interested in biological matters.
Hippon supposed that the bodies of all living things contain moisture that is characteristic of them, and thanks to which they live and feel.
He considered the *soul (seated in the brain) to be derived from the semen and to be itself moist, and devoted special attention to the development of the human body from the embryonic state to maturity.
Hippon was very well known in Athens around 430 BC, because according to a scholion to Aristophanes’ Clouds, he was satirized both in this play and previously by Cratinus in his play Panoptai. Like other philosophers, he was apparently labelled an ‘atheist’ in Athens for his doctrines, probably just because of the treatment he was subjected to by the comic poets.
Pythagorean philosopher Hippon
