Asclepiades of Phlius

Phlius

Phlius was a Greek city in the northwestern Argolid, in the Peloponnese, said to be named after the Greek hero, Phlias. Although geographically close to Argos, the city became a Spartan ally and a member of the Peloponnesian League....

 was a Greek philosopher

Greek philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...

 in the Eretrian school of philosophy. He was the friend of Menedemus of Eretria, and they both went to live in Megara

Megara

Megara is an ancient city in Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken by Athens. Megara was one of the four districts of Attica, embodied in the four mythic sons of King...

 and studied under Stilpo

Stilpo

Stilpo was a Greek philosopher of the Megarian school. He was a contemporary of Theophrastus, Diodorus Cronus, and Crates of Thebes. None of his writings survive, he was interested in logic and dialectic, and he argued that the universal is fundamentally separated from the individual and concrete...

, before sailing to Elis

Elis

Elis, or Eleia is an ancient district that corresponds with the modern Elis peripheral unit...

 to join Phaedo

Phaedo of Elis

Phaedo of Elis was a Greek philosopher. A native of Elis, he was captured in war and sold into slavery. He subsequently came into contact with Socrates at Athens who warmly received him and had him freed. He was present at the death of Socrates, and Plato named one of his dialogues Phaedo...

's school. His friendship with Menedemus was said to have been hardly inferior to the friendship of Pylades

Pylades

In Greek mythology, Pylades is the son of King Strophius of Phocis and of Anaxibia, daughter of Atreus and sister of Agamemnon and Menelaus. He is mostly known for his strong friendship with his cousin Orestes, son of Agamemnon.-Orestes and Pylades:...

 and Orestes

Orestes (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older ones....

. As impoverished young men living in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, they were one day summoned before the Areopagus

Areopagus

The Areopagus or Areios Pagos is the "Rock of Ares", north-west of the Acropolis, which in classical times functioned as the high Court of Appeal for criminal and civil cases in Athens. Ares was supposed to have been tried here by the gods for the murder of Poseidon's son Alirrothios .The origin...

, to explain how they could spend all day with the philosophers if they had no visible means of support. They summoned a miller

Miller

A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents in other languages around the world...

 to the court to explain that they threshed

Threshing

Threshing is the process of loosening the edible part of cereal grain from the scaly, inedible chaff that surrounds it. It is the step in grain preparation after harvesting and before winnowing, which separates the loosened chaff from the grain...

 grain

Cereal

Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...

 at night for 2 drachmas, whereupon the Areopagites were so astonished that they awarded the two men 200 drachmas as a reward.

They eventually settled in Eretria

Eretria

Erétria was a polis in Ancient Greece, located on the western coast of the island of Euboea, south of Chalcis, facing the coast of Attica across the narrow Euboean Gulf. Eretria was an important Greek polis in the 6th/5th century BC. However, it lost its importance already in antiquity...

, having transferred Phaedo's school there. It was said that they were both married; and that Asclepiades was married to the mother, and Menedemus to the daughter; and when Asclepiades's wife died, he took the wife of Menedemus; and Menedemus went on to marry a rich woman. They all lived in one house, and Menedemus entrusted the whole management of it to his former wife. Asclepiades died before Menedemus, at Eretria, at a great age.