After engaging in politics he became a student of nature. According to some he left nothing in writing; for the Nautical Astronomy attributed to him is said to be by Phocus of Samos. Callimachus knows him as the discoverer of the Ursa Minor ; for he says in his Jambics : Who first of men the course made plain Of those small stars we call the Wain, Whereby Phoenicians sail the main.? But according to others he wrote nothing but two treatises, one On the Solstice and one On the Equinoz, regarding all other matters as incognizable. He seems by some accounts to have been the first to study astronomy,’ the first to predict eclipses of the sun and to fix the solstices; so KEudemus in his History of Astronomy. It was this which gained for him the admiration of Xenophanes and Herodotus and the notice of Heraclitus and Democritus. And some, including Choerilus the poet, declare that he was the first to maintain the immortality of the soul. He was the first to determine the sun’s course from solstice to solstice, and according to some the first to declare the size of the sun to be one seven hundred and twentieth part of the solar circle, and the size of the moon to be the same fraction of the lunar circle. He was the first to give the last day of the month the name of Thirtieth, and the first, some say, to discuss physical problems. Aristotle and Hippias affirm that, arguing from the magnet and from amber, he attributed a soul or life even to inanimate objects. Pamphila states that,