About

Diagoras of Melos was an ancient Greek philosopher, credited as the first declared atheist in the history of the Western World. Do not confuse him with Diagoras of Rhodes, who was an olympionike (Olympic champion) and father of olympionikes.

Of course, the statue that I have chosen for my profile picture is not of Diagoras of Melos, since no sculpture exists of that rather unpopular philosopher. Instead, this is a picture of a modern replica of an ancient Greek statue known as “Poseidon of Melos”. The replica belongs to the “Royal Cast Collection”, in Copenhagen, while the (somewhat battered) original statue is housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Greece.

Please also note that the terms “Melos” and “Milos” refer to the same island of the south-western Aegean sea; Melos is used in ancient contexts, while Milos is used in modern contexts.

Under no circumstances do I claim to be infallible. English is not even my native language. If you notice something wrong or even unclear in my writings, please do not hessitate to bring it to my attention, I will consider that you are doing me a favor.

If you post a comment and you discover afterwards that it contains a grammar or syntactic error, you can ask me to change it by sending me email.

The “name” part of my email address is diagoras.milios, while the “server” part is gmail.com.

Copyright © 2008 Diagoras of Melos