Teles

Τέλης

(Τέλης), a Greek philosopher, who is erroneously ranked by Fabricius (Bibl. Gr. i. p. 876) among the Pythagoreans. He should rather be classed with the Socratics; Diogenes, Crates, Bion, Aristippus, Xenophon, and Socrates himself, being the philosophers with whose doctrines he seems chiefly to have concerned himself. He appears to have been a contemporary of Stilpon. (Teles, de Exilio, ap. Stob. Floril. 40.8.)

Works

Teles was the author of various dialogues, of which some considerable fragments have been preserved by Stobaeus, though they are not printed in the dialogical form. (Welcker, Kleine Schriften, vol. ii. p. 495.) Stobaeus has quoted from the following pieces or dialogues :--

1. Περὶ αὐταρκείας (5.67).
2. Μὴ εῖναι τέλος ἡδονὴν (98.72).
3. Σύγκρισις πλούτον καὶ ἀρετῆς (91.33, 93.31).
4. Περὶ φυγῆς (40.8).
5. Περὶ περιστάσεως (108.82).
6. Περὶ εὐπαθείας (108.83).
7. A couple of epitomized extracts from pieces not named (95.21. 97.31).

[C.P.M]

From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.