Heraclitus was born in Epheseus, a town on the western coast of Ionia, between Miletus and Colophon. Heraclitus was of noble birth, but he gave up all of his political opportunities to pursue philosophy. He wrote his main philosophical work in about 500 B.C. Of this, over 120 fragments remain. These sayings are culled from other later writers, such as Sextus Empiricus, who quote Heraclitus. This means that we do not know the order of the short sayings of Heraclitus, except for the first two, which occurred near the beginning of the book. Of course, this order affects the interpretation of his philosophy, and consequently it is a contentious issue among scholars.
