Phoenician Philosophy and Greek Atomism: the Case of Mochos of Sidon

A fragment has come down to us from the Stoic Posidonius, where it is said that the Phoenicians, in particular Mochos from Sidon, developed atomic philosophy even before the time of the Trojan War. Modern scientists, for the most part, are extremely skeptical about this evidence and do not recognize any developed philosophical culture among the Phoenician ethnos. In our article, we try to refute this point of view by showing that, having a very developed mythological system, the Phoenicians could have had an equally developed philosophical culture, which, in turn, influenced Greek thought – the fact which the Greeks themselves never denied, tracing their wisdom to the Ancient East and to Phoenicia in particular. Atomism could have originated in Phoenicia because Phoenicia was an alphabetic culture, and according to the observations of scientists, almost everywhere where alphabetic writing arose, unlike ideographic writing, one or another form of philosophical atomism arose along with it. Also, based on epigraphic evidence, the article shows that the mysterious Laitos, the translator of Mochos’ works into Greek, is none other than a little-known Platonist of the 1st century AD Ofellius Laetus from Ephesus, whose translations could be used by such authors as Josephus, Tatian, Diogenes Laertius, Iamblichus, Damascus and Nonnus when they touched on Phoenician issues.