The eldest son of the British historian economist and philosopher James Mill he was born on May 20 1806 in his father's house in Pentonville London. He was educated exclusively by his father who was a strict disciplinarian. By his eighth year he had read in the original Greek Aesop's Fables Xenophon's Anabasis and the whole of the historian Herodotus. He was acquainted with the satirist Lucian the historian of philosophy Diogenes Laërtius the Athenian writer and educational theorist Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato. He had also read a great deal of history in English. At the age of eight he started Latin the geometry of Euclid and algebra and began to teach the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history but he went through all the Latin and Greek authors commonly read in the schools and universities and by the age of 10 could read Plato and the Athenian statesman Demosthenes with ease. About the age of 12 he began a thorough study of Scholastic logic at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied the work of the Scottish political economist and philosopher Adam Smith and that of the English economist David Ricardo.