_In the following imaginary ‘Dinner-Party of the Seven Sages’ the
supposed narrator is a certain Diocles of Corinth, a professional
diviner and expiator of omens connected with the court of Periander, who
was despot of Corinth from 625_ B. C. _to 585_ B. C. _The dramatic date
is towards the close of that period. It must not be assumed that
Plutarch is pretending to be historical, and anachronisms must be
disregarded._
_The Seven Sages are here Thales, Bias, Pittacus, Solon, Chilon,
Cleobulus, Anacharsis (see Notes on Persons and Places). The list varies
with different writers, but Thales, Bias, Pittacus, and Solon are
invariably, and Chilon is regularly, included in the canon. Periander is
himself sometimes made one of the number, and a certain Myson also
appears._
_The qualities which constituted a ‘sage’ in this connexion were those
of keen practical sense and insight, and a power of crystallizing the
results into pithy maxims. He was not a ‘philosopher’ in the later sense
of that word._