BOHN’S CLASSICAL LIBRARY
DIOGENES LAËRTIUS
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
LONDON: PORTUGAL ST., KINGSWAY
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER AND CO.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF
EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY
DIOGENES LAËRTIUS.
LITERALLY TRANSLATED
BY C. D. YONGE, M.A.,
_Fellow of the Royal University of London;
Regius Professor of English Literature and Modern
History, Queen’s College, Belfast._
[Illustration]
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD
1915
[_Reprinted from Stereotype plates._]
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
PREFACE 1
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTION 3
THALES 14
SOLON 23
CHILO 32
PITTACUS 35
BIAS 38
CLEOBULUS 41
PERIANDER 43
ANACHARSIS, THE SCYTHIAN 46
MYSON 49
EPIMENIDES 50
PHERECYDES 53
BOOK II.
ANAXIMANDER 57
ANAXIMENES 57
ARCHELAUS 62
SOCRATES 63
XENOPHON 75
ÆSCHINES 79
ARISTIPPUS 81
PHÆDO 96
EUCLIDES 97
STILPO 100
CRITO 103
SIMON 104
GLAUCO 104
SIMIAS 105
CEBES 105
MENEDEMUS 105
BOOK III.
PLATO 113
BOOK IV.
SPEUSIPPUS 152
XENOCRATES 154
POLEMO 158
CRATES 160
CRANTOR 161
ARCESILAUS 163
BION 171
LACYDES 176
CARNEADES 177
CLITOMACHUS 178
BOOK V.
ARISTOTLE 181
THEOPHRASTUS 194
STRATO 202
LYCON 205
DEMETRIUS 209
HERACLIDES 213
BOOK VI.
ANTISTHENES 217
DIOGENES 224
MONIMUS 248
ONESICRITUS 249
CRATES 249
METROCLES 253
HIPPARCHIA 254
MENIPPUS 256
MENEDEMUS 257
BOOK VII.
ZENO 259
ARISTON 318
HERILLUS 320
DIONYSIUS 321
CLEANTHES 322
SPHÆRUS 326
CHRYSIPPUS 327
BOOK VIII.
PYTHAGORAS 338
EMPEDOCLES 359
EPICHARMUS 368
ARCHYTAS 369
ALCMÆON 371
HIPPASUS 371
PHILOLAUS 372
EUDOXUS 372
BOOK IX.
HERACLITUS 376
XENOPHANES 382
PARMENIDES 384
MELISSUS 386
ZENO, THE ELEATIC 386
LEUCIPPUS 388
DEMOCRITUS 390
PROTAGORAS 397
DIOGENES, OF APOLLONIA 400
ANAXARCHUS 400
PYRRHO 402
TIMON 420
BOOK X.
EPICURUS 424
PREFACE.
Diogenes, the author of the following work, was a native (as is generally
believed) of Laërte, in Cilicia, from which circumstance he derived the
cognomen of Laërtius. Little is known of him personally, nor is even the
age in which he lived very clearly ascertained. But as Plutarch, Sextus
Empiricus, and Saturninus are among the writers whom he quotes, he is
generally believed to have lived near the end of the second century of
our era: although some place him in the time of Alexander Severus, and
others as late as Constantine. His work consists of ten books, variously
called: The Lives of Philosophers, A History of Philosophy, and The Lives
of Sophists. From internal evidence (iii. 47, 29), we learn that he wrote
it for a noble lady (according to some, Arria; according to others,
Julia, the Empress of Severus), who occupied herself with the study of
philosophy, and especially of Plato.
Diogenes Laërtius divides the philosophy of the Greeks into the Ionic,
beginning with Anaximander, and ending with Theophrastus (in which class,
he includes the Socratic philosophy and all its various ramifications);
and the Italian, beginning with Pythagoras, and ending with Epicurus, in
which he includes the Eleatics, as also Heraclitus and the Sceptics. From
the minute consideration which he devotes to Epicurus and his system, it
has been supposed that he himself belonged to that school.
His work is the chief source of information we possess concerning the
history of Greek philosophy, and is the foundation of nearly all the
modern treatises on that subject; some of the most important of which are
little more than translations or amplifications of it. It is valuable,
as containing a copious collection of anecdotes illustrative of the life
and manners of the Greeks; but he has not always been very careful in
his selection, and in some parts there is a confusion in his statements
that makes them scarcely intelligible. These faults have led some critics
to consider the work as it now exists merely a mutilated abridgment of
the original. Breslæus, who in the thirteenth century, wrote a Treatise
on the Lives and Manners of the Philosophers, quotes many anecdotes and
sayings, which seem to be derived from Diogenes, but which are not to be
found in our present text; whence Schneider concludes that he had a very
different and far more complete copy than has come down to us.
The text used in the following translation is chiefly that of Huebner, as
published at Leipsic, A.D. 1828.
LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTION.
I. Some say that the study of philosophy originated with the barbarians.
In that among the Persians there existed the Magi,[1] and among
the Babylonians or Assyrians the Chaldæi,[2] among the Indians the
Gymnosophistæ,[3] and among the Celts and Gauls men who were called
Druids[4] and Semnothei, as Aristotle relates in his book on Magic,
and Sotion in the twenty-third book of his Succession of Philosophers.
Besides those men there were the Phœnician Ochus, the Thracian
Zamolxis,[5] and the Libyan Atlas. For the Egyptians say that Vulcan
was the son of Nilus, and that he was the author of philosophy, in which
those who were especially eminent were called his priests and prophets.
II. From his age to that of Alexander, king of the Macedonians were
forty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-three years, and during this
time there were three hundred and seventy-three eclipses of the sun, and
eight hundred and thirty-two eclipses of the moon.
Again, from the time of the Magi, the first of whom was Zoroaster
the Persian, to that of the fall of Troy, Hermodorus the Platonic
philosopher, in his treatise on Mathematics, calculates that fifteen
thousand years elapsed. But Xanthus the Lydian says that the passage of
the Hellespont by Xerxes took place six thousand years after the time of
Zoroaster,[6] and that after him there was a regular succession of Magi
under the names of Ostanes and Astrampsychos and Gobryas and Pazatas,
until the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander.
III. But those who say this, ignorantly impute to the barbarians the
merits of the Greeks, from whom not only all philosophy, but even the
whole human race in reality originated. For Musæus was born among the
Athenians, and Linus among the Thebans; and they say that the former,
who was the son of Eumolpus, was the first person who taught the system
of the genealogy of the gods, and who invented the spheres; and that
he taught that all things originated in one thing, and when dissolved
returned to that same thing; and that he died at Phalerum, and that this
epitaph was inscribed on his tomb:—
Phalerum’s soil beneath this tomb contains
Musæus dead, Eumolpus’ darling son.
And it is from the father of Musæus that the family called Eumolpidæ
among the Athenians derive their name. They say too that Linus was the
son of Mercury and the Muse Urania; and that he invented a system of
Cosmogony, and of the motions of the sun and moon, and of the generation
of animals and fruits; and the following is the beginning of his poem,
There was a time when all the present world
Uprose at once.
From which Anaxagoras derived his theory, when he said that all things
had been produced at the same time, and that then intellect had come and
arranged them all in order.
They say, moreover, that Linus died in Eubœa, having been shot with an
arrow by Apollo, and that this epitaph was set over him:—
The Theban Linus sleeps beneath this ground,
Urania’s son with fairest garlands crown’d.
IV. And thus did philosophy arise among the Greeks, and indeed its very
name shows that it has no connection with the barbarians. But those who
attribute its origin to them, introduce Orpheus the Thracian, and say
that he was a philosopher, and the most ancient one of all. But if one
ought to call a man who has said such things about the gods as he has
said, a philosopher, I do not know what name one ought to give to him who
has not scrupled to attribute all sorts of human feelings to the gods,
and even such discreditable actions as are but rarely spoken of among
men; and tradition relates that he was murdered by women;[7] but there
is an inscription at Dium in Macedonia, saying that he was killed by
lightning, and it runs thus:—
Here the bard buried by the Muses lies,
The Thracian Orpheus of the golden lyre;
Whom mighty Jove, the Sovereign of the skies,
Removed from earth by his dread lightn’ng’s fire.
V. But they who say that philosophy had its rise among the barbarians,
give also an account of the different systems prevailing among the
various tribes. And they say that the Gymnosophists and the Druids
philosophize, delivering their apophthegms in enigmatical language,
bidding men worship the gods and do no evil, and practise manly virtue.
VI. Accordingly Clitarchus, in his twelfth book, says that the
Gymnosophists despise death, and that the Chaldæans study astronomy and
the science of soothsaying—that the Magi occupy themselves about the
service to be paid to the gods, and about sacrifices and prayers, as
if they were the only people to whom the deities listen: and that they
deliver accounts of the existence and generation of the gods, saying that
they are fire, and earth, and water; and they condemn the use of images,
and above all things do they condemn those who say that the gods are male
and female; they speak much of justice, and think it impious to destroy
the bodies of the dead by fire; they allow men to marry their mothers or
their daughters, as Sotion tells us in his twenty-third book; they study
the arts of soothsaying and divination, and assert that the gods reveal
their will to them by those sciences. They teach also that the air is
full of phantoms, which, by emanation and a sort of evaporation, glide
into the sight of those who have a clear perception; they forbid any
extravagance of ornament, and the use of gold; their garments are white,
their beds are made of leaves, and vegetables are their food, with cheese
and coarse bread; they use a rush for a staff, the top of which they run
into the cheese, and so taking up a piece of it they eat it. Of all kinds
of magical divination they are ignorant, as Aristotle asserts in his book
on Magic, and Dinon in the fifth book of his Histories. And this writer
says, that the name of Zoroaster being interpreted means, a sacrifice to
the stars; and Hermodorus makes the same statement. But Aristotle, in
the first book of his Treatise on Philosophy, says, that the Magi are
more ancient than the Egyptians; and that according to them there are two
principles, a good demon and an evil demon, and that the name of the one
is Jupiter or Oromasdes, and that of the other Pluto or Arimanius. And
Hermippus gives the same account in the first book of his History of the
Magi; and so does Eudoxus in his Period; and so does Theopompus in the
eighth book of his History of the Affairs of Philip; and this last writer
tells us also, that according to the Magi men will have a resurrection
and be immortal, and that what exists now will exist hereafter under its
own present name; and Eudemus of Rhodes coincides in this statement.
But Hecatæus says, that according to their doctrines the gods also are
beings who have been born. But Clearchus the Solensian, in his Treatise
on Education says, that the Gymnosophists are descendants of the Magi;
and some say that the Jews also are derived from them. Moreover, those
who have written on the subject of the Magi condemn Herodotus; for they
say that Xerxes would never have shot arrows against the sun, or have
put fetters on the sea, as both sun and sea have been handed down by the
Magi as gods, but that it was quite consistent for Xerxes to destroy the
images of the gods.
VII. The following is the account that authors give of the philosophy of
the Egyptians, as bearing on the gods and on justice. They say that the
first principle is matter; then that the four elements were formed out
of matter and divided, and that some animals were created, and that the
sun and moon are gods, of whom the former is called Osiris and the latter
Isis, and they are symbolised under the names of beetles and dragons, and
hawks, and other animals, as Manetho tells us in his abridged account of
Natural Philosophy, and Hecatæus confirms the statement in the first book
of his History of the Philosophy of the Egyptians. They also make images
of the gods, and assign them temples because they do not know the form of
God. They consider that the world had a beginning and will have an end,
and that it is a sphere; they think that the stars are fire, and that it
is by a combination of them that the things on earth are generated; that
the moon is eclipsed when it falls into the shadow of the earth; that the
soul is eternal and migratory; that rain is caused by the changes of the
atmosphere; and they enter into other speculations on points of natural
history, as Hecatæus and Aristagoras inform us.
They also have made laws about justice, which they attribute to Mercury,
and they consider those animals which are useful to be gods. They claim
to themselves the merit of having been the inventors of geometry, and
astrology, and arithmetic. So much then for the subject of invention.
VIII. But Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term
Philosophy, and who called himself a philosopher; when he was conversing
at Sicyon with Leon, who was tyrant of the Sicyonians or of the
Phliasians (as Heraclides Ponticus relates in the book which he wrote
about a dead woman); for he said that no man ought to be called wise,
but only God. For formerly what is now called philosophy (φιλοσοφία) was
called wisdom (σοφία), and they who professed it were called wise men
(σοφοὶ), as being endowed with great acuteness and accuracy of mind; but
now he who embraces wisdom is called a philosopher (φιλόσοφος).
But the wise men were also called Sophists. And not only they, but poets
also were called Sophists: as Cratinus in his Archilochi calls Homer and
Hesiod, while praising them highly.
IX. Now these were they who were accounted wise men. Thales, Solon,
Periander, Cleobulus, Chilo, Bias, Pittacus. To these men add Anacharsis
the Scythian, Myson the Chenean, Pherecydes the Syrian, and Epimenides
the Cretan; and some add, Pisistratus, the tyrant: These then are they
who were called the wise men.
X. But of Philosophy there arose two schools. One derived from
Anaximander, the other from Pythagoras. Now, Thales had been the
preceptor of Anaximander, and Pherecydes of Pythagoras. And the one
school was called the Ionian, because Thales, being an Ionian (for he
was a native of Miletus), had been the tutor of Anaximander;—but the
other was called the Italian from Pythagoras, because he spent the chief
part of his life in Italy. And the Ionic school ends with Clitomachus,
and Chrysippus, and Theophrastus; and the Italian one with Epicurus; for
Anaximander succeeded Thales, and he was succeeded again by Anaximenes,
and he by Anaxagoras, and he by Archelaus, who was the master of
Socrates, who was the originator of moral philosophy. And he was the
master of the sect of the Socratic philosophers, and of Plato, who was
the founder of the old Academy; and Plato’s pupils were Speusippus and
Xenocrates; and Polemo was the pupil of Xenocrates, and Crantor and
Crates of Polemo. Crates again was the master of Arcesilaus, the founder
of the Middle Academy, and his pupil was Lacydes, who gave the new
Academy its distinctive principles. His pupil was Carneades, and he in
his turn was the master of Clitomachus. And this school ends in this way
with Clitomachus and Chrysippus.
Antisthenes was the pupil of Socrates, and the master of Diogenes the
Cynic; and the pupil of Diogenes was Crates the Theban; Zeno the Cittiæan
was his; Cleanthes was his; Chrysippus was his. Again it ends with
Theophrastus in the following manner:—
Aristotle was the pupil of Plato, Theophrastus the pupil of Aristotle;
and in this way the Ionian school comes to an end.
Now the Italian school was carried on in this way. Pythagoras was the
pupil of Pherecydes; his pupil was Telauges his son; he was the master
of Xenophanes, and he of Parmenides; Parmenides of Zeno the Eleatic,
he of Leucippus, he of Democritus: Democritus had many disciples, the
most eminent of whom were Nausiphanes and Nausicydes, and they were the
masters of Epicurus.
XI. Now, of Philosophers some were dogmatic, and others were inclined
to suspend their opinions. By dogmatic, I mean those who explain their
opinions about matters, as if they could be comprehended. By those who
suspend their opinions, I mean those who give no positive judgment,
thinking that these things cannot be comprehended. And the former class
have left many memorials of themselves; but the others have never written
a line; as for instance, according to some people, Socrates, and Stilpo,
and Philippus, and Menedemus, and Pyrrho, and Theodorus, and Carneades,
and Bryson; and, as some people say, Pythagoras, and Aristo of Chios,
except that he wrote a few letters. There are some men too who have
written one work only, Melissus, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras; but Zeno
wrote many works, Xenophanes still more; Democritus more, Aristotle more,
Epicurus more, and Chrysippus more.
XII. Again, of philosophers some derived a surname from cities, as, the
Elians, and Megaric sect, the Eretrians, and the Cyrenaics. Some from
the places which they frequented, as the Academics and Stoics. Some
from accidental circumstances, as the Peripatetics; or, from jests, as
the Cynics. Some again from their dispositions, as the Eudæmonics; some
from an opinion, as the Elenctic, and Analogical schools. Some from
their masters, as the Socratic and Epicurean philosophers; and so on.
The Natural Philosophers were so called from their study of nature; the
Ethical philosophers from their investigation of questions of morals
(περὶ τὰ ἔθη). The Dialecticians are they who devote themselves to
quibbling on words.
XIII. Now there are three divisions of philosophy. Natural, Ethical, and
Dialectic. Natural philosophy occupies itself about the world and the
things in it; Ethical philosophy about life, and the things which concern
us; Dialectics are conversant with the arguments by which both the others
are supported.
Natural philosophy prevailed till the time of Archelaus; but after the
time of Socrates, Ethical philosophy was predominant; and after the time
of Zeno the Eleatic, Dialectic philosophy got the upper hand.
Ethical philosophy was subdivided into ten sects; the Academic, the
Cyrenaic, the Elian, the Megaric, the Cynic, the Eretrian, the Dialectic,
the Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean. Of the old Academic school
Plato was the president; of the middle, Arcesilaus; and of the New,
Lacydes:—the Cyrenaic school was founded by Aristippus the Cyrenian; the
Elian, by Phædo, of Elis; the Megaric, by Euclid, of Megara; the Cynic,
by Antisthenes, the Athenian; the Eretrian, by Menedemus, of Eretria;
the Dialectic by Clitomachus, the Carthaginian; the Peripatetic, by
Aristotle, the Stagirite; the Stoic, by Zeno, the Cittiæan; the Epicurean
school derives its name from Epicurus, its founder.
But Hippobotus, in his Treatise on Sects, says that there are nine sects
and schools: first, the Megaric; secondly, the Eretrian; thirdly, the
Cyrenaic; fourthly, the Epicurean; fifthly, the Annicerean; sixthly, the
Theodorean; seventhly, the sect of Zeno and the Stoics; eighthly, that
of the Old Academy; and ninthly, the Peripatetic;—not counting either
the Cynic, or the Eliac, or the Dialectic school. That also which is
called the Pyrrhonean is repudiated by many writers, on account of the
obscurity of its principles. But others consider that in some particulars
it is a distinct sect, and in others not. For it does appear to be a
sect—for what we call a sect, say they, is one which follows, or appears
to follow, a principle which appears to it to be the true one; on which
principle we correctly call the Sceptics a sect. But if by the name sect
we understand those who incline to rules which are consistent with the
principles which they profess, then the Pyrrhonean cannot be called a
sect, for they have no rules or principles.
These, then, are the beginnings, these are the successive masters, these
are the divisions, and schools of philosophy.
XIV. Moreover, it is not long ago, that a new Eclectic school was set
up by Potamo, of Alexandria, who picked out of the doctrines of each
school what pleased him most. And as he himself says, in his Elementary
Instruction, he thinks that there are certain criteria of truth: first
of all the faculty which judges, and this is the superior one; the
other that which is the foundation of the judgment, being a most exact
appearance of the objects. And the first principles of everything he
calls matter, and the agent, and the quality, and the place. For they
show out of what, and by what, and how, and where anything is done. The
end is that to which everything is referred; namely, a life made perfect
with every virtue, not without the natural and external qualities of the
body.
But we must now speak of the men themselves; and first of all about
Thales.
LIFE OF THALES.
I. Thales, then, as Herodotus and Duris and Democritus say, was the
son of Euxamius and Cleobule; of the family of the Thelidæ, who are
Phœnicians by descent, among the most noble of all the descendants of
Cadmus and Agenor, as Plato testifies. And he was the first man to whom
the name of Wise was given, when Damasius was Archon at Athens, in whose
time also the seven wise men had that title given to them, as Demetrius
Phalereus records in his Catalogue of the Archons. He was enrolled as
a citizen at Miletus when he came thither with Neleus, who had been
banished from Phœnicia; but a more common statement is that he was a
native Milesian, of noble extraction.
II. After having been immersed in state affairs he applied himself to
speculations in natural philosophy; though, as some people state, he
left no writings behind him. For the book on Naval Astronomy, which is
attributed to him is said in reality to be the work of Phocus the Samian.
But Callimachus was aware that he was the discoverer of the Lesser Bear;
for in his Iambics he speaks of him thus:
And, he, ’tis said, did first compute the stars
Which beam in Charles’s wain, and guide the bark
Of the Phœnician sailor o’er the sea.
According to others he wrote two books, and no more, about the solstice
and the equinox; thinking that everything else was easily to be
comprehended. According to other statements, he is said to have been the
first who studied astronomy, and who foretold the eclipses and motions
of the sun, as Eudemus relates in his history of the discoveries made in
astronomy; on which account Xenophanes and Herodotus praise him greatly;
and Heraclitus and Democritus confirm this statement.
III. Some again (one of whom is Chœrilus the poet) say that he was the
first person who affirmed that the souls of men were immortal; and he was
the first person, too, who discovered the path of the sun from one end
of the ecliptic to the other: and who, as one account tells us, defined
the magnitude of the sun as being seven hundred and twenty times as great
as that of the moon. He was also the first person who called the last
day of the month the thirtieth. And likewise the first to converse about
natural philosophy, as some say. But Aristotle and Hippias say that he
attributed souls also to lifeless things, forming his conjecture from the
nature of the magnet, and of amber. And Pamphile relates that he, having
learnt geometry from the Egyptians, was the first person to describe a
right-angled triangle in a circle, and that he sacrificed an ox in honour
of his discovery. But others, among whom is Apollodorus the calculator,
say that it was Pythagoras who made this discovery. It was Thales also
who carried to their greatest point of advancement the discoveries which
Callimachus in his iambics says were first made by Euphebus the Phrygian,
such as those of the scalene angle, and of the triangle, and of other
things which relate to investigations about lines. He seems also to have
been a man of the greatest wisdom in political matters. For when Crœsus
sent to the Milesians to invite them to an alliance, he prevented them
from agreeing to it, which step of his, as Cyrus got the victory, proved
the salvation of the city. But Clytus relates, as Heraclides assures us,
that he was attached to a solitary and recluse life.
IV. Some assert that he was married, and that he had a son named
Cibissus; others, on the contrary, say that he never had a wife, but that
he adopted the son of his sister; and that once being asked why he did
not himself become a father, he answered, that it was because he was fond
of children. They say, too, that when his mother exhorted him to marry,
he said, “No, by Jove, it is not yet time.” And afterwards, when he was
past his youth, and she was again pressing him earnestly, he said, “It is
no longer time.”
V. Hieronymus, of Rhodes, also tells us, in the second book of his
Miscellaneous Memoranda, that when he was desirous to show that it was
easy to get rich, he, foreseeing that there would be a great crop of
olives, took some large plantations of olive trees, and so made a great
deal of money.
VI. He asserted water to be the principle of all things, and that the
world had life, and was full of dæmons: they say, too, that he was the
original definer of the seasons of the year, and that it was he who
divided the year into three hundred and sixty-five days. And he never had
any teacher except during the time that he went to Egypt, and associated
with the priests. Hieronymus also says that he measured the Pyramids:
watching their shadow, and calculating when they were of the same size
as that was. He lived with Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus, as we are
informed by Minyas.
VII. Now it is known to every one what happened with respect to the
tripod that was found by the fishermen and sent to the wise men by the
people of the Milesians. For they say that some Ionian youths bought a
cast of their net from some Milesian fishermen. And when the tripod was
drawn up in the net there was a dispute about it; until the Milesians
sent to Delphi: and the God gave them the following answer:—
You ask about the tripod, to whom you shall present it;
’Tis for the wisest, I reply, that fortune surely meant it.
Accordingly they gave it to Thales, and he gave it to some one, who again
handed it over to another, till it came to Solon. But he said that it
was the God himself who was the first in wisdom; and so he sent it to
Delphi. But Callimachus gives a different account of this in his Iambics,
taking the tradition which he mentions from Leander the Milesian; for he
says that a certain Arcadian of the name of Bathycles, when dying, left a
goblet behind him with an injunction that it should be given to the first
of the wise men. And it was given to Thales, and went the whole circle
till it came back to Thales, on which he sent it to Apollo Didymæus,
adding (according to Callimachus,) the following distich:—
Thales, who’s twice received me as a prize,
Gives me to him who rules the race of Neleus.
And the prose inscription runs thus:—
Thales the son of Examius, a Milesian, offers this to Apollo
Didymæus, having twice received it from the Greeks as the
reward for virtue.
And the name of the son of Bathycles who carried the goblet about from
one to the other, was Thyrion, as Eleusis tells us in his History of
Achilles. And Alexander the Myndian agrees with him in the ninth book of
his Traditions. But Eudoxus of Cnidos, and Evanthes of Miletus, say that
one of the friends of Crœsus received from the king a golden goblet, for
the purpose of giving it to the wisest of the Greeks; and that he gave
it to Thales, and that it came round to Chilo, and that he inquired of
the God at Delphi who was wiser than himself; and that the God replied,
Myson, whom we shall mention hereafter. (He is the man whom Eudoxus
places among the seven wise men instead of Cleobulus; but Plato inserts
his name instead of Periander.) The God accordingly made this reply
concerning him:—
I say that Myson, the Œtæan sage,
The citizen of Chen, is wiser far
In his deep mind than you.
The person who went to the temple to ask the question was Anacharsis; but
again Dædacus, the Platonic philosopher, and Clearchus, state that the
goblet was sent by Crœsus to Pittacus, and so was carried round to the
different men. But Andron, in his book called The Tripod, says that the
Argives offered the tripod as a prize for excellence to the wisest of the
Greeks; and that Aristodemus, a Spartan, was judged to deserve it, but
that he yielded the palm to Chilo; and Alcæus mentions Aristodemus in
these lines:—
And so they say Aristodemus once
Uttered a truthful speech in noble Sparta:
’Tis money makes the man; and he who’s none,
Is counted neither good nor honourable.
But some say that a vessel fully loaded was sent by Periander to
Thrasybulus the tyrant of the Milesians; and that as the ship was wrecked
in the sea, near the island of Cos, this tripod was afterwards found
by some fishermen. Phanodicus says that it was found in the sea near
Athens, and so brought into the city; and then, after an assembly had
been held to decide on the disposal, it was sent to Bias—and the reason
why we will mention in our account of Bias. Others say that this goblet
had been made by Vulcan, and presented by the Gods to Pelops, on his
marriage; and that subsequently it came into the possession of Menelaus,
and was taken away by Paris when he carried off Helen, and was thrown
into the sea near Cos by her, as she said that it would become a cause
of battle. And after some time, some of the citizens of Lebedos having
bought a net, this tripod was brought up in it; and as they quarrelled
with the fishermen about it, they went to Cos; and not being able to get
the matter settled there, they laid it before the Milesians, as Miletus
was their metropolis; and they sent ambassadors, who were treated with
neglect, on which account they made war on the Coans; and after each side
had met with many revolutions of fortune, an oracle directed that the
tripod should be given to the wisest; and then both parties agreed that
it belonged to Thales: and he, after it had gone the circuit of all the
wise men, presented it to the Didymæan Apollo. Now, the assignation of
the oracle was given to the Coans in the following words:—
The war between the brave Ionian race
And the proud Meropes will never cease,
Till the rich golden tripod which the God,
Its maker, cast beneath the briny waves,
Is from your city sent, and justly given
To that wise being who knows all present things,
And all that’s past, and all that is to come.
And the reply given to the Milesians was—
You ask about the tripod:
and so on, as I have related it before. And now we have said enough on
this subject.
But Hermippus, in his Lives, refers to Thales what has been by some
people reported of Socrates; for he recites that he used to say that he
thanked fortune for three things:—first of all, that he had been born a
man and not a beast; secondly, that he was a man and not a woman; and
thirdly, that he was a Greek and not a barbarian.
VIII. It is said that once he was led out of his house by an old woman
for the purpose of observing the stars, and he fell into a ditch and
bewailed himself, on which the old woman said to him—“Do you, O Thales,
who cannot see what is under your feet, think that you shall understand
what is in heaven?” Timon also knew that he was an astronomer, and in his
Silli he praises him, saying:—
Like Thales, wisest of the seven sages,
That great astronomer.
And Lobon of Argos, says, that which was written by him extends to about
two hundred verses; and that the following inscription is engraved upon
his statue:—
Miletus, fairest of Ionian cities,
Gave birth to Thales, great astronomer,
Wisest of mortals in all kinds of knowledge.
IX. And these are quoted as some of his lines:—
It is not many words that real wisdom proves;
Breathe rather one wise thought,
Select one worthy object,
So shall you best the endless prate of silly men reprove.—
And the following are quoted as sayings of his:—“God is the most ancient
of all things, for he had no birth: the world is the most beautiful of
things, for it is the work of God: place is the greatest of things, for
it contains all things: intellect is the swiftest of things, for it runs
through everything: necessity is the strongest of things, for it rules
everything: time is the wisest of things, for it finds out everything.”
He said also that there was no difference between life and death. “Why,
then,” said some one to him, “do not you die?” “Because,” said he, “it
does make no difference.” A man asked him which was made first, night or
day, and he replied, “Night was made first by one day.” Another man asked
him whether a man who did wrong, could escape the notice of the Gods.
“No, not even if he thinks wrong,” said he. An adulterer inquired of him
whether he should swear that he had not committed adultery. “Perjury,”
said he, “is no worse than adultery.” When he was asked what was very
difficult, he said, “To know one’s self.” And what was easy, “To advise
another.” What was most pleasant? “To be successful.” To the question,
“What is the divinity?” he replied, “That which has neither beginning
nor end.” When asked what hard thing he had seen, he said, “An old man
a tyrant.” When the question was put to him how a man might most easily
endure misfortune, he said, “If he saw his enemies more unfortunate
still.” When asked how men might live most virtuously and most justly,
he said, “If we never do ourselves what we blame in others.” To the
question, “Who was happy?” he made answer. “He who is healthy in his
body, easy in his circumstances, and well-instructed as to his mind.” He
said that men ought to remember those friends who were absent as well as
those who were present, and not to care about adorning their faces, but
to be beautified by their studies. “Do not,” said he, “get rich by evil
actions, and let not any one ever be able to reproach you with speaking
against those who partake of your friendship. All the assistance that
you give to your parents, the same you have a right to expect from your
children.” He said that the reason of the Nile overflowing was, that
its streams were beaten back by the Etesian winds blowing in a contrary
direction.
X. Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says, that Thales was born in the
first year of the thirty-fifth Olympiad; and he died at the age of
seventy-eight years, or according to the statement of Sosicrates, at the
age of ninety, for he died in the fifty-eighth Olympiad, having lived in
the time of Crœsus, to whom he promised that he would enable him to pass
the Halys without a bridge, by turning the course of the river.
XI. There have also been other men of the name of Thales, as Demetrius
of Magnesia says, in his Treatise on People and Things of the same name;
of whom five are particularly mentioned, an orator of Calatia of a very
affected style of eloquence; a painter of Sicyon, a great man; the third
was one who lived in very ancient times, in the age of Homer and Hesiod
and Lycurgus; the fourth is a man who is mentioned by Duris in his work
on Painting; the fifth is a more modern person, of no great reputation,
who is mentioned by Dionysius in his Criticisms.
XII. But this wise Thales died while present as a spectator at a
gymnastic contest, being worn out with heat and thirst and weakness, for
he was very old, and the following inscription was placed on his tomb:—
You see this tomb is small—but recollect,
The fame of Thales reaches to the skies.
I have also myself composed this epigram on him in the first book of my
epigrams or poems in various metres:—
O mighty sun, our wisest Thales sat
Spectator of the games, when you did seize upon him;
But you were right to take him near yourself,
Now that his aged sight could scarcely reach to heaven.
XIII. The apophthegm, “know yourself.” is his; though Antisthenes in
his Successions, says that it belongs to Phemonoe, but that Chilo
appropriated it as his own.
XIV. Now concerning the seven, (for it is well here to speak of them
all together,) the following traditions are handed down. Damon the
Cyrenæan, who wrote about the philosophers, reproaches them all, but
most especially the seven. And Anaximenes says, that they all applied
themselves to poetry. But Dicæarchus says, that they were neither wise
men nor philosophers, but merely shrewd men, who had studied legislation.
And Archetimus, the Syracusian, wrote an account of their having a
meeting at the palace of Cypselus, at which he says that he himself was
present. Ephorus says that they all except Thales met at the court of
Crœsus. And some say that they also met at the Pandionium,[8] and at
Corinth, and at Delphi. There is a good deal of disagreement between
different writers with respect to their apophthegms, as the same one is
attributed by them to various authors. For instance there is the epigram:—
Chilo, the Spartan sage, this sentence said:
Seek no excess—all timely things are good.
There is also a difference of opinion with respect to their number.
Leander inserts in the number instead of Cleobulus and Myson, Leophantus
Gorsias, a native of either Lebedos or Ephesus; and Epimenides, the
Cretan; Plato, in his Protagoras, reckons Myson among them instead
of Periander. And Ephorus mentions Anacharsis in the place of Myson;
some also add Pythagoras to the number. Dicæarchus speaks of four, as
universally agreed upon, Thales, Bias, Pittacus, and Solon; and then
enumerates six more, of whom we are to select three, namely, Aristodemus,
Pamphilus, Chilo the Lacedæmonian, Cleobulus, Anacharsis, and Periander.
Some add Acusilaus of Argos, the son of Cabas, or Scabras. But Hermippus,
in his Treatise on the Wise Men says that there were altogether
seventeen, out of whom different authors selected different individuals
to make up the seven. These seventeen were Solon, Thales, Pittacus, Bias,
Chilo, Myson, Cleobulus, Periander, Anacharsis, Acusilaus, Epimenides,
Leophantus, Pherecydes, Aristodemus, Pythagoras, Lasus the son of
Charmantides, or Sisymbrinus, or as Aristoxenus calls him the son of
Chabrinus, a citizen of Hermione, and Anaxagoras. But Hippobotus in his
Description of the Philosophers enumerates among them Orpheus, Linus,
Solon, Periander, Anacharsis, Cleobulus, Myson, Thales, Bias, Pittacus,
Epicharmus, and Pythagoras.
XV. The following letters are preserved as having been written by Thales:—
THALES TO PHERECYDES.
I hear that you are disposed, as no other Ionian has been, to discourse
to the Greeks about divine things, and perhaps it will be wiser of you to
reserve for your own friends what you write rather than to entrust it to
any chance people, without any advantage. If therefore it is agreeable to
you, I should be glad to become a pupil of yours as to the matters about
which you write; and if you invite me I will come to you to Syros; for
Solon the Athenian and I must be out of our senses if we sailed to Crete
to investigate the history of that country, and to Egypt for the purpose
of conferring with the priests and astronomers who are to be found there,
and yet are unwilling to make a voyage to you; for Solon will come
too, if you will give him leave, for as you are fond of your present
habitation you are not likely to come to Ionia, nor are you desirous of
seeing strangers; but you rather, as I hope, devote yourself wholly to
the occupation of writing. We, on the other hand, who write nothing,
travel over all Greece and Asia.
THALES TO SOLON.
XVI. If you should leave Athens it appears to me that you would find
a home at Miletus among the colonists of Athens more suitably than
anywhere else, for here there are no annoyances of any kind. And if you
are indignant because we Milesians are governed by a tyrant, (for you
yourself hate all despotic rulers), still at all events you will find it
pleasant to live with us for your companions. Bias has also written to
invite you to Priene, and if you prefer taking up your abode in the city
of the Prieneans, then we ourselves will come thither and settle near you.
LIFE OF SOLON.
I. Solon the son of Execestides, a native of Salamis, was the first
person who introduced among the Athenians, an ordinance for the
lowering[9] of debts; for this was the name given to the release of the
bodies and possessions of the debtors. For men used to borrow on the
security of their own persons, and many became slaves in consequence of
their inability to pay; and as seven talents were owed to him as a part
of his paternal inheritance when he succeeded to it, he was the first
person who made a composition with his debtors, and who exhorted the
other men who had money owing to them to do likewise, and this ordinance
was called σεισάχθεια; and the reason why is plain. After that he enacted
his other laws, which it would take a long time to enumerate; and he
wrote them on wooden revolving tablets.
II. But what was his most important act of all was, when there had been
a great dispute about his native land Salamis, between the Athenians and
Megarians, and when the Athenians had met with many disasters in war,
and had passed a decree that if any one proposed to the people to go to
war for the sake of Salamis he should be punished with death, he then
pretended to be mad and putting on a crown rushed into the market place,
and there he recited to the Athenians by the agency of a crier, the
elegies which he had composed, and which were all directed to the subject
of Salamis, and by these means he excited them; and so they made war
again upon the Megarians and conquered them by means of Solon. And the
elegies which had the greatest influence on the Athenians were these:—
Would that I were a man of Pholegandros,[10]
Or small Sicinna,[11] rather than of Athens:
For soon this will a common proverb be,
That’s an Athenian who won’t fight for Salamis.
And another was:—
Let’s go and fight for lovely Salamis,
And wipe off this our present infamy.
He also persuaded them to take possession of the Thracian Chersonesus,
and in order that it might appear that the Athenians had got possession
of Salamis not by force alone, but also with justice, he opened some
tombs, and showed that the corpses buried in them were all turned towards
the east, according to the Athenian fashion of sepulture; likewise the
tombs themselves all looked east, and the titles of the boroughs to which
the dead belonged were inscribed on them, which was a custom peculiar to
the Athenians. Some also say that it was he who added to the catalogue of
Homer, after the lines:—
With these appear the Salaminian bands,
Whom Telamon’s gigantic son commands—
These other verses:—
In twelve black ships to Troy they steer their course,
And with the great Athenians join their force.[12]
III. And ever after this time the people was willingly obedient to him,
and was contented to be governed by him; but he did not choose to be
their ruler, and moreover, as Sosicrates relates, he, as far as in him
lay, hindered also his relative Pisistratus from being so, when he saw
that he was inclined to such a step. Rushing into one of the assemblies
armed with a spear and shield, he forewarned the people of the design
of Pisistratus, and not only that but told them that he was prepared to
assist them; and these were his words: “Ye men of Athens, I am wiser
than some of you, and braver than others. Wiser than those of you who do
not perceive the treachery of Pisistratus; and braver than those who are
aware of it, but out of fear hold their peace.” But the council, being in
the interest of Pisistratus, said that he was mad, on which he spoke as
follows:—
A short time will to all my madness prove,
When stern reality presents itself.
And these elegiac verses were written by him about the tyranny of
Pisistratus, which he foretold,
Fierce snow and hail are from the clouds borne down,
And thunder after brilliant lightning roars;
And by its own great men a city falls,
The ignorant mob becoming slaves to kings.
IV. And when Pisistratus had obtained the supreme power, he, as he would
not influence him, laid down his arms before the chief council-house,
and said, “O my country, I have stood by you in word and deed.” And then
he sailed away to Egypt, and Cyprus, and came to Crœsus. And while at
his court being asked by him, “Who appears to you to be happy?”[13] He
replied, “Tellus the Athenian, and Cleobis and Biton,” and enumerated
other commonly spoken of instances. But some people say, that once Crœsus
adorned himself in every possible manner, and took his seat upon his
throne, and then asked Solon whether he had ever seen a more beautiful
sight. But he said, “Yes, I have seen cocks and pheasants, and peacocks;
for they are adorned with natural colours, and such as are ten thousand
times more beautiful.” Afterwards leaving Sardis he went to Cilicia, and
there he founded a city which he called Soli after his own name; and he
placed in it a few Athenians as colonists, who in time departed from the
strict use of their native language, and were said to speak _Solecisms_;
and the inhabitants of that city are called Solensians; but those of Soli
in Cyprus are called Solians.
V. And when he learnt that Pisistratus continued to rule in Athens as a
tyrant, he wrote these verses on the Athenians:—
If through your vices you afflicted are,
Lay not the blame of your distress on God;
You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards,
So now you groan ’neath slavery’s heavy rod—
Each one of you now treads in foxes’ steps,
Bearing a weak, inconstant, faithless mind,
Trusting the tongue and slippery speech of man;
Though in his acts alone you truth can find.
This, then, he said to them.
VI. But Pisistratus, when he was leaving Athens, wrote him a letter in
the following terms:—
PISISTRATUS TO SOLON.
I am not the only one of the Greeks who has seized the sovereignty of
his country, nor am I one who had no right whatever to do so, since I
am of the race of Codrus; for I have only recovered what the Athenians
swore that they would give to Codrus and all his family, and what they
afterwards deprived them of. And in all other respects I sin neither
against men nor against gods, but I allow the Athenians to live under the
laws which you established amongst them, and they are now living in a
better manner than they would if they were under a democracy; for I allow
no one to behave with violence: and I, though I am the tyrant, derive no
other advantage beyond my superiority in rank and honour, being content
with the fixed honours which belonged to the former kings. And every one
of the Athenians brings the tithe of his possessions, not to me, but to
the proper place in order that it may be devoted to the public sacrifices
of the city; and for any other public purposes, or for any emergencies of
war which may arise.
But I do not blame you for laying open my plans, for I know that you
did so out of regard for the city rather than out of dislike to me; and
also because you did not know what sort of government I was about to
establish; since, if you had been acquainted with it, you would have been
content to live under it and would not have fled. Now, therefore, return
home again; believing me even without my swearing to you that Solon shall
never receive any harm at the hands of Pisistratus; know also that none
of my enemies have suffered any evil from me; and if you will consent to
be one of my friends, you shall be among the first; for I know that there
is no treachery or faithlessness in you. Or if you wish to live at Athens
in any other manner, you shall be allowed to do so; only do not deprive
yourself of your country because of my actions.
Thus wrote Pisistratus.
VII. Solon also said, that the limit of human life was seventy years,
and he appears to have been a most excellent lawgiver, for he enjoined,
“that if any one did not support his parents he should be accounted
infamous; and that the man who squandered his patrimony should be equally
so, and the inactive man was liable to prosecution by any one who choose
to impeach him.” But Lysias, in his speech against Nicias, says that
Draco first proposed this law, but that it was Solon who enacted it. He
also prohibited all who lived in debauchery from ascending the tribunal;
and he diminished the honours paid to Athletes who were victorious in
the games, fixing the prize for a victor at Olympia at five hundred
drachmæ,[14] and for one who conquered at the Isthmian games at one
hundred; and in the same proportion did he fix the prizes for the other
games, for he said, that it was absurd to give such great honours to
those men as ought to be reserved for those only who died in the wars;
and their sons he ordered to be educated and bred up at the public
expense. And owing to this encouragement, the Athenians behave themselves
nobly and valiantly in war; as for instance, Polyzelus, and Cynægirus,
and Callimachus, and all the soldiers who fought at Marathon, and
Harmodius, and Aristogiton, and Miltiades, and numberless other heroes.
But as for the Athletes, their training is very expensive, and their
victories injurious, and they are crowned rather as conquerors of their
country than of their antagonists, and when they become old, as Euripides
says:—
They’re like old cloaks worn to the very woof.
IX. So Solon, appreciating these facts, treated them with moderation.
This also was an admirable regulation of his, that a guardian of orphans
should not live with their mother, and that no one should be appointed a
guardian, to whom the orphans’ property would come if they died. Another
excellent law was, that a seal engraver might not keep an impression of
any ring which had been sold by him, and that if a person struck out the
eye of a man who had but one, he should lose both his own, and that no
one should claim what he had not deposited, otherwise death should be his
punishment. If an archon was detected being drunk, that too was a capital
crime. And he compiled the poems of Homer, so that they might be recited
by different bards, taking the cue from one another, so that where one
had left off the next one might take him up, so that it was Solon rather
than Pisistratus who brought Homer to light, as Dieuchidas says, in the
fifth book of his History of Megara, and the most celebrated of his
verses were:—
Full fifty more from Athens stem the main.
And the rest of that passage—“And Solon was the first person who called
the thirtieth day of the month ἔνη καὶ νέα.”[15] He was the first person
also who assembled the nine archons together to deliver their opinions,
as Apollodorus tells us in the second book of his Treatise on Lawgivers.
And once, when there was a sedition in the city, he took part neither
with the citizens, nor with the inhabitants of the plain, nor with the
men of the sea-coast.
X. He used to say, too, that speech was the image of actions, and that
the king was the mightiest man as to his power; but that laws were like
cobwebs—for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them,
they held it fast; but if a thing of any size fell into them, it broke
the meshes and escaped. He used also to say that discourse ought to be
sealed by silence, and silence by opportunity. It was also a saying of
his, that those who had influence with tyrants, were like the pebbles
which are used in making calculations; for that every one of those
pebbles were sometimes worth more, and sometimes less, and so that the
tyrants sometimes made each of these men of consequence, and sometimes
neglected them. Being asked why he had made no law concerning parricides,
he made answer, that he did not expect that any such person would exist.
When he was asked how men could be most effectually deterred from
committing injustice, he said, “If those who are not injured feel as
much indignation as those who are.” Another apophthegm of his was, that
satiety was generated by wealth, and insolence by satiety.
XI. He it was who taught the Athenians to regulate their days by the
course of the moon; and he also forbade Thespis to perform and represent
his tragedies, on the ground of falsehood being unprofitable; and when
Pisistratus wounded himself, he said it all came of Thespis’s tragedies.
XII. He gave the following advice, as is recorded by Apollodorus in
his Treatise on the Sects of Philosophers:—“Consider your honour, as
a gentleman, of more weight than an oath.—Never speak falsely.—Pay
attention to matters of importance.—Be not hasty in making friends; and
do not cast off those whom you have made.—Rule, after you have first
learnt to submit to rule.—Advise not what is most agreeable, but what is
best.—Make reason your guide.—Do not associate with the wicked.—Honour
the gods; respect your parents.”
XIII. They say also that when Mimnermus had written:—
Happy’s the man who ’scapes disease and care,
And dies contented in his sixtieth year
Solon rebuked him, and said:—
Be guided now by me, erase this verse,
Nor envy me if I’m more wise than you.
If you write thus, your wish would not be worse,
May I be eighty ere death lays me low.
The following are some lines out of his poems:—
Watch well each separate citizen,
Lest having in his heart of hearts
A secret spear, one still may come
Saluting you with cheerful face,
And utter with a double tongue
The feigned good wishes of his wary mind.
As for his having made laws, that is notorious; he also composed speeches
to the people, and a book of suggestions to himself, and some elegiac
poems, and five thousand verses about Salamis and the constitution of the
Athenians; and some iambics and epodes.
XV. And on his statue is the following inscription—
Salamis that checked the Persian insolence,
Brought forth this holy lawgiver, wise Solon.
He flourished about the forty-sixth Olympiad, in the third year of which
he was archon at Athens, as Sosicrates records; and it was in this year
that he enacted his laws; and he died in Cyprus, after he had lived
eighty years, having given charge to his relations to carry his bones to
Salamis, and there to burn them to ashes, and to scatter the ashes on the
ground. In reference to which Cratinus in his Chiron represents him as
speaking thus:—
And as men say, I still this isle inhabit,
Sown o’er the whole of Ajax’ famous city.
There is also an epigram in the before mentioned collection of poems, in
various metres, in which I have made a collection of notices of all the
illustrious men that have ever died, in every kind of metre and rhythm,
in epigrams and odes. And it runs thus:—
The Cyprian flame devour’d great Solon’s corpse
Far in a foreign land; but Salamis
Retains his bones, whose dust is turned to corn.
The tablets of his laws do bear aloft
His mind to heaven. Such a burden light
Are these immortal rules to th’ happy wood.
XVI. He also, as some say, was the author of the apophthegm—“Seek
excess in nothing.” And Dioscorides, in his Commentaries, says, that,
when he was lamenting his son, who was dead (with whose name I am not
acquainted), and when some one said to him, “You do no good by weeping,”
he replied, “But that is the very reason why I weep, because I do no
good.”
XVII. The following letters also are attributed to him:—
SOLON TO PERIANDER.
You send me word that many people are plotting against you; but if you
were to think of putting everyone of them out of the way, you would do
no good; but some one whom you do not suspect would still plot against
you, partly because he would fear for himself, and partly out of dislike
to you for fearing all sorts of things; and he would think, too, that he
would make the city grateful to him, even if you were not suspected. It
is better, therefore, to abstain from the tyranny, in order to escape
from blame. But if you absolutely must be a tyrant, then you had better
provide for having a foreign force in the city superior to that of the
citizens; and then no one need be formidable to you, nor need you put any
one out of the way.
SOLON TO EPIMENIDES.
XVIII. My laws were not destined to be long of service to the Athenians,
nor have you done any great good by purifying the city. For neither
can the Deity nor lawgivers do much good to cities by themselves; but
these people rather give this power, who, from time to time, can lead
the people in any opinions they choose; so also the Deity and the laws,
when the citizens are well governed, are useful; but when they are ill
governed, they are no good. Nor are my laws or all the enactments that
I made, any better; but those who were in power transgressed them, and
did great injury to the commonwealth, inasmuch as they did not hinder
Pisistratus from usurping the tyranny. Nor did they believe me when I
gave them warning beforehand. But he obtained more credit than I did,
who flattered the Athenians while I told him the truth: but I, placing
my arms before the principal council-house, being wiser than they, told
those who had no suspicion of it, that Pisistratus was desirous to
make himself a tyrant; and I showed myself more valiant than those who
hesitated to defend the state against him. But they condemned the madness
of Solon. But at last I spoke loudly—“O, my country, I, Solon, here am
ready to defend you by word and deed; but to these men I seem to be mad.
So I will depart from you, being the only antagonist of Pisistratus; and
let these men be his guards if they please.” For you know the man, my
friend, and how cleverly he seized upon the tyranny. He first began by
being a demagogue; then, having inflicted wounds on himself, he came to
the Heliæa, crying out, and saying, “That he had been treated in this
way by his enemies.” And he entreated the people to assign him as guards
four hundred young men; and they, disregarding my advice, gave them to
him. And they were all armed with bludgeons. And after that he put down
the democracy. They in vain hoped to deliver the poor from their state of
slavery, and so now they are all of them slaves to Pisistratus.
SOLON TO PISISTRATUS.
I am well assured that I should suffer no evil at your hands. For before
your assumption of the tyranny I was a friend of yours, and now my case
is not different from that of any other Athenian who is not pleased
with tyranny. And whether it is better for them to be governed by one
individual, or to live under a democracy, that each person may decide
according to his own sentiments. And I admit that of all tyrants you are
the best. But I do not judge it to be good for me to return to Athens,
lest any one should blame me, for, after having established equality of
civil rights among the Athenians, and after having refused to be a tyrant
myself when it was in my power, returning now and acquiescing in what you
are doing.
SOLON TO CRŒSUS.
XX. I thank you for your goodwill towards me. And, by Minerva, if I did
not think it precious above everything to live in a democracy, I would
willingly prefer living in your palace with you to living at Athens,
since Pisistratus has made himself tyrant by force. But life is more
pleasant to me where justice and equality prevail universally. However,
I will come and see you, being anxious to enjoy your hospitality for a
season.
LIFE OF CHILO.
I. Chilo was a Lacedæmonian, the son of Damagetus. He composed verses
in elegiac metre to the number of two hundred: and it was a saying of
his that a foresight of future events, such as could be arrived at by
consideration was the virtue of a man. He also said once to his brother,
who was indignant at not being an ephor, while he himself was one, “The
reason is because I know how to bear injustice; but you do not.” And he
was made ephor in the fifty-fifth Olympiad; but Pamphila says that it
was in the fifty-sixth. And he was made first ephor in the year of the
archonship of Euthydemus, as we are told by Sosicrates. Chilo was also
the first person who introduced the custom of joining the ephors to the
kings as their counsellors: though Satyrus attributes this institution
to Lycurgus. He, as Herodotus says in his first book, when Hippocrates
was sacrificing at Olympia, and the cauldrons began to boil of their own
accord, advised him either to marry, or, if he were married already, to
discard his wife, and disown his children.
II. They tell a story, also, of his having asked Æsop what Jupiter was
doing, and that Æsop replied, “He is lowering what is high, and exalting
what is low.” Being asked in what educated men differed from those who
were illiterate, he said, “In good hopes.” Having had the question put
to him, What was difficult, he said, “To be silent about secrets; to
make good use of one’s leisure, and to be able to submit to injustice.”
And besides these three things he added further, “To rule one’s tongue,
especially at a banquet, and not to speak ill of one’s neighbours; for
if one does so one is sure to hear what one will not like.” He advised,
moreover, “To threaten no one; for that is a womanly trick. To be more
prompt to go to one’s friends in adversity than in prosperity. To make
but a moderate display at one’s marriage. Not to speak evil of the dead.
To honour old age.—To keep a watch upon one’s self.—To prefer punishment
to disgraceful gain; for the one is painful but once, but the other for
one’s whole life.—Not to laugh at a person in misfortune.—If one is
strong to be also merciful, so that one’s neighbours may respect one
rather than fear one.—To learn how to regulate one’s own house well.—Not
to let one’s tongue outrun one’s sense.—To restrain anger.—Not to dislike
divination.—Not to desire what is impossible.—Not to make too much haste
on one’s road.—When speaking not to gesticulate with the hand; for that
is like a madman.—To obey the laws.—To love quiet.”
And of all his songs this one was the most approved:—
Gold is best tested by a whetstone hard,
Which gives a certain proof of purity;
And gold itself acts as the test of men,
By which we know the temper of their minds.
III. They say, too, that when he was old he said, that he was not
conscious of having ever done an unjust action in his life; but that he
doubted about one thing. For that once when judging in a friend’s cause
he had voted himself in accordance with the law, but had persuaded a
friend to vote for his acquittal, in order that so he might maintain the
law, and yet save his friend.
IV. But he was most especially celebrated among the Greeks for having
delivered an early opinion about Cythera, an island belonging to Laconia.
For having become acquainted with its nature, he said, “I wish it had
never existed, or that, as it does exist, it were sunk at the bottom of
the sea.” And his foresight was proved afterwards. For when Demaratus was
banished by the Lacedæmonians, he advised Xerxes to keep his ships at
that island: and Greece would have been subdued, if Xerxes had taken the
advice. And afterwards Nicias, having reduced the island at the time of
the Peloponnesian war, placed in it a garrison of Athenians, and did a
great deal of harm to the Lacedæmonians.
V. He was very brief in his speech. On which account Aristagoras, the
Milesian, calls such conciseness, the Chilonean fashion; and says that
it was adopted by Branchus, who built the temple among the Branchidæ.
Chilo was an old man, about the fifty-second Olympiad, when Æsop, the
fable writer, flourished. And he died, as Hermippus says, at Pisa, after
embracing his son, who had gained the victory in boxing at the Olympic
games. The cause of his death was excess of joy, and weakness caused
by extreme old age. All the spectators who were present at the games
attended his funeral, paying him the highest honours. And we have written
the following epigram on him:—
I thank you, brightest Pollux, that the son
Of Chilo wears the wreath of victory;
Nor need we grieve if at the glorious sight
His father died. May such my last end be!
And the following inscription is engraved on his statue:—
The warlike Sparta called this Chilo son,
The wisest man of all the seven sages.
One of his sayings was, “Suretyship, and then destruction.” The following
letter of his is also extant:—
CHILO TO PERIANDER.
You desire me to abandon the expedition against the emigrants, as you
yourself will go forth. But I think that a sole governor is in a slippery
position at home; and I consider that tyrant a fortunate man who dies a
natural death in his own house.
LIFE OF PITTACUS.
I. Pittacus was a native of Mitylene, and son of Hyrradius. But Duris
says, that his father was a Thracian. He, in union with the brothers
of Alcæus, put down Melanchrus the tyrant of Lesbos. And in the battle
which took place between the Athenians and Mitylenæans on the subject
of the district of Achilis, he was the Mitylenæan general; the Athenian
commander being Phrynon, a Pancratiast, who had gained the victory at
Olympia. Pittacus agreed to meet him in single combat, and having a
net under his shield, he entangled Phrynon without his being aware of
it beforehand, and so, having killed him, he preserved the district in
dispute to his countrymen. But Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says, that
subsequently, the Athenians had a trial with the Mitylenæans about the
district, and that the cause was submitted to Periander, who decided it
in favour of the Athenians.
II. In consequence of this victory the Mitylenæans held Pittacus in the
greatest honour, and committed the supreme power into his hands. And
he held it for ten years, and then, when he had brought the city and
constitution into good order, he resigned the government. And he lived
ten years after that, and the Mitylenæans assigned him an estate, which
he consecrated to the God, and to this day it is called the Pittacian
land. But Sosicrates says that he cut off a small portion of it, saying
that half was more than the whole; and when Crœsus offered him some money
he would not accept it, as he said that he had already twice as much as
he wanted; for that he had succeeded to the inheritance of his brother,
who had died without children.
III. But Pamphila says, in the second book of her Commentaries, that he
had a son named Tyrrhæus, who was killed while sitting in a barber’s
shop, at Cyma, by a brazier, who threw an axe at him; and that the
Cymæans sent the murderer to Pittacus, who when he had learnt what had
been done, dismissed the man, saying, “Pardon is better than repentance.”
But Heraclitus says that the true story is, that he had got Alcæus into
his power, and that he released him, saying, “Pardon is better than
punishment.” He was also a lawgiver; and he made a law that if a man
committed a crime while drunk, he should have double punishment; in the
hope of deterring men from getting drunk, as wine was very plentiful in
the island.
IV. It was a saying of his that it was a hard thing to be good, and
this apophthegm is quoted by Simonides, who says, “It was a saying of
Pittacus, that it is a hard thing to be really a good man.” Plato also
mentions it in his Protagoras. Another of his sayings was, “Even the
Gods cannot strive against necessity.” Another was, “Power shows the
man.” Being once asked what was best, he replied, “To do what one is
doing at the moment well.” When Crœsus put the question to him, “What is
the greatest power?” “The power,” he replied, “of the variegated wood,”
meaning the wooden tablets of the laws. He used to say too, that there
were some victories without bloodshed. He said once to a man of Phocæa,
who was saying that we ought to seek out a virtuous man, “But if you seek
ever so much you will not find one.” Some people once asked him what
thing was very grateful? and he replied, “Time.”—What was uncertain?
“The future.”—What was trusty? “The land.”—What was treacherous? “The
sea.” Another saying of his was, that it was the part of wise men, before
difficult circumstances arose, to provide for their not arising; but that
it was the part of brave men to make the best of existing circumstances.
He used to say too, “Do not say before hand what you are going to do;
for if you fail, you will be laughed at.” “Do not reproach a man with
his misfortunes, fearing lest Nemesis may overtake you.” “If you have
received a deposit, restore it.” “Forbear to speak evil not only of your
friends, but also of your enemies.” “Practise piety, with temperance.”
“Cultivate truth, good faith, experience, cleverness, sociability, and
industry.”
V. He wrote also some songs, of which the following is the most
celebrated one:—
The wise will only face the wicked man,
With bow in hand well bent,
And quiver full of arrows—
For such a tongue as his says nothing true,
Prompted by a wily heart
To utter double speeches.
He also composed six hundred verses in elegiac metre; and he wrote a
treatise in prose, on Laws, addressed to his countrymen.
VI. He flourished about the forty-second Olympiad; and he died when
Aristomenes was Archon, in the third year of the fifty-second Olympiad;
having lived more than seventy years, being a very old man. And on his
tomb is this inscription:—
Lesbos who bore him here, with tears doth bury
Hyrradius’ worthy son, wise Pittacus.
Another saying of his was, “Watch your opportunity.”
VII. There was also another Pittacus, a lawgiver, as Phavorinus tells us
in the first book of his Commentaries; and Demetrius says so too, in his
Essay on Men and Things of the same name. And that other Pittacus was
called Pittacus the less.
VIII. But it is said that the wise Pittacus once, when a young man
consulted him on the subject of marriage, made him the following answer,
which is thus given by Callimachus in his Epigrams.
Hyrradius’ prudent son, old Pittacus
The pride of Mitylene, once was asked
By an Atarnean stranger; “Tell me, sage,
I have two marriages proposed to me;
One maid my equal is in birth and riches;
The other’s far above me;—which is best?
Advise me now which shall I take to wife?”
Thus spoke the stranger; but the aged prince,
Raising his old man’s staff before his face,
Said, “These will tell you all you want to know;”
And pointed to some boys, who with quick lashes
Were driving whipping tops along the street.
“Follow their steps,” said he; so he went near them
And heard them say, “Let each now mind his own.”—
So when the stranger heard the boys speak thus,
He pondered on their words, and laid aside
Ambitious thoughts of an unequal marriage.
As then he took to shame the poorer bride,
So too do you, O reader, mind thy own.
And it seems that he may have here spoken from experience, for his own
wife was of more noble birth than himself, since she was the sister
of Draco, the son of Penthilus; and she gave herself great airs, and
tyrannized over him.
IX. Alcæus calls Pittacus σαράπους and σάραπος, because he was
splay-footed, and used to drag his feet in walking, he also called him
χειροπόδης, because he had scars on his feet which were called χειράδες.
And γαύρηξ, implying that he gave himself airs without reason. And φύσκων
and γάστρων, because he was fat. He also called him ζοφοδορπίδας, because
he had weak eyes, and ἀγάσυρτος, because he was lazy and dirty. He used
to grind corn for the sake of exercise, as Clearchus, the philosopher,
relates.
X. There is a letter of his extant, which runs thus:—
PITTACUS TO CRŒSUS.
You invite me to come to Lydia in order that I may see your riches; but
I, even without seeing them, do not doubt that the son of Alyattes is the
richest of monarchs. But I should get no good by going to Sardis; for I
do not want gold myself, but what I have is sufficient for myself and my
companions. Still, I will come, in order to become acquainted with you as
a hospitable man.
LIFE OF BIAS.
I. Bias was a citizen of Priene, and the son of Teutamus, and by Satyrus
he is put at the head of the seven wise men. Some writers affirm that he
was one of the richest men of the city; but others say that he was only
a settler. And Phanodicus says, that he ransomed some Messenian maidens
who had been taken prisoners, and educated them as his own daughters,
and gave them dowries, and then sent them back to Messina to their
fathers. And when, as has been mentioned before, the tripod was found
near Athens by some fishermen, the brazen tripod I mean, which bore the
inscription—“For the Wise;” then Satyrus says that the damsels (but
others, such as Phanodicus, say that it was their father,) came into the
assembly, and said that Bias was the wise man—recounting what he had done
to them: and so the tripod was sent to him. But Bias, when he saw it,
said that it was Apollo who was “the Wise,” and would not receive the
tripod.
II. But others say that he consecrated it at Thebes to Hercules, because
he himself was a descendant of the Thebans, who had sent a colony to
Priene, as Phanodicus relates. It is said also that when Alyattes was
besieging Priene, Bias fattened up two mules, and drove them into his
camp; and that the king, seeing the condition that the mules were in, was
astonished at their being able to spare food to keep the brute beasts so
well, and so he desired to make peace with them, and sent an ambassador
to them. On this Bias, having made some heaps of sand, and put corn on
the top, showed them to the convoy; and Alyattes, hearing from him what
he had seen, made peace with the people of Priene; and then, when he sent
to Bias, desiring him to come quickly to him, “Tell Alyattes, from me” he
replied, “to eat onions;”—which is the same as if he had said, “go and
weep.”
III. It is said that he was very energetic and eloquent when pleading
causes; but that he always reserved his talents for the right side. In
reference to which Demodicus of Alerius uttered the following enigmatical
saying—“If you are a judge, give a Prienian decision.” And Hipponax says,
“More excellent in his decisions than Bias of Priene.” Now he died in
this manner:—
IV. Having pleaded a cause for some one when he was exceedingly old,
after he had finished speaking, he leaned back with his head on the
bosom of his daughter’s son; and after the advocate on the opposite side
had spoken, and the judges had given their decision in favour of Bias’s
client, when the court broke up he was found dead on his grandson’s
bosom. And the city buried him in the greatest magnificence, and put over
him this inscription—
Beneath this stone lies Bias, who was born
In the illustrious Prienian land,
The glory of the whole Ionian race.
And we ourselves have also written an epigram on him—
Here Bias lies, whom, when the hoary snow
Had crowned his aged temples, Mercury
Unpitying led to Pluto’s darken’d realms.
He pleaded his friend’s cause, and then reclin’d
In his child’s arms, repos’d in lasting sleep.
V. He also wrote about two thousand verses on Ionia, to show in what
matter a man might best arrive at happiness; and of all his poetical
sayings these have the greatest reputation:—
Seek to please all the citizens, even though
Your house may be in an ungracious city.
For such a course will favour win from all:
But haughty manners oft produce destruction.
And this one too:—
Great strength of body is the gift of nature;
But to be able to advise whate’er
Is most expedient for one’s country’s good,
Is the peculiar work of sense and wisdom.
Another is:—
Great riches come to many men by chance.
He used also to say that that man was unfortunate who could not support
misfortune; and that it is a disease of the mind to desire what was
impossible, and to have no regard for the misfortunes of others. Being
asked what was difficult, he said—“To bear a change of fortune for the
worse with magnanimity.” Once he was on a voyage with some impious men,
and the vessel was overtaken by a storm; so they began to invoke the
assistance of the Gods; on which he said, “Hold your tongues, lest they
should find out that you are in this ship.” When he was asked by an
impious man what piety was, he made no reply; and when his questioner
demanded the reason of his silence, he said, “I am silent because you are
putting questions about things with which you have no concern.” Being
asked what was pleasant to men, he replied, “Hope.” It was a saying of
his that it was more agreeable to decide between enemies than between
friends; for that of friends, one was sure to become an enemy to him;
but that of enemies, one was sure to become a friend. When the question
was put to him, what a man derived pleasure while he was doing, he said,
“While acquiring gain.” He used to say, too, that men ought to calculate
life both as if they were fated to live a long and a short time: and that
they ought to love one another as if at a future time they would come to
hate one another; for that most men were wicked. He used also to give
the following pieces of advice:—“Choose the course which you adopt with
deliberation; but when you have adopted it, then persevere in it with
firmness.—Do not speak fast, for that shows folly.—Love prudence.—Speak
of the Gods as they are.—Do not praise an undeserving man because of
his riches.—Accept of things, having procured them by persuasion,
not by force.—Whatever good fortune befalls you, attribute it to the
gods.—Cherish wisdom as a means of travelling from youth to old age, for
it is more lasting than any other possession.”
VI. Hipponax also mentions Bias, as has been said before; and Heraclitus
too, a man who was not easily pleased, has praised him; saying, in Priene
there lived Bias the son of Teutamus, whose reputation is higher than
that of the others; and the Prienians consecrated a temple to him which
is called the Teutamium. A saying of his was, “Most men are wicked.”
LIFE OF CLEOBULUS.
I. Cleobulus was a native of Lindus, and the son of Evagoras; but
according to Duris he was a Carian; others again trace his family back
to Hercules. He is reported to have been eminent for personal strength
and beauty, and to have studied philosophy in Egypt; he had a daughter
named Cleobulina, who used to compose enigmas in hexameter verse, and she
is mentioned by Cratinus in his play of the same name, except that the
title is written in the plural number. They say also that he restored the
temple of Minerva which had been built by Danaus.
II. Cleobulus composed songs and obscure sayings in verse to the number
of three thousand lines, and some say that it was he who composed the
epigram on Midas.
I am a brazen maiden lying here
Upon the tomb of Midas. And as long
As water flows, as trees are green with leaves
As the sun shines and eke the silver moon,
As long as rivers flow, and billows roar,
So long will I upon this much wept tomb,
Tell passers by, “Midas lies buried here.”
And as an evidence of this epigram being by him they quote a song of
Simonides, which runs thus:—
What men possessed of sense
Would ever praise the Lindian Cleobulus?
Who could compare a statue made by man
To everflowing streams,
To blushing flowers of spring,
To the sun’s rays, to beams o’ the golden morn,
And to the ceaseless waves of mighty Ocean?
All things are trifling when compared to God.
While men beneath their hands can crush a stone;
So that such sentiments can only come from fools.
And the epigram cannot possibly be by Homer, for he lived many years, as
it is said, before Midas.
III. There is also the following enigma quoted in the Commentaries of
Pamphila, as the work of Cleobulus:—
There was one father and he had twelve daughters,
Each of his daughters had twice thirty children.
But most unlike in figure and complexion;
For some were white, and others black to view,
And though immortal they all taste of death.
And the solution is, “the year.”
IV. Of his apophthegms, the following are the most celebrated. Ignorance
and talkativeness bear the chief sway among men. Opportunity will be the
most powerful. Cherish not a thought. Do not be fickle, or ungrateful.
He used to say too, that men ought to give their daughters in marriage
while they were girls in age, but women in sense; as indicating by this
that girls ought to be well educated. Another of his sayings was, that
one ought to serve a friend that he may become a greater friend; and an
enemy, to make him a friend. And that one ought to guard against giving
one’s friends occasion to blame one, and one’s enemies opportunity of
plotting against one. Also, when a man goes out of his house, he should
consider what he is going to do: and when he comes home again he should
consider what he has done. He used also to advise men to keep their
bodies in health by exercise.—To be fond of hearing rather than of
talking.—To be fond of learning rather than unwilling to learn.—To speak
well of people.—To seek virtue and eschew vice.—To avoid injustice.—To
give the best advice in one’s power to one’s country.—To be superior to
pleasure.—To do nothing by force.—To instruct one’s children.—To be
ready for reconciliation after quarrels.—Not to caress one’s wife, nor to
quarrel with her when strangers are present, for that to do the one is a
sign of folly, and to do the latter is downright madness.—Not to chastise
a servant while elated with drink, for so doing one will appear to be
drunk one’s self.—To marry from among one’s equals, for if one takes a
wife of a higher rank than one’s self, one will have one’s connexions
for one’s masters.—Not to laugh at those who are being reproved, for so
one will be detested by them.—Be not haughty when prosperous.—Be not
desponding when in difficulties.—Learn to bear the changes of fortune
with magnanimity.
V And he died at a great age, having lived seventy years, and this
inscription was put over him:—
His country, Lindus, this fair sea-girt city
Bewails wise Cleobulus here entombed.
VI. One of his sayings was, “Moderation is the best thing.” He also wrote
a letter to Solon in these terms:—
CLEOBULUS TO SOLON.
You have many friends, and a home everywhere, but yet I think that Lindus
will be the most agreeable habitation for Solon, since it enjoys a
democratic government, and it is a maritime island, and whoever dwells in
it has nothing to fear from Pisistratus, and you will have friends flock
to you from all quarters.
LIFE OF PERIANDER.
I. Periander was a Corinthian, the son of Cypselus, of the family of
the Heraclidæ. He married Lyside (whom he himself called Melissa), the
daughter of Procles the tyrant of Epidaurus, and of Eristhenea the
daughter of Aristocrates, and sister of Aristodemus, who governed nearly
all Arcadia, as Heraclides Ponticus says in his Treatise on Dominion
and had by her two sons Cypselus and Lycophron, the younger of whom was
clever boy, but the elder was deficient in intellect. At a subsequent
period he in a rage either kicked or threw his wife down stairs when
she was pregnant, and so killed her, being wrought upon by the false
accusations of his concubines, whom he afterwards burnt alive. And the
child, whose name was Lycophron, he sent away to Corcyra because he
grieved for his mother.
II. But afterwards, when he was now extremely old, he sent for him back
again, in order that he might succeed to the tyranny. But the Corcyreans,
anticipating his intention, put him to death, at which he was greatly
enraged, and sent their children to Corcyra to be made eunuchs of; and
when the ship came near to Samos, the youths, having made supplications
to Juno, were saved by the Samians. And he fell into despondency and
died, being eighty years old. Sosicrates says that he died forty-one
years before Crœsus, in the last year of the forty-eighth Olympiad.
Herodotus, in the first book of his History, says that he was connected
by ties of hospitality with Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus. And
Aristippus, in the first book of his Treatise on Ancient Luxury, tells
the following story of him; that his mother Cratea fell in love with
him, and introduced herself secretly into his bed; and he was delighted;
but when the truth was discovered he became very oppressive to all his
subjects, because he was grieved at the discovery. Ephorus relates that
he made a vow that, if he gained the victory at Olympia in the chariot
race, he would dedicate a golden statue to the God. Accordingly he
gained the victory; but being in want of gold, and seeing the women at
some national festival beautifully adorned, he took away their golden
ornaments, and then sent the offering which he had vowed.
III. But some writers say that he was anxious that his tomb should not be
known, and that with that object he adopted the following contrivance. He
ordered two young men to go out by night, indicating a particular road by
which they were to go, and to kill the first man they met, and bury him;
after them he sent out four other men who were to kill and bury them.
Again he sent out a still greater number against these four, with similar
instructions. And in this manner he put himself in the way of the first
pair, and was slain, and the Corinthians erected a cenotaph over him with
the following inscription:—
The sea-beat land of Corinth in her bosom,
Doth here embrace her ruler Periander,
Greatest of all men for his wealth and wisdom.
We ourselves have also written an epigram upon him:—
Grieve not when disappointed of a wish,
But be content with what the Gods may give you—
For the great Periander died unhappy,
At failing in an object he desired.
IV. It was a saying of his that we ought not to do anything for the sake
of money; for that we ought only to acquire such gains as are allowable.
He composed apophthegms in verse to the number of two thousand lines;
and said that those who wished to wield absolute power in safety, should
be guarded by the good will of their countrymen, and not by arms. And
once being asked why he assumed tyrannical power, he replied, “Because,
to abdicate it voluntarily, and to have it taken from one, are both
dangerous.” The following sayings also belong him:—Tranquillity is
a good thing.—Rashness is dangerous.—Gain is disgraceful.—Democracy
is better than tyranny.—Pleasures are transitory, but honour is
immortal.—Be moderate when prosperous, but prudent when unfortunate.—Be
the same to your friends when they are prosperous, and when they
are unfortunate.—Whatever you agree to do, observe.—Do not divulge
secrets.—Punish not only those who do wrong, but those who intend to do
so.
V. This prince was the first who had body-guards, and who changed a
legitimate power into a tyranny; and he would not allow any one who chose
to live in his city, as Euphorus and Aristotle tell us.
VI. And he flourished about the thirty-eighth Olympiad, and enjoyed
absolute power for forty years. But Sotion, and Heraclides, and
Pamphila, in the fifth book of her Commentaries, says that there were
two Perianders; the one a tyrant, and the other a wise man, and a native
of Ambracia. And Neanthes of Cyzicus makes the same assertion, adding,
that the two men were cousins to one another. And Aristotle says, that it
was the Corinthian Periander who was the wise one; but Plato contradicts
him. The saying—“Practice does everything,” is his. He it was, also, who
proposed to cut through the Isthmus.
VII. The following letter of his is quoted:—
PERIANDER TO THE WISE MEN.
I give great thanks to Apollo of Delphi that my letters are able to
determine you all to meet together at Corinth; and I will receive you
all, as you may be well assured, in a manner that becomes free citizens.
I hear also that last year you met at Sardis, at the court of the King
of Lydia. So now do not hesitate to come to me, who am the tyrant of
Corinth; for the Corinthians will all be delighted to see you come to the
house of Periander.
VIII. There is this letter too:—
PERIANDER TO PROCLES.
The injury of my wife was unintended by me; and you have done wrong in
alienating from me the mind of my child. I desire you, therefore, either
to restore me to my place in his affections, or I will revenge myself on
you; for I have myself made atonement for the death of your daughter, by
burning in her tomb the clothes of all the Corinthian women.[16]
IX. Thrasybulus also wrote him a letter in the following terms:—
I have given no answer to your messenger; but having taken him into a
field, I struck with my walking-stick all the highest ears of corn, and
cut off their tops, while he was walking with me. And he will report to
you, if you ask him, everything which he heard or saw while with me; and
do you act accordingly if you wish to preserve your power safely, taking
off the most eminent of the citizens, whether he seems an enemy to you or
not, as even his companions are deservedly objects of suspicion to a man
possessed of supreme power.
LIFE OF ANACHARSIS, THE SCYTHIAN.
I. Anacharsis the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of
Caduides the king of the Scythians; but his mother was a Grecian woman;
owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.
II. He wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about
those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course
of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and
amounting to eight hundred lines. He gave occasion for a proverb, because
he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the
Scythian conversation.
III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh
Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he
came to Solon’s house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell
his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to
see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitality with
him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon
to reply him that, “Men generally limited such alliances to their own
countrymen.” In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told
the servant that now he was in Solon’s country, and that it was quite
consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On
this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made
him one of his greatest friends.
IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a
purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being
exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot
by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, “That
he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought
from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family.”
Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian
sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:—
When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn’d, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion—
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first the bunch
of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third, that of disgust.
He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were
skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act
as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not
fond of drinking, he said, “If he always keeps in view the indecorous
actions of drunken men.” He used also to say, that he marvelled how the
Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour
Athletæ because of their beating one another. When he had been informed
that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, “That those
who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death.” He used
to say that oil was a provocative of madness, “because Athletæ, when
anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury.”
“How is it,” he used to say, “that those who forbid men to speak falsely,
tell lies openly in their vintners’ shops?” It was a saying of his, that
he “marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of
small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large
goblets.” And this inscription is on his statues—“Restrain your tongues,
your appetites, and your passions.” He was once asked if the flute was
known among the Scythians; and he said, “No, nor the vine either.” At
another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of
vessel? and he said, “That which is brought into dock.” He said, too,
that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that
“They left the smoke[17] in the mountains, and carried the wood down to
their cities.” Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the
living or the dead? he said, “Under which head do you class those who are
at sea.” Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said,
“Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your
country.” When he was asked what there was among men which was both good
and bad, he replied, “The tongue.” He used to say “That it was better
to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for
nothing.” Another saying of his was, that “The forum was an established
place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously.” Being once
insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, “O, young man, if
now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will
have to bear water.”
VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the
inventor of the anchor, and of the potter’s wheel.
VII. The following letter of his is extant:—
ANACHARSIS TO CRŒSUS
O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order
to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have
no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a
better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it
very desirable to become a friend of yours.
LIFE OF MYSON.
I. Myson, the son of Strymon, as Sosicrates states, quoting Hermippus as
his authority, a Chenean by birth, of some Œtæan or Laconian village,
is reckoned one of the seven wise men, and they say that his father was
tyrant of his country. It is said by some writers that, when Anacharsis
inquired if any one was wiser than he, the priestess at Delphi gave the
answer which has been already quoted in the life of Thales in reference
to Chilo:—
I say that Myson the Œtæan sage,
The citizen of Chen, is wiser far
In his deep mind than you.
And that he, having taken a great deal of trouble, came to the village,
and found him in the summer season fitting a handle to a plough, and he
addressed him, “O Myson, this is not now the season for the plough.”
“Indeed,” said he, “it is a capital season for preparing one;” but others
say, that the words of the oracle are the Etean sage, and they raise
the question, what the word Etean means. So Parmenides says, that it is
a borough of Laconia, of which Myson was a native; but Sosicrates, in
his Successions says, that he was an Etean on his father’s side, and a
Chenean by his mother’s. But Euthyphron, the son of Heraclides Ponticus,
says that he was a Cretan, for that Etea was a city of Crete.
II. And Anaxilaus says that he was an Arcadian. Hipponax also mentions
him, saying, “And Myson, whom Apollo stated to be the most prudent of
all men.” But Aristoxenus, in his Miscellanies, says that his habits were
not very different from those of Timon and Apemantus, for that he was
a misanthrope. And that accordingly he was one day found in Lacedæmon
laughing by himself in a solitary place, and when some one came up to him
on a sudden and asked him why he laughed when he was by himself, he said,
“For that very reason.” Aristoxenus also says that he was not thought
much of, because he was not a native of any city, but only of a village,
and that too one of no great note; and according to him, it is on account
of this obscurity of his that some people attribute his sayings and
doings to Pisistratus the tyrant, but he excepts Plato the philosopher,
for he mentions Myson in his Protagoras, placing him among the wise men
instead of Periander.
III. It used to be a common saying of his that men ought not to seek for
things in words, but for words in things; for that things are not made on
account of words, but that words are put together for the sake of things.
IV. He died when he had lived ninety-seven years.
LIFE OF EPIMENIDES.
I. Epimenides, as Theopompus and many other writers tell us, was the son
of a man named Phædrus, but some call him the son of Dosiadas; and others
of Agesarchus. He was a Cretan by birth, of the city of Gnossus; but
because he let his hair grow long, he did not look like a Cretan.
II. He once, when he was sent by his father into the fields to look for a
sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cave
and fell asleep, and slept there fifty-seven years; and after that, when
he awoke, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been
taking a short nap; but as he could not find it he went on to the field
and there he found everything changed, and the estate in another person’s
possession, and so he came back again to the city in great perplexity,
and as he was going into his own house he met some people who asked him
who he was, until at last he found his younger brother who had now
become an old man, and from him he learnt all the truth.
III. And when he was recognized he was considered by the Greeks as
a person especially beloved by the Gods, on which account when the
Athenians were afflicted by a plague, and the priestess at Delphi
enjoined them to purify their city, they sent a ship and Nicias the son
of Niceratus to Crete, to invite Epimenides to Athens; and he, coming
there in the forty-sixth Olympiad, purified the city and eradicated
the plague for that time; he took some black sheep and some white ones
and led them up to the Areopagus, and from thence he let them wherever
they chose, having ordered the attendants to follow them, and wherever
any one of them lay down they were to sacrifice him to the God who was
the patron of the spot, and so the evil was stayed; and owing to this
one may even now find in the different boroughs of the Athenians altars
without names, which are a sort of memorial of the propitiation of the
Gods that then took place. Some said that the cause of the plague was
the pollution contracted by the city in the matter of Cylon, and that
Epimenides pointed out to the Athenians how to get rid of it, and that in
consequence they put to death two young men, Cratinus and Ctesibius, and
that thus the pestilence was put an end to.
III. And the Athenians passed a vote to give him a talent and a ship to
convey him back to Crete, but he would not accept the money, but made a
treaty of friendship and alliance between the Gnossians and Athenians.
IV. And not long after he had returned home he died, as Phlegon relates
in his book on long-lived people, after he had lived a hundred and
fifty-seven years; but as the Cretans report he had lived two hundred and
ninety-nine; but as Xenophones the Colophonian, states that he had heard
it reported, he was a hundred and fifty-four years old when he died.
V. He wrote a poem of five thousand verses on the Generation and Theogony
of the Curetes and Corybantes, and another poem of six thousand five
hundred verses on the building of the Argo and the expedition of Jason to
Colchis.
VI. He also wrote a treatise in prose on the Sacrifices in Crete, and
the Cretan Constitution, and on Minos and Rhadamanthus, occupying four
thousand lines.
VI. Likewise he built at Athens the temple which is there dedicated to
the venerable goddesses, as Lobon the Augur says in his book on Poets;
and he is said to have been the first person who purified houses and
lands, and who built temples.
VII. There are some people who assert that he did not sleep for the
length of time that has been mentioned above, but that he was absent
from his country for a considerable period, occupying himself with the
anatomisation and examination of roots.
VIII. A letter of his is quoted, addressed to Solon the lawgiver, in
which he discusses the constitution which Minos gave the Cretans. But
Demetrius the Magnesian, in his treatise on Poets and Prose writers of
the same name as one another, attempts to prove that the letter is a
modern one, and is not written in the Cretan but in the Attic dialect,
and the new Attic too.
IX. But I have also discovered another letter of his which runs thus:—
EPIMENIDES TO SOLON.
Be of good cheer, my friend; for if Pisistratus had imposed his laws on
the Athenians, they being habituated to slavery and not accustomed to
good laws previously, he would have maintained his dominion for ever,
succeeding easily in enslaving his fellow countrymen; but as it is, he
is lording it over men who are no cowards, but who remember the precepts
of Solon and are indignant at their bonds, and who will not endure the
supremacy of a tyrant. But if Pisistratus does possess the city to-day,
still I have no expectation that the supreme power will ever descend to
his children. For it is impossible that men who have lived in freedom and
in the enjoyment of most excellent laws should be slaves permanently; but
as for yourself, do not you go wandering about at random, but come and
visit me, for here there is no supreme ruler to be formidable to you; but
if while you are wandering about any of the friends of Pisistratus should
fall in with you, I fear you might suffer some misfortune.
He then wrote thus:—
X. But Demetrius says that some writers report that he used to receive
food from the nymphs and keep it in a bullock’s hoof; and that eating it
in small quantities he never required any evacuations, and was never
seen eating. And Timæus mentions him in his second book.
XI. Some authors say also that the Cretans sacrifice to him as a god, for
they say that he was the wisest of men: and accordingly, that when he
saw the port of Munychia,[18] at Athens, he said that the Athenians did
not know how many evils that place would bring upon them: since, if they
did, they would tear it to pieces with their teeth; and he said this a
long time before the event to which he alluded. It is said also, that he
at first called himself Æacus; and that he foretold to the Lacedæmonians
the defeat which they should suffer from the Arcadians; and that he
pretended that he had lived several times. But Theopompus, in his Strange
Stories, says that when he was building the temple of the Nymphs, a voice
burst forth from heaven;—“Oh! Epimenides, build this temple, not for the
Nymphs but for Jupiter.” He also foretold to the Cretans the defeat of
the Lacedæmonians by the Arcadians, as has been said before. And, indeed,
they were beaten at Orchomenos.
XII. He pretended also, that he grew old rapidly, in the same number
of days as he had been years asleep; at least, so Theopompus says. But
Mysonianus, in his Coincidences, says, that the Cretans call him one
of the Curetes. And the Lacedæmonians preserve his body among them, in
obedience to some oracle, as Sosibius the Lacedæmonian says.
XIII. There were also two other Epimenides, one the genealogist; the
other, the man who wrote a history of Rhodes in the Doric dialect.
LIFE OF PHERECYDES.
I. Pherecydes was a Syrian, the son of Babys, and, as Alexander says, in
his Successions, he had been a pupil of Pittacus.
II. Theopompus says that he was the first person who ever wrote among
the Greeks on the subject of Natural Philosophy and the Gods. And there
are many marvellous stories told of him. For it is said that he was
walking along the sea-shore at Samos, and that seeing a ship sailing
by with a fair wind, he said that it would soon sink; and presently it
sank before their eyes. At another time he was drinking some water which
had been drawn up out of a well, and he foretold that within three days
there would be an earthquake; and there was one. And as he was going
up to Olympia, and had arrived at Messene, he advised his entertainer,
Perilaus, to migrate from the city with all his family, but that Perilaus
would not be guided by him; and afterwards Messene was taken.
III. And he is said to have told the Lacedæmonians to honour neither gold
nor silver, as Theopompus says in his Marvels; and it is reported that
Hercules laid this injunction on him in a dream, and that the same night
he appeared also to the kings of Sparta, and enjoined them to be guided
by Pherecydes; but some attribute these stories to Pythagoras.
IV. And Hermippus relates that when there was a war between the Ephesians
and Magnesians, he, wishing the Ephesians to conquer, asked some one, who
was passing by, from whence he came? and when he said, “From Ephesus,”
“Drag me now,” said he, “by the legs, and place me in the territory
of the Magnesians, and tell your fellow countrymen to bury me there
after they have got the victory;” and that he went and reported that
Pherecydes had given him this order. And so they went forth the next day
and defeated the Magnesians; and as Pherecydes was dead, they buried him
there, and paid him very splendid honours.
V. But some writers say that he went to Delphi, and threw himself down
from the Corycian hill; Aristoxenus, in his History of Pythagoras and
his Friends, says that Pherecydes fell sick and died, and was buried by
Pythagoras in Delos; But others say that he died of the lousy disease;
and when Pythagoras came to see him, and asked him how he was, he put
his finger through the door, and said, “You may see by my skin.” And
from this circumstance that expression passed into a proverb among the
philosophers, when affairs are going on badly; and those who apply it to
affairs that are going on well, make a blunder. He used to say, also,
that the Gods call their table θυωρὸς.
VI. But Andron, the Ephesian, says that there were two men of the name of
Pherecydes, both Syrians: one an astronomer and the other a writer on God
and the Divine Nature; and that this last was the son of Babys, who was
also the master of Pythagoras. But Eratosthenes asserts that there was
but one, who was a Syrian; and that the other Pherecydes was an Athenian,
a genealogist; and the work of the Syrian Pherecydes is preserved, and it
begins thus:—“Jupiter, and Time, and Chthon existed externally.” And the
name of Cthonia became Tellus, after Jupiter gave it to her as a reward.
A sun-dial is also preserved, in the island of Syra, of his making.
VII. But Duris, in the second book of his Boundaries, says that this
epigram was written upon him:—
The limit of all wisdom is in me;
And would be, were it larger. But report
To my Pythagoras that he’s the first
Of all the men that tread the Grecian soil;
I shall not speak a falsehood, saying this.
And Ion, the Chian, says of him:—
Adorned with valour while alive, and modesty,
Now that he’s dead he still exists in peace;
For, like the wise Pythagoras, he studied
The manners and the minds of many nations.
And I myself have composed an epigram on him in the Pherecratean metre:—
The story is reported,
That noble Pherecydes
Whom Syros calls her own,
Was eaten up by lice;
And so he bade his friends,
Convey his corpse away
To the Magnesian land,
That he might victory give
To holy Ephesus.
For well the God had said,
(Though he alone did know
Th’ oracular prediction),
That this was fate’s decree.
So in that land he lies.
This then is surely true,
That those who’re really wise
Are useful while alive,
And e’en when breath has left them.
VIII. And he flourished about the fifty-ninth Olympiad. There is a letter
of his extant in the following terms:—
PHERECYDES TO THALES.
May you die happily when fate overtakes you. Disease has seized upon
me at the same time that I received your letter. I am all over lice,
and suffering likewise under a low fever. Accordingly, I have charged
my servants to convey this book of mine to you, after they have buried
me. And do you, if you think fit, after consulting with the other wise
men, publish it; but if you do not approve of doing so, then keep it
unpublished, for I am not entirely pleased with it myself. The subject is
not one about which there is any certain knowledge, nor do I undertake
to say that I have arrived at the truth; but I have advanced arguments,
from which any one who occupies himself with speculations on the divine
nature, may make a selection; and as to other points, he must exercise
his intellect, for I speak obscurely throughout. I, myself, as I am
afflicted more severely by this disease every day, no longer admit any
physicians, or any of my friends. But when they stand at the door, and
ask me how I am, I put out my finger to them through the opening of the
door, and show them how I am eaten up with the evil; and I desired them
to come to-morrow to the funeral of Pherecydes.
These, then, are they who were called wise men; to which list some
writers add the name of Pisistratus. But we must also speak of the
philosophers. And we will begin first with the Ionic philosophy, the
founder of which school was Thales, who was the master of Anaximander.